New York Yankees Derek Jeter and manager Joe Girardi at Yankee Stadium in New York

TBS does this every October. It pulls a Napoleon and takes over the broadcast booth during the MLB postseason, kicking the voices that loyal fans like yours truly have grown comfortable listening to all season to the curb.

MLB finds it fit to allow The Terrible Broadcast Network to strip the TV rights from local TV crews in these series. That means no YES Network covering the Yankees in the playoffs.

You know what I say? NO! I want my team's network broadcasting its games in baseball’s second season, dammit.

Their voices and analysis have accompanied the daily wars waged on the field by my team all season. They travel with the players and probably have more intimate relationships with them than they do with their wives. (Well maybe not Ken Singleton and his significant other…but that’s beside the point.)

TBS pulled the same stunt last season, and they always pick the worst possible pairing to replace local broadcasters. If you remember the atrocious announcers they forced us to suffer through during Yankee games in the ALCS last season, you’ll remember how well I reacted. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a small sample of my reaction:

If somebody told you that the Yankees would have their former ace pitcher Chien Ming Wang make only a handful of starts before being put on the DL for the season because of a sudden inability to throw any pitches that can avoid a bat, that the team would lose right fielder Xavier Nady for the season, that Jorge Posada and Jose Molina would both spend a considerable amount of time on the DL forcing the Yankees to plug in a peppy minor leaguer with no prior experience as their backstop, have Nick Swisher actually deliver the best pitching performance of the night for the Yankees during a blowout loss early in the season and STILL finish with the best record in baseball, you would've told them they were more delusional than Joe Morgan, John Sterling, and Chip Caray combined. (Speaking of which, what the hell was TBS thinking of installing Caray in the booth during the playoffs? I demand a paternity test immediately, because there is no way this idiot is really Harry's son. He's forced self-respecting fans across the country to reach for the mute button all series because of his terrible calls during the Yankees-Twins ALCS).

Unfortunately it’s no better this season.

The worst part of this hostile takeover of the booth is that this is the time of year when baseball broadcasts should be at their best, yet the national broadcasters who get dropped in the booth make sure the coverage is at its full-blown worst. They only have a cursory knowledge of the teams involved in a vital postseason struggle on the field and simply rely on overplayed tropes and canned storylines to fill the airwaves.

Last year the dominant storyline was the abundance of homers hit at the "New Yankee Stadium” (and of course they referred to it as NEW Yankee Stadium every damn time). This was, of course, a patently false claim that was disproven statistically, meteorologically and by anybody that considered it wise to do something outrageous like watch the games all season. But that didn't stop the announcers from harping on it.

There was also the “A-Rod’s sure to come up in a big spot ‘cause he’s a choke artist in the postseason” storyline, a claim the All-Star slugger flipped on its head with his breakout performance in last year’s playoffs.

This year my money is on “Will Joe Girardi, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera’s contract statuses distract the team?,” “Is the Core Four finally too old to come through in October,” or “My, oh, my how far A.J. Burnett and Javier Vazquez have fallen...will the shaky pitching be able to perform in the playoffs?” to be the overplayed philosophy of the playoffs.

I’m so sure of this that I will personally treat, let’s call him the “coach” of this blog, to one coffee (or tea) at the locale of his choice if the above does not transpire.

So how do we fix this egregious error?

It’s quite simple. All MLB has to do is give the local broadcasters space in the broadcast booth so they can share their wisdom and knowledge of the team with the national idiots spouting unfounded claims and retread story ideas. Using just the local guys would be better, but even a resigned cooperation is better than the current coup d’état taking place.

Baseball better fix this problem, or I’ll be forced to…write the exact same post again next season, only with more angry verbs and more intense adjectives.

(By the way, the Yankees matchup with the Twins in Game 1 of the ALDS was on in the background as I was writing this post. It was a spectacular game, the Yankees emerged on top in a back-and-forth battle, and the broadcast sucked. Game 2 doesn’t promise to be any better…the idiots in the booth just spent a minute and a half discussing the worst middle name on the team. Unless there’s some odd baseball rule I’m unaware of, that has ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE ON WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE GAME).

To reach writer John Collins, click here.

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