As I hope you may have noticed, I have been away from my blog for a bit. April is a quiet sports month for us here at RCN so it is a good time for me to reunite with my wife and with my golf game. I managed to do both this past month – I went on a cruise and followed that up with a five-day golf trip. Those obviously made the month fly by, but it is good to be back at the computer and looking towards the baseball championships coming up this month.
The last major sporting event that I watched prior to vacation was the Masters. I have always been intrigued by the reverence that the announcers seem to pay to this event. So I did some research and found that, in 1979, the radio and television announcers were given rules and a terminology guide from the Masters committee that they must follow. Some have lost their job by not obeying the edict. Here are a few of the rules:
- Never refer to the gallery or patrons as a mob or crowd.
- Never estimate the size of the gallery.
- Never refer to players’ earnings.
- Never refer to Masters prize money.
- De-emphasize the players’ antics.
- Do not compare any holes at Augusta National with those at another golf course.
- The water in front of the 13th green is not to be called Rae’s Creek, but a tributary of Rae’s Creek.
- Make no reference to Masters tickets having been sold out.
- Make frequent mention of the presentation ceremony to be conducted at the end of the final round.
- Do not guess where a ball might be.
- Do not estimate the length of a putt.
In addition, there is a Terminology and Style Guide which includes the following:
- Augusta National Golf Club – not Country Club or Golf Course.
- Patrons – the people in attendance are patrons, not fans or spectators.
- Second Cut – there is no rough; the higher grass should be referred to as the second cut.
- Bunkers – they are not sand traps.
- First nine/Second nine – not front nine and back nine.
- Groupings – not “threesomes” for rounds one and two.
- Hole number 1 – not 1st
- 1st round – preferred term for rounds and Final round for 4th
There are more rules and more terminologies, but you get the idea. And… if you announce the Masters, you BETTER get the idea. Gary McCord was fired in 1994 for saying that “bikini wax” was used on the Augusta greens to make them slick and that some of the bunkers around the course looked like “body bags”. He has not been asked back. Long-time announcer Jack Whitaker once referred to the gallery as a “mob scene” and the Augusta committee got him removed from the broadcast.
This Masters will be remembered for the collapse of Jordan Spieth in the final round, but I, for one, paid a bit more attention to every word that was spoken during the broadcast. And, I am quite sure, so did every one of the announcers (if they wanted to keep the job).
ABOVE THE EARS (SOME MUSINGS)
- Some good news out of Philadelphia – a new Eagles’ quarterback, the Flyers made the playoffs, and, better yet, the Phillies are winning. Light at the end of what has been a very dark tunnel.
- Speaking of Eagles’ football, Carson Wentz played for North Dakota State. I did a Lafayette-North Dakota State game in Fargo, North Dakota, back in 2011. Boy, do they love their football. It was a packed house at the indoor stadium with the loudest crowd I have experienced. Lafayette lost 42-6. There is not much else to do out there. In the local pub the night before the game, dogs sat on the bar stools and they had a meat raffle! What?
- I mentioned Bourjos, Hernandez, Herrera, Franco, Howard, Galvis, Rupp, and Goedel as the Phillies position players to start the season. However, it has been the pitching staff, both starters and relievers, who have been responsible for the success of the team so far.
- As I write this, every team in the National League East, except the Braves, is at .500 or better. The Phillies have the fourth best record in the National League and third best in the NL East.
- Jim Best will offer up his blog on this site next week. Thanks to him, John Leone, and Scott Barr filling in for me.
