We return now to the visceral but cut-to-the-core question about TV and radio game analysts: Would you like to have him or her seated beside you during a game?
In baseball, the broader questions become: Why has TV chosen to do this to us? Why can’t we watch a game as a matter of simple, born-and-raised enjoyment? Why has that become a challenge of Biblical proportion?
By the second inning of Tuesday’s Yankees-Nationals on YES, Al Leiter had again issued his dare, his challenge to us to seek sanctuary elsewhere, mute the telecast or to keep listening to him discuss, describe, approximate, pinpoint, explain, analyze, advise, propose, predict, probe, poke, question, examine and otherwise dissect every pitch.