Easy answers to dumb questions
DMZ · August 31, 2008 at 11:10 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Broadcaster Dave Niehaus has done his job so well for so long that he was the recipient of the 2008 Ford C. Frick Award. Can Rick Rizzs make it two Mariners broadcasters to win the accolade in as many seasons?
No. Dear God no.
Comments
30 Responses to “Easy answers to dumb questions”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Really? Someone actually sent that in as a question? Wow…
Yeah. And the next time Commissioner Gordon picks up the bat-phone, he’ll ask for Burt Ward.
Ahh, I needed a good laugh before bedtime.
“Sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”*
Rick can’t, but, bless him, he keeps trying.
(*apologies to Daniel Schorr if I got that wrong).
Who the hell wrote that article?
1) No way Rizzs comes close
2) Whoever wrote it needs to go back to third grade.
-Rizzs could join Niehaus in elite copany- What is copany?
Also, they dont know how do use parentheses. (“Rick Rizzs )left) has worked”)
Whoever wrote that at MLB.com is quite obviously smoking something.
Hey, why not Rick Rizzs?
Dave “exspecially” Valle and Mike “no doubt about it” Blowers should also receive consideration.
The question is a practical joke, yes?
Red gets my vote.
Why does everybody hate Rick Rizzs? I don’t think he is a bad announcer. No.. probably not hall of fame caliber.. but still, not bad enough to be insulted.
well, now Jim Street is right, Rizzs is among the contenders. Rizzs and the 210 other eligible contenders this year …
“The Ford C. Frick Award is given to an active or retired broadcaster with a minimum of 10 years of continuous major league broadcast service with a ball club, network, or a combination of the two.”
He creeps me out.
I don’t like that quality in an announcer, and certainly not in one in the HOF.
In honor of Ford Frick, if Rizzs does win the award he should have an asterisk placed next to his name because he had to call 162 games instead of 154.
One thing in Rizzs’ favor, though: he doesn’t do it anymore but back in the day he had the most awesome combover ever. It was a real thing of greatness to behold. You almost didn’t think he was really going bald. Well, you thought that because, let’s face it, it was still a combover, but… what was my point again?
It’s not hate – and Rizzs is in fact a very competent play by play announcer – but it’s certainly not like. Paul’s right; it’s the creepy thing.
“Why does everybody hate Rick Rizzs? I don’t think he is a bad announcer. ”
Nobody said anything about hating Rick Rizzs. I do not know him personally. Criticizing his performance in his professional role is not the same as hating. With that said…
Rizzs is an awful announcer. Rather than bringing the game alive, he sounds like he is addressing a bunch of 5 year olds. During Dave’s glory days, I tended to tune into games (on radio) after 4.5 innings. Now I am a very occasional listener.
I am just hoping that losing the Frick award can spark another encounter with Evil Rick Rizzs.
Who knew that Rizzs posted under “Walkie83?”
Rizzs appeals to the 60-75 year old female demographic that refuses to believe the Mariners can do anything wrong.
That laugh of his makes my skin crawl.
Why does everybody hate Rick Rizzs? I don’t think he is a bad announcer. No.. probably not hall of fame caliber.. but still, not bad enough to be insulted.
Say, friend, you’ve got a much higher tolerance of smarm than I do.
I honestly have to turn the radio off when he does that junior sportscaster segment. The car salesman treacle piles up so thick I feel like I need a shower.
The scary thing is, I think he’s probably a decent guy who thinks he’s developed a comforting, silver-throated broadcast voice. It’s not an act, he’s not insincere, that’s really who he is. He just sounds like the slickest scam artist ever to emerge from the slimy netherworld of late night colonic infomercials.
I see the first sentence in the story, but not the second. Could they have removed it due to sheer lunacy?
I always thought Rizzs’s laugh was unintentionally hilarious. I don’t think he’s a hall-of-fame announcer, but I don’t think he’s terrible either.
I like Rick Rizzs, having met him in person. He’s a good guy and gives back to the community and seems very sincere and willing to go the extra mile for the causes he supports.
That doesn’t change the fact that he isn’t a very good baseball announcer. He gives off the used car salesman vibe every time he talks.
“Rizzs appeals to the 60-75 year old female demographic that refuses to believe the Mariners can do anything wrong.”
Watch it there, buddy! I resemble them words…
….at least, the first part up to the word “demographic”. 🙂
I think he’s probably a decent guy who thinks he’s developed a comforting, silver-throated broadcast voice. It’s not an act, he’s not insincere, that’s really who he is. He just sounds like the slickest scam artist ever to emerge from the slimy netherworld of late night colonic infomercials.
We’ve talked about this a little before, but unfortunately, that’s not the case: Rizzs is an amazingly rehearsed, artificial machine. If you ever have a chance to hear his between-inning breaks where he tries to figure out which (say) “Hey friends” sounds the most smarmy for use the next inning, it’ll entirely break you of any thought that he’s at all sincere.
oh, I think he is sincere. I think he believes that to be a true professional, he needs to do “the little things” to be at the top of his game, and if that means working on his delivery (“say friends” … say, friends … hey friends”) during the breaks, so be it.
I still think he (and the Ms) would be best served by moving him into a meet & greet role.
Rick Rizzs reminds me of the character “Larry” from that immortal 70s sitcom classic Three’s Company.
Not only does Rick have that used car salesman smarm, he seems to have Larry’s lecherous streak as well, judging from the stories that have been posted here about Rizzs’ wandering eye.
does it count as a ‘wandering eye’ when the person is single?
Speaking of the Rizzs wandering eye….
It apparently wanders all over some fine Issaquah establishments….
As for phoniness, Captain Ken Wilson takes the cake. Nobody else is even close.
I do love it, though, when Rizzs says “Wow!”
Jose Vidro is a professional hitter. Rick Rizzs is a professional broadcaster.
I don’t hate Rizzs, he bothers me much less than Fairly ever did. I like “Goodbye, baseball”, especially when he does it in that understated way of his. I even met him once, at a Dan Wilson signing at, I believe, the Bellevue Square Bon Marche back in ’96 or ’97 (I was about 13 at the time), he ran into it “randomly” (perhaps?). He autographed slips of paper for me and my two younger siblings, too shy to approach him themselves. I remember wishing he had been Dave Niehaus instead, and feeling bad about that.
Fairly… When he first started broadcasting M’s games I didn’t like him much, in fact I jumped between TV and radio to stay away from him for a time. But somehow, over the years, I actually started to appreciate his broadcasting.
Maybe he improved, or maybe my tastes changed, or maybe I slowed down, or something… By the time he retired, I actually enjoyed listening to his stories on the air.
I still found his repetitive nature annoying (he would generally say the same thing three times), and on certain plays he was very predictable (e.g., on an infield fly, he could be counted upon to always suggest that the infielder should have dropped the ball on the off chance that the baserunner on first would take off). But Fairly certainly was not the worst, or close to the worst, of the Mariner announcers. IMHO, anyway.
Rizzs, I can’t listen to him I just can’t…his play by play isn’t bad, I’ll say that, it’s when he ventures off like he always does into uncharted territory where he starts extolling the Mariners bad players, talking about his charities, talking and laughing with “Val” etc, etc…It’s one long mindnumbing “look at me, charming the pants off you with my homespun babble, my baseball expertise (used to play second base) how can you not like me” talk fest….The junior broadcastor was especially painful “how are ya buddy?”.
If he were to get an award for the kind of stuff he puts on the air, it really would be the end of civilization as we know it. That’s not an overstatement.