Good TV

For any fans who haven’t already, check out the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball offering (no Web site, hmm); it’s really pretty good. The broadcast is high-definition and well-produced too, with the screen chrome unobtrusive, informative, and attractive. The broadcast team—Jon Miller and Joe Morgan—is excellent; Morgan is maybe the best color-commentator currently working, which is a graceful sequel to having been the maybe the best player in the world for a while, thirty years back. Fortunately, the camera only visits the broadcast booth once or twice per game; Jon and Joe have faces made for radio. The “K-Zone” strike zone visualization works surprisingly well, and the between-inning visits with the managers are handled intelligently and have a lower cliché density than you might expect. The between-inning features where a rock band or a politician talks about how much they love baseball don’t do much for me; but ESPN is trying to freshen up a very old medium. Good on ’em.