Who is baseball’s biggest broadcasting “homer?”
It’s White Sox veteran Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper did a self-described analysis of baseball broadcasters and gauged their home team biases by how often in a game they referred to their teams as “we” and “our”, used nicknames for players and “blatantly rooted” for their team.
Harrelson and television partner Steve Stone were the runaway leaders, with most of the scoring based on Harrelson.
Harrelson couldn’t be happier.
“”You just made my day,” Harrelson told the newspaper. “That’s the biggest compliment you could give me, to call me the biggest homer in baseball.”
The newspaper listened to nine innings of one game for 30 teams, charting what it considered biased comments. Harrelson [and Stone] had 104 during a 2-1 victory against the Texas Rangers on July 5, the game that was charted.
The next closest pair of announcers were the Cleveland Indians’ Rick Manning and Matt Underwood with 23.
The fewest “homer” comments came from the San Francisco Giants’ Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper with one.
Harrelson said he doesn’t worry about how he is perceived.
“I have my detractors, no doubt about it,” Harrelson said. “I look at it as a compliment.”
