BlueHen86 wrote:JoltinJoe wrote:
A lot of folks got pissed at him over the bogus stories. For some reason, though, I found it kinda funny and charming in its own little odd way. The guy's a friggin Hall of Famer and one of the greatest 2b to ever play the game, and he found it necessary to make up stories like a JV wannabe.
It wasn't just the stories, it was stuff that he would pass off as fact, but wasn't. He didn't do his homework and it showed. I also didn't find him to be charming.
Lindsay Nelson would make a lot of mistakes and be charming. Phil Rizzuto was charming.
Joe was just a legend in his own mind.
I agree that Morgan didn't do the prep work other color analysts did, and essentially relied on his general knowledge. In a big game, Morgan could never tell us what a pitcher said to him before the game about his approach that night, because he didn't do those interviews.
On the other hand, the area where I thought Morgan was good, and never got any credit, was his in-game intuition. He offered opinions on the way a manager, a pitcher, or a batter was thinking in a critical situation or count, and would make predictions about what pitch a hitter was sitting on, or what move a manager would make next, and what pitch (type and location) was on the way, given what kind of stuff the pitcher had that night. He was very often right. I suppoe for a guy like Morgan this intuition came naturally and wasn't something he needed prep work. I think this is whay ESPN tried adding a second color commentator, like Steve Phillips, to the booth, in order to add that pre-game prep perspective that Morgan didn't do.
