Don Orsillo Deserves So Much Better Than This
By now, you’ve heard the news. This is the final season for Don Orsillo in the NESN broadcast booth covering Red Sox games. And it is a complete injustice.
If you’re like me, this news came as a complete shock. But then we heard the tidbit that this was not Orsillo’s decision to make. This is surprising and not so surprising at the same time. It’s surprising because how in the hell could NESN look at a talent like Orsillo and decide that the broadcast is better off without him? It’s not surprising to find out that it wasn’t his decision to leave. Of course he didn’t willingly leave his post as the television play-by-play announcer for the Boston Red Sox. This is Orsillo’s dream job. In May 2011, we learned that TBS was “making a strong run at tying up NESN’s Don Orsillo to a long-term deal,” a year in which Orsillo’s contract was due to expire. No stranger to TBS, as he had been doing the postseason broadcast, Orsillo opted to forgo going national, and stayed with the local broadcast, showing his loyalty to NESN and the Red Sox. And how was that loyalty repaid? Well, this.
The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn had a story today that said, “According to industry sources, Orsillo was never a favorite of Joseph Maar, NESN’s vice president of programming and production/executive producer who arrived at the network in July 2012.” I had someone reach out to me with knowledge of the situation, who confirmed that it was Maar behind the decision to let Orsillo walk. Maar, if you recall, was the same person who was responsible for letting Naoko Funayama leave back in 2013, which was heavily criticized, and rightfully so.
Dave O’Brien will be taking over for Orsillo in 2016. And don’t get me wrong, O’Brien is really good at what he does. Great, even. But you cannot possibly sell me, or any other Red Sox fans who have watched this team on a nightly basis since 2001, that Orsillo doesn’t belong in that broadcast booth. From what I’ve seen, the backlash over this decision has been huge, and that’s an incredible understatement. Any explanation given for Orsillo’s dismissal cannot possibly be justified, if Orsillo actually still wanted to continue at NESN. They were talking on Dennis and Callahan this morning about how the ratings being down could possibly be a reason behind this, but there’s just no way that any sane person could blame the play-by-play announcer for ratings being down during the third last place season in four years.
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Don deserves better than this, and the fans deserve an explanation. A real one, not the bullshit one that we’ll probably get, if we even get one at all.
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