Feb 20, 2018

The new Billy

Its been nearly three years since we met Billy, the play-by-play announcer who dazzled us during the Milwaukee-Wright State baseball game, including coining the phrase "looks to be a catcher, number Sean Murphy".

Tuesday's game (Tennessee beat Lipscomb 8-5) we met the new, and improved Billy!

And this time we got his name. It's Andy Brock! (Billy!):


"he's already through the first batters of the Bisons"
"Chinea gave great minutes for the Vols"
"it's fouled directly backwards"
"the newcomer pitcher"
"looking to swing the ball"
"making sure the Vols don't get too into scoring position"
"in their first ever win of the season"
"and the first swing for the Vols is a successful one"
"he is a fan of runners on base"
"couldn't quite collect his stance there"
"a very productive offensive outing"
"Thomas interested in the pitch....did he go around?"
"as the Vols set to take the plate"
[after a second inning strike out] "Zach Daniels looking to make up for that later in the game"
"this man is looking to increase his stats heavily this season"
"he can fly around the paths"
"back in the top of the third, this is a very young game here at Lindsey Nelson Stadium"
"since then Hunley hasn't strucken out anyone"
"letting Hooker walk right onto home"
"Vitello has worked with multiple NBA stars, including Andrew Benintendi of the Boston Redsox"
"Dayton Tripp is settling into this mound"
"you never know what you're going to get night in and night out with Benito, but you know you're going to get firepower"
"a swing and a deep cut"
"Chinea puts a piece on the ball"
"hoping to center one out"
"late in the third quarter"
"to give them a nice six point cushion"
"Tennessee gets across zero in the fourth inning"
"that probably would've been a double or a single in the MLB"
"the bats have been decently consistent"
"he does give off a nice blast"
"a little conference over at the mound"
"they have deemed Adam Stewart's day to be done"
"Dorso's really investigating his runners over there"
"they'll only have one inning to get back this three-run lead"
"one double to his name"
"Vazquez has been dialed in, no one's been really able to face him"
"and the Volunteers take the one game mid week game series"

Feb 16, 2018

Closed Captioning!

I was watching the first game of the Liberty-VCU series last Friday (Liberty won 5-4 thanks to home runs from Jonathan Embry and Tre Todd) and at one point play-by-play man Alan York started talking about great baseball names.

York eventually mentioned a Lynchburg Hillcats (Single A Cleveland Indians) player named Sicnarf Loopstok.

Sicnarf is a former milb.com name of the year recipient, and while that's fantastic it's also sad since apparently the last competition took place in 2014.

Anyway, back to Friday's broadcast, which included closed captioning for some reason. This is the text that came up on my screen during the Loopstok portion of the telecast:













Sicknar Flupsnop!

York pronounced it correctly, so missing the first name by a couple letters isn't too bad.

Flupsnop?

I can imagine a member of the Loopstok family tuning in for the first game of a mid-February, non-conference game between Liberty and VCU, hearing the name pronounced correctly by York.

"Isn't that nice, they mentioned Sicnarf."

[Sees the closed captioning]

"Flupsnop?!"