Courtesy the Houston Chronicle

(November 12, 2010) Oh, somewhere in this favored land, or, presumably, somewhere in this hemisphere, Jon Miller is enjoying a postseason cruise, which likely means he’s in his radio gear — Hawaiian shirt and shorts — as opposed to the coat and tie he dons for ESPN television duties.

Imagining Miller in all his informal sartorial eloquence brings a smile to my face; the prospect of his rhetorical eloquence disappearing from the national broadcast scene next season, however, does not.

Change for change’s sake, which would appear to be the only reason to remove Miller from ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, as ESPN announced it will do for the 2011 season, strikes me as a pretty flimsy premise upon which to deprive listeners of one of the game’s greatest voices.

And that’s stating it mildly. If you really want a response that will peel paint, get a load of what Curt Smith, the nation’s most prolific historian on the lore and legend of baseball announcers, had to say on the matter.

“There are many things wrong with ESPN’s baseball coverage, but Jon Miller is not among them,” Smith said. “The so-called worldwide leader has just fired the best broadcaster in the country, and for what? Bad ratings? Hardly his fault. Poor camera coverage? Not responsible for that.

“What he is responsible for in interspacing play-by-play with anecdotes, adding whimsy and humor, attention to detail and appreciation of the game’s poetry and lineage. No one does it better than Jon Miller, and if MLB Network, TBS or Fox has any scintilla of intelligence, they are at this moment speaking to his agent.”

So there.

Miller was not available for comment. Joe Morgan, his longtime on-air counterpart who also will not return in 2011, said in a statement, “I was not surprised by ESPN’s decision. They have been taking Sunday Night Baseball in a different direction the last two years, and I was not comfortable with that direction.”

Fine. In that case, Smith said, they should let Miller work solo.

“After all, Jon doesn’t need an analyst,” he said. “He would bring Chuck Thompson, Harry Caray and Vin Scully (in the form of his peerless impersonations) into the booth with him. Four voices for the price of one: Wouldn’t you want to listen to that?”

ESPN apparently has offered Miller the opportunity to continue doing radio, which would be fine with me. He brings a degree of excitement to the broadcast that makes even the mundane riveting; Smith said if he were to update his book Voices of Summer, which ranks the top broadcasters of all time, he would put Miller in the top five.

It’s yet another case in which ESPN walketh about, seeking what it may devour, for no apparent reason. Dan Schulman, who apparently will succeed Miller on the Sunday TV games, is a fine broadcaster who also brings a certain edge to the proceedings, particularly on radio. But he’s no Jon Miller.

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