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Precisely this. Hawk Harrelson is utterly horrendous. Easily the worst announcer in baseball, possibly ever. There is not a single bigger homer out there than Hawk. None. Period. Full stop.
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Not even close to the worst ever.
Hawk's problem isn't homerism. Baseball needs a few homer announcers. It has enough dull-ass vanilla by-the-book ESPN clones who nobody can tell from Adam.
Hawk's problem is that in the last decade he's become an
excessive caricature. He was always cartoonish, a homer, with the lingo - South Carolina to Chicago by way of Arch McDonald. I loved watching White Sox games in the 1990s when Hawk and Tom "Wimpy" Paciorek were together. I thought they were unique. Fun.
Since Paciorek left, possibly because of Harrelson's maneuvering, it has not been as much fun. And the Hawkspeak seems ever more forced, what little spontaneity existed is gone. Former partner Darrin Jackson was (and is) inept and dull. Steve Stone has his own large reputation and ego and is so clearly put off by Harrelson it makes the broadcast strained. Stone could hack the homerism - hell, we worked with Harry Caray - but Harrelson's ego is spikier and shtick plastic where Harry was vain, boozy and organic. Hawk can't pull off the "Mayor of Rush Street" thing like Harry.
I don't think he's as bad as his worst critics do. I don't think he's nearly as worthwhile as he was a decade ago. I do hate the stupid "Heave the Hawk" people who complain that his hick phrases are just not "Chicago." Not that Harrelson is anywhere near this league, but Red Barber ("ol' redhead jumpin' up on a log and hollerin' to ya'") was hardly Brooklyn. Mel Allen was definitely not the Bronx. Hawk deserves criticism - but being Southern and talking like it, even if it is largely shtick - is not the problem.
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In early May this year, after Detroit's Jhonny Peralta hit a two-run walkoff homer to beat the White Sox, Harrelson responded with 63 seconds of dead air.
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He works on the television side. Why, exactly, do you need him to tell you what you are seeing? Whatever Hawk's flaws, the notion that a minute of dead air is horrible is laughable to me. Radio men need to fill the air for the most part, letting it breathe occasionally. TV men, who could stand to let it breathe even more, seldom ever do. I'm not sure anything better conveys the deflated feeling of White Sox fans watching the game than Harrelson's dead silence.
That he would be castigated for his silence, even if it is because he's a raging homer, says a lot about why baseball broadcasting is awful in this era.