The Glorious Guest Post: The Seminal Moment for Jon Miller

Hello, friends. My name is Ted, and you can primarily find my poorly-formated and supported arguments at this website. Occasionally, I do some work for Neate over here at Out of Left Field.

Today, with Mr. Bonds now 11 home runs away from Hank Aaron, I thought it was time to investigate another aspect of baseball's central storyline this season: what it means for Jon Miller, the San Francisco Giants play-by-play man who fills similar duties for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball.

Most sportcasters have a singular moment with which they are identified. In the case of someone like Al Michaels, regardless of all the classic MNF comebacks and NBA playoff battles he voiced over, it's always going to be "Do you believe in miracles?" For Marv Albert, it'd probably be something from a series involving the Bulls in the early 1990s - "A spectacular move by Michael Jordan!" comes to mind. Dick Stockon has Carlton Fisk's foul pole waving home run back when he was working for NBC Sports; Brent Musberger has almost every venerable college football moment of the past decade, most notably "You are looking live..." And, lest I forget my main man Gus Johnson, he has UCLA vs. Gonzaga from the 2006 Sweet 16.

Jon Miller is a little bit of a different study. You'd be hard pressed to find a baseball purist who won't tell you Miller is the best play-by-play guy out there; while he's called 9 World Series for ESPN Radio, perhaps the greatest shame of ESPN being a cable network is that Miller can't be the TV voice of the Series - that falls annually to Joe Buck. His dulcid tones and subtle interaction with whoever is in the booth are both absolutely masterful. You might get a couple of homers arguing for Don Orsillo, or Michael Kay, or Dave Niehaus (a Mariners guy). Fact is, most people - especially baseball people (and really, aren't we all in that category during the summer?) - are going to tell you no one beats Miller on a national scale.

Miller is a San Francisco guy. Sure, he left - he was the Orioles play-by-play man for their '83 World Series all the way through 1996. But he came back, becoming the primary Giants guy around the same time Bonds got there, bringing his career full circle from his old days calling the Warriors part-time ('79-'82) and the San Jose Earthquakes. That's one thing we've learned time and time again throughout history, by the way: heroes always go home. In the grand scheme of baseball announcers, Miller is a hero.

He got home, and as a result, he's been inextricably linked to Bonds for the last decade. Still though, most of Bonds' truly relevant moments tend to get picked up nationally, pushing Miller to the side a smidge. When he broke Ruth last year, he did it on FOX's Game of the Week - I think Thom Brennaman had that call. When he got to 73 in one year, the game he finally shattered McGwire, if I'm not mistaken, was Chris Berman nationally.

Now, with Bonds 11 back of eternal history, here comes Jon Miller's moment. Even if these games start getting picked up nationally every night when Bonds is five out - ESPN most nights, FOX on Saturdays - there's a good chance Miller would stay national, at least on the ESPN telecasts. Sure, Chris Berman is a revered figure over the past 25 years, but giving Miller this chance is too much to pass up. He knows the situation with Bonds in the Bay Area - where it started, what's happened since, and what it all means - so well that his call of No. 756 can't help but be legendary.

And you see, that's what Jon Miller deserves, for his own legacy. Twenty years down the road, every time a sports TV show or network or any other platform does one of those compilation programs of moments, and you absolutely have to see the coronation of Barry Bonds as the all-time home run king, well... hearing Miller's voice on it is going to be just perfect. There's really no one else that deserves that crack at baseball announcing immortality more than Miller. Far more than his subtle jabs at people's baserunning, this could be his true "Do you believe in miracles?!?" moment, the one six-word expression of joy and relevance that takes him into a new echelon of his own profession.

So, in the grand scheme of every debate that will rage about Bonds for the next six to eight weeks - Do black people want to see him succeed? Will Aaron and/or Selig visit? How relevant is this record in light of his potential transgressions? - just think of the other, more round man sitting 100 feet above the guy actually swinging the bat. For him, this might be just as important.