Curt Schilling suspension gives ESPN chance to rethink Sunday Night Baseball … – SportingNews.com

Curt Schilling’s hateful, inaccurate and idiotic post to Twitter got him suspended from ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball telecast this week. Combined with the fact that he is terrible at his job, making his network’s signature baseball program nearly unwatchable, Schilling should be off the air for good, ideally never to be heard from again, as he has next to nothing worthwhile to contribute to human consciousness.

What about that one time Schilling was right on the money, going after his daughter’s cyberbullies? Yes, that was admirable, but also wildly hypocritical, given Schilling’s own behavior online. There is no compelling reason for his voice to be heard, and this Sunday night will be a gift.

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Unfortunately, because Schilling’s penalty is only one week off ESPN for posting a vile worldview on Twitter that he had shared on Facebook plenty of times previously, the gift is only temporary. Jessica Mendoza, the onetime Olympic gold medal-winning softball player who on Monday became ESPN’s first female analyst for a major league game, will fill Schilling’s seat in the booth alongside Dan Shulman and John Kruk — a savvy move both for public relations and for adding a fresh voice to a stale enterprise.

What ESPN should do is not just cut ties with Schilling, saving it the embarrassment of having to do so the next time he puts his name to reprehensible speech. It’s time to shake up Sunday Night Baseball and breathe life into it. The key to doing it is right under ESPN’s nose, on the baseball broadcast nobody watches, Wednesday Night Baseball.

On this week’s Wednesday Night Baseball, there were five announcers. That’s right, five. Jon Sciambi did play-by-play, accompanied by Rick Sutcliffe in the booth, with Doug Glanville, Eduardo Perez and Eric Wedge sprinkled around the ballpark. Such a preponderance of announcers seems like it would be overkill, but it actually worked very well, playing out more like a roundtable than a game of “Can You Top This?” For what it’s worth, Schilling’s tendency to try to assert his intelligence while demeaning Kruk is one of the worst parts of the current Sunday Night Baseball experience.

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ESPN employs a ton of talented and insightful baseball people, and giving them a weekly spotlight would be good for the Sunday Night Baseball franchise, the network and the game. At different points in the game, different voices would have their chance to have their say, but more organically than trying to jam in prepackaged segments from Buster Olney, as is the current practice.

There’s an argument to be made for letting a broadcast team develop chemistry by working together week in and week out. There’s also the Kruk-Schilling dynamic, which only seems to serve to ensure nobody ever forgets about the 1993 Phillies. By going with a rotating cast, ESPN can get conversations going between different announcers, finding different areas to explore, providing the promise of something interesting each week.

What might it sound like with Dan Shulman calling his usual solid Sunday play-by-play, accompanied by Kruk, Mendoza, Olney and Perez? Maybe the next week, it’s Shulman with Glanville, Keith Law, Mark Mulder and Wedge.

ESPN should realize that viewers of Sunday Night Baseball are either fans of the teams playing or hardcore baseball fans. The former group does not care about week-to-week continuity of announcers. The latter group would appreciate getting varied perspectives on the game over the course of the season.

Until that realization occurs, the world will have to make do with a one-game reprieve from Schilling, and the chance for Mendoza to impress a wider audience, the best thing to come out of a bad situation.