Truth to Power

You can contest whether the Red Sox have the best fans in baseball.  As a long-timer, I am suspicious of the carpetbaggers.  You can debate whether Fenway is a lyrical little bandbox or a back-crunching, miserable-clubhoused trap.  But you cannot deny that the Red Sox have the best announcer in baseball in Joe Castiglione.  

Castiglione's a low-key guy.  He doesn't have a dopey catchphrase, or any sense of hysteria.  He loves the Sox, but he loves the game, first and foremost.  He delivered one of the best succinct calls I've ever heard in my life last summer, when he declared a ball "Back, track, wall, gone."  And what other announcer, anywhere in the league, would mount a passionate defense of Teddy Roosevelt's right to win the Presidents' Race at Nationals Park by citing the details of Roosevelt's childhood health?  Or recite the details of a career of a Senators player nicknamed the Washington Monument as a riff on Adam Dunn's weight?  I love the guy, seriously.  His voice emanates from my two World Series beer openers.  But I could listen to him--and frequently do--all night.