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| Hawk in his natural and very much preferred habitat. (Getty Images) |
Reputation has it that Hawk Harrelson is the most brazenly biased announcer in all of baseball. But does his reputation square with the facts? In this instance, yes, it most certainly does.
Staffers at the Wall Street Journal studied the topic of announcer bias in MLB via the following methods:
By the rules of our study, anyone with a microphone who used a pronoun like "we," "us" or "our" to describe the home team was given a citation. Obscure pet names for players were also flagged: The Detroit Tigers announcers, for instance, referred to backup catcher Gerald Laird as "G-Money." Additional penalties were given for things like excessive moping after miscues or unrestrained glee after big moments.
To the surprise of no one who's ever heard him ply his trade, Ol' Hell Yes lapped the field and then some. The complete results, courtesy of the Journal:
For those counting, the final score is: White Sox 104, Next Five Most-Biased Teams Combined 85. You can indeed put it on the board.
And was the Hawk chagrined to learn of his quantifiable slant? Of course not. "You just made my day," he said upon learning of his lofty perch atop the rankings. "That's the biggest compliment you could give me, to call me the biggest homer in baseball."
One quibble, though: Shouldn't Jerry Remy's Boston-drenched accent count as a noteworthy pro-Red Sox statement regardless of the words he uses?
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