Chip Caray has been largely criticized for his work thus far
in the AL Central tiebreaker and playoffs.
AP

1. Of course he's no Hawk Harrelson

When I think of hell, I imagine myself being subjected to the Ludovico technique, with an endless reel of Derek Jeter and Skip Schumaker highlights playing while Michael Kay shouts in my left ear about the glory and majesty of the Yankee pinstripes and Joe Buck screams in the other about the hardworking people of St. Louis, the best fans in all baseball. I have no patience for bad baseball announcers, or even for just plain dull ones.

That said, the national consensus forming around the idea that Chip Caray is a really terrible broadcaster is inexplicable. Take a random sampling of opinions tweeted by the masses during and right after Wednesday night's Twins-Yankees game:

TimBoddie Chip Caray, you really, really, really, really, really, really SUCK!
tantoncalamity I've always despised Chip Caray. IMHO the worst Caray ever, that's saying something considering Skip was brutal as well.
EricAndKevin you are right chip caray is the worst play by play man in the history of history
jmarie1074 Ok Chip Caray - going w/alternate audio so I can hear the game called by someone who doesn't want to date Jeter & knows baseball.
gtra1n Chip Caray; worst announcer of all-time, or only recent memory?
JonathanSacks Chip Caray has no idea how baseball works. He also no idea how the light in the fridge turns on when the door opens. Lol
GregVegas I know it's not Friday, but this can't wait. Follow @yesmichaelkay for far better play-by-play than what Chip Caray's vomiting out.

While I seem to be the only person not listed as a beneficiary of Caray's life insurance who feels this way, I wouldn't just say that he's inoffensive, but that I actively enjoy listening to him. He may botch the odd call and like the word "fisted" even more than Dan Savage does, but his work bears no trace of the smarminess and self-worship that mars that of so many of his peers, and if he gushes it always seems to be out of high enthusiasm for the game, rather than a belief that good ballplayers are better than other people. In fact, if I were to key in on his main strength, it's that he actually seems to like baseball. This isn't something you can say of most of his rivals, and it counts for a lot.

2. Alex Rodriguez, rid of monkey

On Wednesday night A-Rod drove in a run for the first time in 20 postseason chances, and then followed it with another. Sad a thing as this was for tabloid headline writers, it was wonderful for the rest of us, if only because we'll be spared much psychologizing nonsense about the man and his problems in the clutch over the next stretch. This isn't to deny that Rodriguez's long playoff slump was strange, but that's all it was, and if it's vastly oversimplifying things to say that it was just a weird statistical anomaly, that still makes much more sense than drawing all sorts of inferences about his relationships with Derek Jeter and his father and Jay-Z. While you can fit my regard for the RBI as a measure of performance under your thumbnail, at 33 Rodriguez is a strong year away from breaking into the all-time top 15 in that category. This is much more telling than what he did over 19 playoff at-bats spread over five years.

3. Baseball players

If you'd played a drinking game on Wednesday in which you took a shot every time someone who works for TBS quoted Twins manager Ron Gardenhire to the effect that his guys are baseball players, you would have died. I think everyone ought to keep in mind that this is the polite way of saying that someone isn't really very good. If you use having an on-base average below .310 in more than 200 plate appearances as a rough proxy for status as a baseball player, the Twins had seven of them this year. This is a big reason why they will not likely be playing much baseball past this weekend.