If there is a funnier MLB broadcast duo than Jason Benetti and Andy Dirks, I am not familiar with their work. Regardless of how the Tigers are playing, you can guarantee that Benetti will arrive at the booth ready to pepper his play-by-play with clever one-liners, deep-cut references and an extended bit or two. Of all his rotating partners in his couple years calling Detroit baseball, the modest, folksy Dirks has proven the most able and game to follow along with Benetti and—perhaps occasionally—egg him on.
Even by my high standards for these two, the bottom of the fourth in Monday's Tigers-Yankees game was pretty hilarious. After the first hitter of the inning, the Yankee defense took notice of the ballpark's tiny second-base "dirt cam," which for whatever reason had made itself conspicuous. The production crew gave viewers a dirt-eye view of the Yankees' curiosity, and then their attempt to bury the camera. The televised soundtrack to their attack on dirt cam was Benetti and Dirks voicing the anxieties of the persecuted camera, then eventually just making the sounds kids make when they bang action figures together.
This was part of a delay that necessitated the intercession of the grounds crew, which came out with a big bucket labeled "Dirt Cam." You could read the bucket thanks to the angle provided by the cam itself.
The whole stoppage was surely much, much more exciting for a TV viewer than someone at the ballpark, and it ended on a celebratory note. Benetti boldly proclaimed the resilience of dirt cam, bolstered by the power of its brother near home plate.
This loopy announcer moment officially begins the dog days of summer, and I couldn't be happier.
