Phil Ewes

Look, I don't want to beat a dead horse or kick a horse while it's down or do anything generally unsavory to our fine equine friends. I've already registered my gripes with MASN's team of commentators, and I understand it can't be much fun for Gary Thorne to have to sit for God knows how many hours each day in sweaty press boxes repeating himself ad nauseam about glorified triple-A'ers being unable to pick up runners in scoring position or making untimely errors or blowing yet another save or, like, failing drug tests and getting caught cheating with one another's wives (which has to happen if this season is truly to go down in history as the quintessential baseball train-wreck).

What's more, I understand how all this might eventuate in Thorne's tendency to pour it on a little thick whenever the inevitable in-game meltdown happens each evening; it's like the guy's patting himself on the back for prognosticating the painfully obvious, gloating that (for example) Robinson Cano was just due for the hit that would continue his remarkable streak, and wouldn't you know it, the base knock came just when the Bombers had loaded them up, thereby putting themselves in position to take the lead, and at the expense of Cla Meredith, who just couldn't buy a hold this year.

So Gary gets a pass for all that, in my book. I'll even let him off the hook for his supremely irritating "three-RBI home run" call; ditto for bastardizing the surname of erstwhile O's manager Dave "Tromblay." (In a previous life, after all, Thorne was one hell of an NHL announcer, and it's gotta be tough to scrub one Yannick Tremblay from the ol' memory bank.)

But what I really, really cannot abide is the way Thorne pronounces the last name of Yankees hurler Phil Hughes: "Yoos," he calls him. What is this, Pygmalion? Do we need to get 'Enry 'Iggins up in the booth to work with Gary on speaking the King's?

Please, Gary, if we have to play — and probably lose to — these guys 18 times a season, at least heed this advice: You're a professional broadcaster. You're not beneath proper intonation of glottal fricatives.