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People and Pop Culture

The Sit-Down(s): Jim Brockmire / Hank Azaria

After wrapping up the shooting of Season 2 of “Brockmire” on IFC, Hank Azaria (a Mets fan) and Jim Brockmire (a fan of anything with alcohol in it) shared their baseball insights.

When legendary baseball announcer Jim Brockmire quit his job last summer as the Morristown (Pa.) Frackers’ broadcaster, he had no idea that he would wind up 1,100 miles away calling games for the Class AAA New Orleans Crawdaddy’s.

Brockmire (played by six-time Emmy Award winner Hank Azaria) is the main character in an eponymous TV series that debuted last summer on IFC. Season 2 debuted April 25.

In the show, he is a former Kansas City Royals announcer who, shortly before a game, caught his wife having sex with a neighbor. That surprise led him to have a not-ready-for-the-FCC on-air meltdown. He was fired by the club and found himself in the booth of Morristown Field attempting to resurrect his career.

The stadium, in reality, is Luther Williams Field in Macon, Ga. Built in 1929, the venue has served as a backdrop for many baseball movies, including the 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic “42.”

Coolray Field in Gwinnett County, Ga., is the real-life home of the Gwinnett Stripers.david broughton / staff

Season 2 was filmed at Coolray Field in Gwinnett County, Ga., about 36 miles north of Atlanta. The ballpark is home to the real-life Class AAA Gwinnett Stripers, but for two weeks last fall, it was transformed into Crawdaddy Stadium. 

Make-believe sponsors’ names were trademarked, and signage bearing those companies’ names was used throughout the ballpark, and several of the stadium’s suites were transformed into sets and editing rooms.

Crawdaddy’s signage helps to spin the tale.david broughton / staff

The first season averaged more than 500,000 live-plus-three-day viewers, according to Nielsen, and drew a total of 8.6 million total viewers in live+7 ratings. According to IFC, the show’s weekly audience nearly doubled on average within three days of its original air date. The Season 2 premiere delivered 506,000 total viewers in Nielsen live+3 ratings, 7 percent higher than last season’s finale.

IFC has already renewed the show for two more seasons.

SBJ’s David Broughton spoke with Azaria, both in and out of character, about broadcasting and baseball.

Hank Azaria, in character as Jim Brockmireifc

Favorite sportscaster (not named Brockmire):

Brockmire: I actually don’t have a favorite sportscaster that isn’t myself. What I have is a list of people that I hate the least out of everyone. And at the top of that list is Andrés Cantor, the man who yells “Goooaaaalll” at soccer games. I actually almost care about soccer when I hear him yell that. Almost.
Azaria: I don’t understand the backlash that some of these guys get. Like Joe Buck and Cris Collinsworth. Collinsworth seems so knowledgeable, I actually find myself listening to him just to try to find out why people criticize him. I think he’s great. He reminds me of Tim McCarver, when he first started. He was so insightful, then I guess he just started resting on his laurels and repeating himself. Or maybe just lost touch with the game. I don’t know what happened to him. And I hate to say it, I really hate to say it, but A-Rod’s a good broadcaster.

Least favorite sportscaster:

Brockmire: Joe Buck and Brent Musburger. [Buck made several appearances as himself in the first season.]
Azaria: [Late Boston Celtics’ announcer] Johnny Most. Oh my God, I don’t know how I lived through four years of listening to that guy [Azaria attended Tufts University in Boston]. His voice sounded like cracked glass, and he was such an unabashed homer. That’s my major pet peeve I have in sportscasters. Even with teams I like, I don’t like when the broadcaster is only pulling for their side. I also hated Dan Dierdorf. He did the same thing Bill Walton does. When a team does something good and they say, “This is why this team is the greatest team in the world.” And then a minute later, if they do something bad, it’s “This is why this team will never win a championship.” Why do they feel it necessary to hyperbolize every play?

Favorite ballparks:

Brockmire: Any ballpark that still has 25-cent beer night, of course, especially when they combine it with bat day, because that leads to some crazy hijinks. A lot of people assume my favorite one is Kauffman Stadium, for all those years I spent calling the Royals. But when you hit emotional rock bottom in a place, it’s hard to chase away those ghosts. Give me a place with no personality, no hometown pride, hell, no trace of emotion at all. For that reason I would say SunTrust Park. Also, I wouldn’t mind seeing Morristown Field again, I just don’t want to smell it ever again — that place smelled like Godzilla’s beer fart.
Azaria: I do love Citi Field, and not just because I’m a Mets fan. I grew up going to Shea, which I loved. But it was like a giant subway station. It was a horrible stadium. Going from Shea to Citi was like going from a shack to a penthouse apartment. I also think that Fenway is the best bleacher park ever.

Ballparks you hope you never step into again:

Brockmire: It would have to be Wrigley. Not because I don’t enjoy a game every now and again in the friendly confines, but because if I step into it there’s an 80 percent chance I’ll be tasered on site. Let’s just say that it’s no fault of the players that those locker rooms smell like piss. Also, Dodger Stadium. Vin Scully made it clear in ’99 what would happen if I showed my face ever again. Dodger Stadium is where the rich and powerful go to answer emails for three innings before leaving to beat the traffic, and the true fans will kill you for wearing the wrong shade of blue. It’s an above-ground representation of the population of hell.
Azaria: Angel Stadium is so depressing. It has to affect the team. It reminds me of the Chargers’ old stadium.

Promotion that you think ballparks should do to draw more fans:

Brockmire: “Tell Joe Buck what you think of him day.” Everyone writes down what they think of Joe and drops it in a fishbowl at the entry gate. Instead of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh-inning stretch, Joe draws 10 answers out of the bowl and reads them out to the crowd from the pitcher’s mound. That’ll bring folks and keep ’em there. Also, being sensitive to this brave new world we live in, we have to be very aware of gender issues. So a promotion that I’d like to see is blow-up doll night. But you could receive whatever gender you choose. No discrimination, so you can bring your kids and make a family night out of it. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve suggested at every park I’ve ever worked. But for some reason the teams have always rejected it.

Stupidest thing you’ve ever heard a sportscaster not named Brockmire do during a broadcast:

Brockmire: I once heard Keith Hernandez challenge Howie Rose to a drinkable yogurt chugging contest on air in the middle of an August heat wave. An expletive-laced meltdown about your cheating wife is bad, but a verbally binding agreement to consume that much dairy on a hot day is suicide.
Azaria: My favorite one was at the end of Harry Caray’s final season. Harry, like Jim Brockmire, liked to have his drink during the game. The Cubs were playing Cincinnati, and I think they lost 5-0. Harry, after the final pitch says, ‘So the final score … Florida zero …’  And there was just dead air for 15 seconds. Then just “Cubs win.”

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