Rick Dempsey, originally uploaded by Keith Allison on Flickr.
My TV was muted, and the nasal tones of Joe Castiglione were floating over the airwaves into my home by the second innning, so I didn't hear tonight's worst from MASN broadcaster Rick Dempsey, who filled in alongside Don Orasillo in the NESN booth with Jerry Remy said to be battling flu.
But if Remy can't come back tomorrow night, I would honestly rather they enlist Tim McCarver to co-host than have Dempsey back again. Seriously. What little I heard of Dempsey was that bad -- for just one example out of many, he called JD Drew an "Orioles killer," after which he was swiftly informed by Orsillo that Drew is hitting .238 against Baltimore. I really think you could've taken your average Red Sox fan off the street to do color, and they'd do about as well as Dempsey's constant spew of cliches, truisms, nonsensical blather and misstatements tonight.
Dempsey was so bad that he was actually lifted for relief color man Nick Cafardo in the seventh inning, though the ostensible reason was that Dempsey had to get ready to inflict himself on Orioles fans on the MASN postgame show. I can only imagine he killed at least some of their winning buzz.
Meanwhile, the play on the field was just as painful as the announcing.
