If there’s anything that could possibly make Jon Miller sound bad, it’s Joe Morgan. The guy is just horrible. He rambles on about every single little detail in a telecast and never lets go. And he makes a manager picking his nose sound like it’s a complicated baseball matter — some sort of sign being given out. Anyways, Awful Announcing points out the latest on Joe Morgan, a column from Phil Mushnick exposing the fraud that is Joe Morgan:
Cardinals-Phillies was part of ESPN’s pathetic “Sunday Night Baseball” coverage. The Phillies were about to become the first Major League Baseball team to 10,000 losses. And Joe Morgan, ESPN’s No. 1 baseball analyst, a fellow whose wisdom is often laced with convoluted, confounding and contradictory nonsense, was moved to tell a national audience about the significant role he played in Phillies history.
The year, Morgan told us, was 1964, that calamitous season when the Phillies blew a 61/2-game lead with 12 games left by losing 10 straight. Morgan said he made his major-league debut late in ’64, against the Phillies. And it was in that game that his RBI single beat the Phillies, extending their infamous losing streak to eight or nine.
Morgan added that Phillies manager Gene Mauch was so upset he threw over the buffet table in the clubhouse, hollering that his club had just been beaten by “a Little Leaguer!”
Great story. But unless Morgan was confusing himself with Reds rookie infielder Chico Ruiz, it never happened. As several readers were moved to write, the Phillies played the Reds, Braves and Cardinals during that losing streak; Houston wasn’t in the mix.
Furthermore, Morgan, though called up in 1964, did not have an RBI that season for Houston.
And he did not make his big-league debut in ’64, either. That came Sept. 21, 1963, when he went 0-for-1, pinch-hitting against the Phillies.
Al Martin and George O’Leary think that’s far-fetched. Now, if only ESPN could clean up Sunday Night Baseball and get a real analyst in the booth — you know, like Harold Reynolds — then all would be well in this world. Until then, we must suffer through the obvious crap this guy spews on a weekly basis. The horror.
