I have to admit I spent most of the LCS watching the Cubs/Marlins, and I quite enjoyed Al Leiter's back-up color commentary. He's by no means a professional commentator but he's articulate enough to provide some pretty interesting perspective. It's too bad that he'll only get more talkative in the years to come (he'll be asked back next year if the Mets don't get to the post-season) and thus become less interesting, but this time he was good.

Bret Boone on the other hand... Woops. That one didn't work out so well, eh Fox? Since I hadn't been watching the Yankees/Red Sox games too much I hadn't heard him until tonight. In fact, I'd forgotten he was even in the booth until he spoke this evening. He sounded like one of those on-the-field reporters (his mic was too close to his mouth) and he only said about a sentence every two innings, and unfortunately what he said wasn't very interesting. After all, he's a second baseman so there's not a lot he can contribute beyond some defensive stuff and some hitting stuff (yes, I'm well aware that Joe Morgan was also a second baseman). Since there's so much time between events on the field, Leiter, as a pitcher, could offer much better up-to-the-moment commentary, dissecting pitching strategies and such, and I thought he brought an interesting less-polished contribution to the NLCS. Boone, either because he's not a pitcher or because he was generally too reserved, couldn't contribute to the in-booth banter nearly as well. Thus, we were stuck with Joe Buck (who's actually not bad and comes from a respected announcing family) and that gawd awful Tim McCarver, otherwise known as the Dan Dierdorf of baseball commentators. Talk, talk, talk, talk. Yak, yak, yak, yak. I'm not nearly as bothered by football and baseball commentators as my dad is, but McCarver has difficulty staying quiet or at least making sure he's got something really interesting to contribute, and I begin to see what Dad's always complaining about when I'm forced to endure Tim McCarver.

Anyway, kudos to Al.