White Sox up to 75 wins

Great Bruce Levine Sunday with Grote.

Grote brought up Bellinger's low hard contact rate in '23. "It proves he's a great hitter how he adjusted his game to go to the opposite field more reducing his hard contact rate". Actually his oppo% rate went up only 1.2%. Still well below MLB average.

Levine said Michael Soroka could be up to a 15 game winner. Only eight 15 or more game winners in '23. That would be in Cy Young award talk class. A tall order for a guy whose only pitched 46 MLB innings total the last 4 years.

I'll be banging the under like I bang your mom.

Is this like a $2 hooker joke?

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

David Haugh stands up to Bruce like none of his "Inside the Clubhouse" co hosts have done. They got into a nice verbal tussle today and Haugh wouldn't back down or show deference to the old scribe. Bruce seems to think he's Abner Doubleday and is all knowing. Levine made his bones by butt kissing and Haugh seems to have little patience for that .

These guys should shoot each other in the face at the same time.

_________________

_________________

I'll be cashing that one with zero sweat.

Good. Levine is unnecessarily abrasive and too often a team apologist. Definitely not a fan of his.

_________________
Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

during Cubs postgame interviews, I guess theres some arrangement where Bruce gets dibs on first question. They're rarely anything of importance and are either a softball, or some bullshit about feelings.

_________________
'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

I was listening to Inside The Clubhouse this morning and heard that they had a new segment called "High and Tight," which is supposed to serve as a response to "somebody who needs responding to," or something to that effect. That piqued my interest, and I was wondering if they would actually come up with some sort of hot take or call someone out. So, I keep listening to the segment.

At the top, they play some anodyne sound byte from Dylan Cease where he says "you know? It just didn't work out last year" and then proceed to talk about how Dylan Cease is a good guy.

Just the hard hitting journalism I've come to expect from Levine & Co.

Damn! That's some big time chin music. Keep honing that edge, Bruce & Haugh.

_________________
Wattabout Kodak Black?

I'm more understanding of Levine (and Zaidman when covering the Bears). These guys would go on with hosts who had very strong opinions on the teams, and then the reporters (Zaidman/Levine) wouldn't take the bait and would give more generic/safe responses. Reporters aren't supposed to be providing their opinions, just the news. Commentators/hosts are supposed to react to the news, give their opinion.

The lines have been blurred. I heard Leila lecturing the listeners a few weeks back saying that on NBC she only gives the news, but on the Score, she gives her opinions. I don't think she understands that makes her "news" coverage very questionable when she's spouting out about rich billionaires on the Score everyday (when talking about the Bears/White Sox stadium issues). Someone like her wants it both ways - to be a serious news journalist, but also give opinions, but doesn't understand why listeners may think she may have an agenda she's pushing.

I don't think Levine has an agenda other than he's probably protecting what relationships he has with the team by not being overly critical. As long as he is able to provide news, I'm ok with him not providing hot takes. Haugh is still very vanilla as a commentator, less edgy and tries to be reasonable vs. some of the other hosts. That's not for everyone though.

ZZ was an update / fill-in host long before he became a team schill. He had plenty of opportunity to express his God-awful sports thoughts on the air. I heard plenty of them. Awful.

Levine's ass-licking goes well beyond protecting his sources.

Mark Grote seems to have no problem being a team mouthpiece and not coming off as a total ass-wipe. Jeff Dickerson was perfectly fine at it. Jesse Rogers has issues articulating sentences, but as a reporter he's fine.

_________________

Levine is a shill who's under the Score mandate of avoiding the truth. He's just not quick witted and a skilled speaker to sound believable. Makes for great sports radio hearing him sound foolish.

Zaidman worst fault is the fact he thinks he has to kiss Hughes a$$ and laugh hysterically at every Pat Hughes stupid joke.

Ron : "Boy Pat, Morel took a big swing and a miss at that curve ball"

Hughes : "Yea Ronnie, I bet the fans in the bleachers appreciated the breeze on this hot, humid evening"

Zaidman (Heard in the background) : "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

_________________
Blackhawk goal, scored by number 20, Al Secord.

_________________

Mitch once tried to make a Saturday morning show out of Zach, Drinky, and I want to say Brian Paruch. The "young guns" of the Score, except by 2008 Drinky was probably like 40. I think it was supposed to be a soft launch for a new morning show if Mully and Hanley didn't work, but they did, and the experiment was never spoken of again, at least by anyone but me.

Even with the reliable Brian Paruch, it was really, really bad.

_________________

LOL...I remember that.
I've said this in other threads....you can be technically skilled at radio or you could be a skilled journalist / writer. Neither of those translate to entertaining / engaging radio host.

_________________

Brian Paruch was exclusively reliable as a soporific, nothing more.

_________________

One of many that are technically good at radio, but about as interesting as a 2x4.

_________________

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Someone has the drop of the lady Jane's haircut guy commercial saying in a weird voice "Brian pah rook"

Ridiculous.

_________________

Wasn't that the predecessor of Paruch going on with Steve Rosenbloom before Grote took the spot over?

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Yeah. That was when Drew Hayes came in and took all the weekend and fill-in shifts away from the board-ops and gave them all to sportswriters. That gave us some really solid years of Rozner and Rosenbloom sitting in for Terry. I also remember a time when Teddy Greenstein was on the Mac show and Terry wouldn't do transition that day because his lofty principles wouldn't allow it.

_________________

Now for some reason I miss Dave Baum.

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

We must be about the same age.

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Also, to a lot of us now in our forties Paruch could never overcome being "Whipping Boy" or worse "Brian the Big Gay Mule" from Q101, the latter being on post-shark jump Mancow's show

I was wondering what happened to Brian Paruch's aural doppelganger, Matt Rodewald, and surprise, yet another Score host who is now a "director of communications" for a school district. Truly the strangest pipeline around.

_________________