Catch Ya Later, Trupe

I must not be much of a Red Sox fan, because I completely missed out on the recent firing of longtime radio broadcaster Jerry Trupiano, who was let go in mid-December after the team reached a new ten-year agreement with Boston station WRKO (680 on the AM dial). Trupiano had partnered with fellow veteran Joe Castiglione for the last fourteen seasons, gaining fame from his “Way back, WAY BACK!” homerun call. (He also became well known for the many times he missed with the call, shouting at the top of his lungs for a blast that was caught on the warning track.)

Castiglione will continue to call games for the Red Sox Radio Network in 2007, his 25th season with the team. He will be joined by the two men hired to replace Trupiano: ESPN’s Dan O’Brien and Larry Lucchino favorite Glenn Gefner, each of whom will broadcast 81 games. The articles I read were unclear as to the way the announcing duties will be split; Trupiano and Castiglione alternated play-by-play duties every two innings.

Personally, I always liked Castiglione better than Trupiano anyway. It might’ve had something to do with the fact that Joe was the guy I used to listen to when I was first starting to enjoy baseball as a kid, while Trupe came along a bit later on, just prior to the downturn in interest that took place during my teen years. There was also the fact that his voice seemed a little too perfect, a little too deep (the best thing about Joe Castiglione is that he most certainly does NOT have a voice you would normally expect to hear on the radio – that, and the pain/annoyance/frustration in his voice when he calls the final out of a Sox loss is palpable), and the lack of chemistry I always detected between the two. I wasn’t the most religious listener to the radio during Trupiano’s tenure with the team, but the times I did listen (usually in the car for 15-20 minutes at a time while running errands) made me wonder if they were really a team or just two guys thrown into the same booth. When Trupe was on the air, Castiglione was often silent to the point that I wondered if he was even in the room or if he had stepped out for a snack; when Joe’s turn came up, Trupe delivered an equally odd lack of interest, only occasionally breaking in with a relevant point (and just as occasionally breaking in with a totally irrelevant point).

So why do I care that Trupiano is gone? Because as much as I thought I never liked him, for all of those reasons outlined above and more, he actually wasn’t all that bad, offering up the occasional witty remark or quotable phrase. My personal favorite came during a mid-August game last season against the Yankees (might’ve been The Boston Massacre Redux, but I’m not 100% certain). Introducing Jermaine Van Buren, Trupe expressed some disbelief regarding the veracity of the pitcher’s physical statistics: “Jermaine Van Buren, listed at 6 foot 1, 220 pounds. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

It’s late in the hiring season and most of the good baseball jobs are gone (a fact that displeased Trupiano greatly; had he been let go in October, the chances of picking up a new gig would have been much better), but here’s hoping that Jerry Trupiano finds his way back into a major league broadcast booth someday. He won’t be writing a Hall of Fame speech any time soon, but there’s a good chance he’ll brighten the days for the fans of whichever team he works for.
They should remember just one thing: he works better alone.