Props for Niehaus

JMB · October 27, 2005 at 5:27 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

At long last, Dave Niehaus has been recognized by America’s Finest News Source — The Onion. Enjoy.

Comments

37 Responses to “Props for Niehaus”

  1. mark from Oly. wa. on October 27th, 2005 5:58 pm

    I can see that being Dave Niehaus’ statement if the M’s were in the Astro’s place last night.

    “..and mercifully the season is over.”

  2. Shoeless Jose on October 27th, 2005 7:14 pm

    I wonder what it would take to get Niehaus to actually make a call like that. The last couple of seasons, I’m sure it’s crossed his mind…

  3. Adam T on October 27th, 2005 7:33 pm

    I think another 90+ losses, one night of binge drinking and an inning of Rico Rizz could set anyone off 🙂

  4. Gomez on October 27th, 2005 7:33 pm

    I only heard Niehaus use that kind of language during Sandfrog AB’s.

  5. AFRanger on October 27th, 2005 7:48 pm

    You know, that call would almost be as good as him sighing after one of Rick Rizz’s annoyingly mindless team supporting comments and saying, “Rick… Shut the F$%^ up!”, and then smacking him on the back of the head.

  6. Mark Oh on October 27th, 2005 7:55 pm

    What about David Wells. He has asked the BoSoxs for a trade to the west coast. Last time I checked Seattle fits the bill. 1 year at 4 mil. isn’t breaking the bank for a mildly volatile player with a lot of injuries.

  7. PLU Tim on October 27th, 2005 8:09 pm

    If they only knew….

  8. goodbye baseball on October 27th, 2005 8:33 pm

    The next time I’m not amused by a piece from The Onion will be the first. I don’t think Dave Niehaus even knows what The Onion is, though. Would he be amused if he saw that?

    Here’s when i could see Niehaus going into full-on expletive mode. It’s a “radio only” game as Dave and Rick like to say, which means they’re working together. Bloomquist strikes out in a key spot in the 8th inning, and Dave goes off maybe minutes after Rizzs refers to him as Willie the Ignitor. Rizzs’ reaction? “Holy smokes Dave, what’s gotten into you?” Then without taking a breath, he says “But remember friends, these Mariners never give up, just like my friend Willie.”

    BTW, I’m typing this as I watch FSN Classics Huskies-ASU from 1998 with Seattle’s other great announcer, Kevin Calabro on the call. I like how Calabro got excited for both teams, even though it was a local broadcast where he could easily have stayed in rumbling baritone mode when ASU did something good.

  9. David J Corcoran on October 27th, 2005 8:37 pm

    the onion is my hero i love it niehaus is awsome too and he should be put in some kind of hall of fame yeah that wood be cool

  10. matthew on October 27th, 2005 8:37 pm

    hilarious… thank you for sharing that on a non-sports night 🙂

  11. matthew on October 27th, 2005 8:39 pm

    P.S. For more hilarity, check out these Onion articles (starting with the first one.)

  12. wabbles on October 27th, 2005 9:29 pm

    I dunno, if Neihaus hasn’t used that call 28 years into his Mariners tenure, with far worse futility than these past seasons, I can’t see him starting now. Now, during The Hot Stove League….

  13. msb on October 27th, 2005 10:20 pm

    I kinda like the image of that pleasant Glenn Hoffman suddenly bellowing ‘Bunt!!!!’

  14. msb on October 27th, 2005 10:28 pm

    oh, and OT but oddly Onion-like, Bledsoe & Brunell are both in the top 5 of quarterback ratings?

  15. Jim Thomsen on October 27th, 2005 11:17 pm

    #9: Thank you for weighing in, Jim Anchower …

    “It’s been a long time since I rapped at ya.”

  16. LB on October 28th, 2005 12:47 am

    #6: Wells’ contract pays him incentives by the start. When all is said and done, it will be way more than $4m. He would earn $200,000 per start for each game from 11-20 and $300,000 per start from 21-30.

    Also, you need to know how to crack the code. “West Coast” for Wells means: “somewhere near my expensive house in San Diego.”

  17. Jake on October 28th, 2005 12:53 am

    Am I the only one that still remembers Dave slipping up during a radio broadcast probably back in 95 or 96, during a Mariner-Giants interleague game by saying, “And coming up to the dish is Jeff Cunt……..(long pause) I beg your pardon, I mean Kent.” He sounded really, really freaked out on the play by play for the rest of the inning until he came back from commercial. It was great.

  18. Mr. Egaas on October 28th, 2005 1:18 am

    Sad I missed that. Niehaus dropping the C-bomb is priceless.

    Even better, because I would have been about 11.

  19. atlaz on October 28th, 2005 1:36 am

    There’s also the other Onion article that mentions the Mariners:

    “Angels first place, A’s second place, Rangers third place, Mariners last place,” Selig said. “Sound familiar yet? If not, get used to it, as that will be your AL West for the next 20 or so years.”

  20. Tom on October 28th, 2005 3:15 am

    The thing about Eckstein is the best part.

  21. petec on October 28th, 2005 7:39 am

    My favorite faux pas I actually heard was when Marques Johnson was calling Sonics game and said, about a large player with a large posterior, something like “he uses all of his tools to get open, including the tool in his pants”.

    KJR also replays Elise Woodward at a Storm game saying “that’s the worst f&^%ing call I’ve ever seen!”. I’m not sure of the context for that one.

  22. Basebliman on October 28th, 2005 7:42 am

    Working with Niehaus on the radio end and hearing what he says with the mic off, this isn’t that far from the truth.

  23. Basebliman on October 28th, 2005 7:47 am

    I also heard Eric Johnson say during a live sports update on the 11 o’clock news when a player made a great basketball shot, saying “How’d he get that s**t off?” and then quickly corrected himself, while the people running the cameras were laughing in the background. This would have been 5-6 years ago.

  24. msb on October 28th, 2005 8:06 am

    #21– “KJR also replays Elise Woodward at a Storm game saying “that’s the worst f&^%ing call I’ve ever seen!”. I’m not sure of the context for that one.”

    it actually wasn’t an on-air line; she was venting off-air at Locke, and they hung on to it (who wouldn’t, it sums up the way most of us feel at one time or another :)) She also has a couple of inadvertent double-entendres uttered when doing color-commentary that pop up every now & then….

  25. msb on October 28th, 2005 8:30 am

    sigh. Thiel has written his “Garcia in the WS” piece which leads to a condemnation of all things Mariner.

  26. Russ on October 28th, 2005 8:44 am

    Thiel is firmly not in the know of how baseball works.

    He is lamenting the loss of Mads? If Mads could stay healthy, we’d of never seen him.

    I’d like to have the Garcia that was pitching for the White Sox also. Sadly, we only got glimpses of him at Safeco for various reasons. I doubt any of the reasons are the same reason the FO wanted him gone.

  27. Jeff in Fremont on October 28th, 2005 10:56 am

    I adore Niehaus, but he’s definitely slipping into Harey Carey-dom. Any time now I expect to turn on the game and he’ll be wearing coke bottle glasses and shouting “HEY EVERYBODY!” at the start of the broadcast.

  28. theberle on October 28th, 2005 11:03 am

    I liked the somewhat obscure Randy Johnson reference. That’s one of the craziest videos I’ve seen.

  29. Evan on October 28th, 2005 11:14 am

    27 – For some reason I’m imagining a combination of Ozzy Osbourne and Dr. Nick Riviera wearing those glasses.

    Is that an obscure RJ reference? I thought the bird-killing incident was pretty famous (right up there with Dave Winfield’s bird-killing incident).

  30. goodbye baseball on October 28th, 2005 11:20 am

    My favorite faux pas that I ever heard came in 1990. The Mets were leading the Phillies 10-3 heading into the bottom of the 9th. Philadelphia rallied to get within one run and had the tying run on third and the winning run at the plate following a double play. The batter, Tommy Herr, hit a line drive that was caught by shortsop Mario Davis (part-time Mariner in the late 80s, not that I knew that at the time) to end the game. The late Bob Murphy says, “The Mets win the game, they win the damn thing by a score of 10-9,” and his partner Gary Cohen was chuckling on-air.

    Believe me, Murph had plenty of opportunties to drop a few F-bombs on air during his Mets broadcasting career. Dave is as much of a class act as Murph was, but I can easily see him saying, “Damn it WIllie, what are you swinging at?” one day. Losing takes a toll on broadcasters too.

  31. goodbye baseball on October 28th, 2005 11:21 am

    I said Mario Davis when I meant Mario Diaz. Sorry about that.

  32. Paul B on October 28th, 2005 2:27 pm

    Back in the ’80’s there used to be an interview before every game with a player or coach, and the interviewee would get something (dinner at a restaraunt, gift certificate for jewelry, something). Anyway, Dave would always either introduce the person, or would say afterwards, something to the effect that he was “one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet”.

    I then realized that it was significant when Dave didn’t say that. For example, Dave never said that Gorman Thomas was nice.

  33. Jim Thomsen on October 28th, 2005 4:19 pm

    The Onion, in one of its anthologies, has a man-on-the-street feature in which all six people “interviewed” bear the names of members of the 1987 Seattle Mariners: Mike Kingery, Steve Shields, Mickey Brantley and Rey Quinones were among them.

  34. Smegmalicious on October 28th, 2005 7:28 pm

    I wonder what was said off mic during that MASSIVE comback in 2001. you know, the one where we blew the 12 run lead. I bet there were some F-bombs dropped there.

  35. Jon Wells on October 29th, 2005 8:24 am

    #26 Russ said “Thiel is firmly not in the know of how baseball works. He is lamenting the loss of Mads?”

    There are others, including me, that have lamented the loss of Madritsch. I feel really strongly that it was a mistake and will come back to bite the M’s in the ass, possibly mor so than taking Podesednik off the 40-man after the ’02 season (Madritsch had had success at the Major League level when he was dumped).

    Sure the M’s have some prospects to protect on the 40 man but you just know they’ll protect Greg Dobbs this winter no matter what prospects they’ll risk losing by doing so. Dobbs, a useless reserve, has little to no value, nor would he be taken in the Rule 5 draft so it’s pointless to have protected him over Madritsch…

  36. Jon Wells on October 29th, 2005 8:29 am

    #32 Paul B said “Back in the ’80’s there used to be an interview before every game with a player or coach, and the interviewee would get something (dinner at a restaraunt, gift certificate for jewelry, something). Anyway, Dave would always either introduce the person, or would say afterwards, something to the effect that he was ‘one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet’. I then realized that it was significant when Dave didn’t say that. For example, Dave never said that Gorman Thomas was nice.

    Funny you should mention that — during that same period there was an article in one of the local papers in which Niehaus was talking about one of the Mariner players (he didn’t say who it was) but he said that the player had gotten pissed off because they were given blue jeans when they came on the air and the guy griped that he didn’t need any more blue jeans. Niehaus told the paper that he didn’t care if the guy hit four home runs in a game, he’d never have him on the air again.

    It turns out that player was Gorman Thomas (years later I asked Rick Rizzs about it).

  37. Michael L on October 30th, 2005 11:01 pm

    My two favorite Dave Niehaus quotes:

    1. During a pre-season game, back in the Bobby Ayala days, Bobby gave up one of his patented game-blowing homers. Dave’s comment: “Bobby Ayala seems to be in mid-season form.”

    2. Dave noticing that the other team had a relief pitcher warming up: “The [whoevers] have [whoever] throwing up in the bullpen. (pause) Well, there I go, I just said it, huh?”

    Then there was the pre-season game a few years ago when Dave went off on a long-winded joke about archaeologists digging up Adam and Eve and identifying them because they didn’t have navels. What the heck?