Senility from the Far East

The two-game series that kicked off the '08 MLB season was a little... off. It seemed like the whole thing was a little surreal, and it had nothing to do with the fact that the games started at 4 am local time. We saw a 28-year-old white rookie from Minnesota walking to the plate with 50 Cent in the background yelling "If I can't do it, homey it can't be done..." We had Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz standing back at the plate and admiring long balls that turned out to be outs or doubles. We had guys like Brandon Moss and Mark Ellis hitting the long ball, and guys like Travis Buck and David Ortiz going oh-fer in both games. And then, to cap it off, we had the play-by-play (with some bonus color commentary) by one Gary Thorne. It wasn't bad enough that the guy was calling batters by their wrong name or getting the counts backwards (0 strikes and 2 balls is not an 0 and 2 count). The worst on-air commentary I've heard in a long time happened this morning when old man Thorne apparently confused Jose Canseco with Jason Giambi. Check out the video and full story over at Awful Announcing.