Jon Miller interview Big BAYBEH!!!

Collapse

Recommended Videos

Collapse
X
 
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • MuffinMcFluffin
    Banned
    • Feb 2003
    • 4215

    #1

    Jon Miller interview Big BAYBEH!!!

    LOL nothing that has to do with the game itself, just the shipping date at the end:


    </font><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr />
    December 04, 2003 - Over the past two decades, Jon Miller has become one of the most recognizable voices in broadcasting. The voice of the San Francisco Giants, Miller has also been partnered with Joe Morgan on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, a relationship that's lasted fourteen years. Miller's baritone voice will venture to a new medium next spring. As announced yesterday, Miller provides play-by-play for Sega Sports' ESPN Major League Baseball, coming spring 2004.

    Miller sat down with IGN Sports recently to give us his thoughts on the state of baseball. The gregarious broadcaster offers words of wisdom for Major League owners, tips for the hard-luck Oakland Athletics, and why St. Louis humidity would force him to choose radio over television broadcasting.


    IGN Sports: In most interviews, we have to play it fair and ask about the most popular baseball teams, like the Yankees. However, I'm going to be selfish today and ask about the teams I care about.

    Jon Miller: Okay.

    IGN Sports: The big baseball story this year was the Cubs and Red Sox, the two cursed teams of baseball, making a push towards the World Series. How many more years do you think the A's need to lose a deciding Game 5 in the playoffs before they have a legitimate "curse"?

    Jon Miller: Well, it was really disturbing, not that they just lost, but the way that it happened. In Game 3 of that series, which Joe Morgan and I worked, they had some chances to score runs that went beyond chances. The runs were there, all they had to do was step on home plate. [Eric] Byrnes... I mean, the ball is at the backstop and there he is, coming to the plate and he runs into [Jason] Varitek and all he can seem to think of at that point is that he's hurt and he's upset with Varitek and so he shoves him. He does everything except walk over and touch home plate. That was one of the worst I'd ever seen.

    And then [Miguel] Tejada, after he ran into Bill Mueller at third base on his way home -- I think he would have actually scored anyway -- but halfway home, for some reason, he stopped. As if assuming "I'm gonna be awarded home plate here." And then they tagged him out. Those were two brutal plays.

    IGN Sports: Do you think that what happened to the A's the three previous years in the playoffs has crept into their mind. It seems as if they started self-destructing in Game 3 and then it just carried on from there and got worse.

    Jon Miller: There's a similarity between those incidents in [this year's] Game 3 and Game 3 of two years before when Jeremy Giambi did not slide at home plate and [Derek] Jeter came out of nowhere and made the play and got him. What was similar about those plays, in each case it was a winnable game. If Giambi had scored that run, there's no question that the whole thing had turned and they were gonna win that game and the series was going to be over. In hindsight we know, as a matter of fact, that if Byrnes had stepped on home plate and Tejada kept on running, they would have won that game. We would never have gotten to Trot Nixon's home run in extra innings. In each case, when they ended up losing those games in Game 3, I think there was this little cloud hanging over them [for the rest of the series]. They're like, "Wait a minute, this thing should have been over yesterday."

    They also had some unforeseen things happen. Jermaine Dye, in that Yankee series, hits that foul ball against El Duque off his shin, breaks his leg. And he'd been [the A's] biggest hitter down the stretch. So they lose him for the rest of Game 4 and the deciding Game 5. [This year], Tim Hudson's out there and what did he go, one inning? Sometime in the second inning he's gotta leave that game. That's just a bad break. And they lost Mulder during the season. I think they just had a couple of bad breaks there. Clearly for the first two games and much of the third game, they looked like the superior team.

    This thing about a curse, I don't buy it personally. I really got tired of hearing it, in regards to the Cubs, especially, with this "billy goat" curse. It was just sort of getting almost irrationally silly, because the real curse on the Cubs had to do with the 1908 season when they had a great pennant race with the Giants. In the final week of the season, on a [Giants] game winning hit, Fred Merkle, as the run was scoring, was supposed to go from first to second, but in his excitement never went over and touched second base. Eventually the Cubs, even with fans pouring out on the field, got the umpire to come back out as they brought the ball to second base, tagged the bag and [the umpire] called Merkle out. Instead of a win for the Giants, that game had to be replayed.

    They were tied on the last day of the season and they replayed that game and the Cubs won it this time and thus went to the World Series. Clearly, the Giants rightfully belonged in that series and the Cubs have never won a World Series since. I think it's that curse, of the fact that the rightful World Series was stolen away from the Giants, that has cursed the Cubs ever since. It has nothing to do with a billy goat whatsoever.

    IGN Sports: I grew up in San Diego, so my other team I follow is the Padres. Does Tony Gwynn have the tools to be a good manager a few years down the road?

    Jon Miller: Well, you know, I don't know how interested Tony is in managing the Padres. You know, I think that a lot of people feel that Bruce Bochy is one of the best managers in the game. I think the Padres are starting to ascend, heading into their new ballpark. Having [Phil] Nevin healthy from the first day, and the young third baseman [Sean] Burroughs having blossomed, and I think this young shortstop [Ramon Vasquez] we saw at the end of the year there, he looks like he's going to be a great player. And several young pitchers that look like they're going to be really good.

    I think that the Padres, I don't know necessarily about this year, but I think they're on the way up. I think they're going to be a much, much improved team this coming season. Plus, there's a lot of talk they might go after Tejada, somebody like that. And if they get Tejada, they might be able to trade [Ryan] Klesko for some pitching, or who knows what they might do. If I'm a Padres fan, I'm pretty upbeat about the future of this team.

    IGN Sports: The Padres have a new ballpark opening this coming season. You get to travel to the ballparks around the Major League. Of the newer ballparks that have come up in the past decade, which of them is the best?

    Jon Miller: I believe, the way the schedule reads, the Giants should be the first regular season game [at Petco Park]. I think that's always exciting to see a new ballpark open like that. I think the one thing, in a new ballpark, obviously you want to see how it looks, how beautiful it is. But the main thing for a baseball fan is to find out how the ballpark plays. You don't find that out in the first game. In the first game at Pac Bell Park, it looked like it was gonna be a bandbox. Kelvin Elster hit three home runs by himself and we all thought, "Wow, they built another bandbox out there." Of course, as time went on, we discovered it was just the opposite, that it's probably the best pitchers ballpark in the league. I know [Padres General Manager] Kevin Towers told me that their hoping theirs will prove to be a pitchers ballpark as well. They're really counting on the future for these young pitchers to lead the way for them, so they're hoping that the ballpark will be a good one for those pitchers.

    I think that Camden Yards still stands out, because it revolutionized what you wanted in a new stadium. Camden Yards was the intercity ballpark that brought back what people liked about the famous old yards like Fenway, and Wrigley, and Ebbets Field, and what not. The intimacy, odd dimensions, and sort of also being a fabric of the city. And then Pac Bell went one better, because Pac Bell is not only an intercity ballpark built on a very small piece of land. It literally has to fit on that piece of land. I mean, just behind the right field wall is San Francisco bay. Pac Bell is built on a smaller piece of land than any other ballpark since Wrigley Field. I think Pac Bell's built on approximately 13 acres of land. All the other new ballparks, dating back to Camden Yards, are built on anywhere from 35 to 70 acres of land.

    Pac Bell's real niche, like Wrigley, like Fenway, like Ebbets, and any other epoch of baseball stadium building, has whatever quirky shapes largely because of the little sliver of land on which it was built. It's shallow to right field because there was no other option. In that sense it's perhaps the most authentic of any of the new ballparks in terms of the odd dimensions and any peculiarities inherent to the ballpark.

    I love going to those ballparks. Almost all of them I really enjoy. You know, Cleveland's [new park], I thought made, going to Cleveland an entirely different experience, an improved experience. Still, when you go to Fenway or you go to Wrigley or Yankee Stadium, you have that history that none of the new ballparks have yet. Plus, I think the fans at those ballparks have such passion for the game, so there's always a lot of excitement in those ballparks. It's hard to beat those. There are not too many ballparks I don't enjoy going to, but those are among my favorites.

    IGN Sports: This year we had the A's and Marlins going to the playoffs and the Royals came very close. Do you think these lower and middle-income teams hurt Bud Selig's argument that there's an economic and competitive crisis in baseball?

    Jon Miller: Well, I think that baseball, instead of continually saying that the A's success is an aberration, ought instead study what it is they've done to become successful. The teams that go out and study what they've done and they're able to implement that, they too can have success without having a huge payroll. There are far too many teams that have spent money almost wantonly, like the Texas Rangers, and got no results at all for it. The Dodgers, although they never fell as far as the Rangers, the Dodgers payroll got way out of hand and the Dodgers have not had success from all that money spent. The Orioles were in the same situation for a while, you know, big money being spent and getting very little in return for it. The Mets last year, look at their payroll and what they got out of it. I think it's an opportunity for teams to get smart.

    From what I've read, John Henry, [owner] of the Red Sox, is a big proponent of the kind of research and the theories that Oakland's developed. I mean, he tried to hire Billy Beane away. You look at the Red Sox and if they're able to be as good at implementing those ideas as Oakland's been, plus the fact that they have resources that Oakland does not have, I mean the Red Sox could be good for a long time to come.

    The genesis of this run the Yankees have been on probably goes back to when Gene Michael was running the ball club when George [Steinbrenner] was suspended. And Gene Michael, I think, helped build the Yankees along the same lines as Oakland has been building its ball club. Looking for players with the ability to get on base, the high on base percentage-type players, that's been a hallmark of most of those Yankee teams. They make you throw a lot of pitches, they get the starting pitchers out of there a little earlier because of high pitch counts, and they get walks, and they get a lot of men on base.

    I think it's time for these owners to get smart and start to build their ball clubs along different lines than they've been building them. It's also time for these owners, when they buy a ball club, instead of trying to make the big splash and give somebody the highest amount of money ever given to any player in history to show their fans they want to win, it's time for them to come in and actually look at the history of the owners who've done that. They [need to] realize, "Wait a minute, I'm just going to be the latest uninformed, naive newcomer to make this mistake that's been made over and over again." Hopefully, new owners will come in now and do a little research and say, "Wait a minute, this is not that way to do it, because this team, that team, this team, that team all did that and they all made the same mistake and I'm not gonna do that." We'll see if there are lessons learned.

    I think that also, Oakland's had this success and yet, the fact that they don't have that much speed, the fact that they don't run the bases well, has hurt them very badly in the postseason, at least twice now in the past three postseasons. They've done a great job in being able to get there, but I think there is something to the fact that they seem to be lacking a bit once they do get there.

    IGN Sports: How did you get into broadcasting?

    Jon Miller: I always wanted to be a broadcaster. I used to play a tabletop baseball game when I was a kid, Stratomatic, and I would broadcast the games to myself while I was playing them. I'd be Vin Scully doing this game, Chuck Thompson doing a game, Phil Rissuto, whoever. The great thing was, when I actually got a job broadcasting Major League Baseball, I was able to call my mom who was so worried when I was a ten year-old in my room all summer long, playing these tabletop baseball games. I said, "You know, I'm basically doing the same thing now except I don't have to do the crowd noise."

    IGN Sports: Depends on the stadium you're in.

    Jon Miller: (Laughs)

    IGN Sports: You broadcast both radio and TV. Which do you prefer and what's different about doing a broadcast on TV as opposed to radio?

    Jon Miller: I think on television, obviously the fan wants the game, they want you to give them all the important details, but I think they want to hear from a Joe Morgan, my partner on Sunday Night Baseball, and his expertise. There are always times during a game where Joe will explain something where a fan will say, "Wow, I never thought or that," or "I never knew that," where they feel they've learned something. I think that, with those top notch players [turned] analyst, people have come to expect that they're going to get that kind of inside information and maybe learn something that they didn't know. I think it's very important for me, as a play-by-play man, to give Joe the room to do what he does so well and at the same time provide structure to the telecast -- Remind people what the score is, and what inning we're in, and recap a little bit, what the count is, who's up, what the situation is, who's on base.

    Radio is a whole different thing. Radio is just you trying to tell the people everything they need to know to enjoy the game. To give them vivid enough descriptions where they can turn that into mental images of what's going on in the game. It's a lot of fun and it's a lot more low key, because it's just you talking to the people. You know, television is very collaborative.

    I can't really say I enjoy one over the other, though I suppose if somebody said you can't do both anymore, for the rest of your professional life you can only do one of the other, I'd have to pick radio. Just because of the informality of it. I wouldn't have to wear a tie every day. You know, you get into St. Louis or Philadelphia in July or August where it's 96 degrees and the humidity is 85 percent and you're stuck in a tie and a sports coat, that's no way to live. I can handle it when it's only an occasional Sunday, or whatever. I'd have to pick the radio in that event.

    I'd certainly hate to ever give up the Sunday night game, because Joe and I, this will be our fifteenth year on Sunday Night Baseball. We not only enjoy the games together, it's the place where both of us would always want to be. We come at it from a completely different point of view. He comes at it from the point of view from a great former player who played most of his adult life. I come at it as a fan. We still have the love of the game and we enjoy the games together. It's a lot of fun for me to work with Joe and to work with Joe on the radio during the playoffs. We had some great games, memorable games, and sometimes just night after night. It was more fun for me to work those with Joe than anybody I could think of.


    IGN Sports offer a special thanks to Jon Miller. You can hear Jon Miller in ESPN's Major League Baseball, set to ship April 2004. We'll have first screens, movies, and details on ESPN MLB in the near future.

    <hr /></blockquote><font class="post">



    Ugh, April. Ah well...
  • SPTO
    binging
    • Feb 2003
    • 68046

    #2
    Re: Jon Miller interview Big BAYBEH!!!

    Y'know you coulda made it a lot easier by just pasting the end part and then a link to the interview for those interested

    Hmm I saw the first screens for the game and eh, i'm not so impressed so far but it does seem to be coming out the latest out of the crop of games. This could be a good thing tho as it COULD mean the game will have lots of changes for the better......or it could suck.
    Member of the Official OS Bills Backers Club

    "Baseball is the most important thing that doesn't matter at all" - Robert B. Parker

    Comment

    • SPTO
      binging
      • Feb 2003
      • 68046

      #3
      Re: Jon Miller interview Big BAYBEH!!!

      Y'know you coulda made it a lot easier by just pasting the end part and then a link to the interview for those interested

      Hmm I saw the first screens for the game and eh, i'm not so impressed so far but it does seem to be coming out the latest out of the crop of games. This could be a good thing tho as it COULD mean the game will have lots of changes for the better......or it could suck.
      Member of the Official OS Bills Backers Club

      "Baseball is the most important thing that doesn't matter at all" - Robert B. Parker

      Comment

      • SPTO
        binging
        • Feb 2003
        • 68046

        #4
        Re: Jon Miller interview Big BAYBEH!!!

        Y'know you coulda made it a lot easier by just pasting the end part and then a link to the interview for those interested

        Hmm I saw the first screens for the game and eh, i'm not so impressed so far but it does seem to be coming out the latest out of the crop of games. This could be a good thing tho as it COULD mean the game will have lots of changes for the better......or it could suck.
        Member of the Official OS Bills Backers Club

        "Baseball is the most important thing that doesn't matter at all" - Robert B. Parker

        Comment

        Working...