In praise of good sportscasting

I can put any announcer into one of four groups. Group A: announcers who enhance the game-watching experience. Group B: announcers who neither add anything nor take anything away. Group C: announcers who detract from the experience. And group D: Dick Vitale.

The vast majority go in groups B or C, the latter including the irritating likes of Joe Morgan, Tim McCarver, John Madden, and Joe Theismann. Group A, of course, is a little more exclusive. Off the top of my head, its members include:

-Howard Cosell
-Larry Munson, the voice of the Georgia Bulldogs
-Keith Jackson
-Gus Johnson, for the sheer excitement
-And from your Atlanta Braves: Skip Caray, Joe Simpson, Pete Van Wieren, and Don Sutton

There are others, I'm sure, but not many. So what are the traits of an enjoyable sportscaster? Knowledge, insight, and humor are a few, but the big one--and this is where Keith Jackson and Joe Morgan are diametrically opposed--is fluidity. The ability to begin a thought, hit all the important points, and wrap it up without stammering, staggering, or changing direction. Listen to Morgan or Madden some time--they are constantly diving into a sentence, clearly with no plan whatsoever for getting out of it. Maybe it's just me, but this makes the broadcasts...what's the auditory equivalent to unwatchable? I don't like unlistenable because you aren't "listening the broadcast" in the first place. Unlistentoable, which gets about 100 Google hits, is the best I can do.

Anyway, back to this week's theme. One of the many things that stood out about the Braves through the division title run was the unparalled quality of the announcers--specifically Caray, Simpson, Van Wieren, and Sutton. But that era is now over too, as Sutton has moved on to work for the Nationals. If his replacement is half as good we should be in fine shape for a while, but it still won't be the same. A few thoughts:

-Caray's old pregame show was absolutely classic. He would relentlessly mock anyone who dared to call with a lame question.
-I would often turn to a game on the radio and be greeted by several seconds of silence before anyone spoke. Not many announcers understand that the listener does not need to be bombarded with constant chatter for the game to be interesting and exciting.
-Listening to Sutton, you would never guess he is in the Hall of Fame. He refuses to tell a story from his playing career unless it involves losing a game, giving up a home run, or some other form of ineptitude.
-I will never get tired of Caray's "that foul ball was caught by a fan from [insert semi-arbitrarily chosen town]" routine. And the best part of the pregame show was when a caller would ask how he could possibly know. The answer, invariably: from decades of studying subtle differences in body language.