When word first hit last year about “Brockmire,” a show on IFC starring Hank Azaria as a weathered baseball broadcaster, it struck me the same way it would if, say, Derek Jeter decided to run a football team.
After all, Azaria has played so many memorable roles in his career, many of them on “The Simpsons.” Yet “The Simpsons” writers clearly love baseball, featuring the sport in too many episodes to mention, and whenever they have needed a baseball broadcaster, they turn first to Azaria’s castmate Harry Shearer, who does a killer Vin Scully. In the Season 2 episode “Dancin’ Homer,” moreover, the episode’s co-writer, Ken Levine, who worked as an actual baseball broadcaster for many years, played the Capital City Capitals’ broadcaster.