While his morning show colleagues had the audio equivalent of a frat-house rah-rah speech with Dwayne Kuiper, KNBR's straight-forward, right-on-the-mark and hellaciously knowledgable, Damon Bruce came out of the shoot this morning and essentially called out the SF Giants and their fans.
How damn refreshing. For the mutants who think I'm in the pocket of Bruce, I'm not; in fact, when Bruce came to KNBR in October of 2005, I found him utterly irritating and my first impression was, "who the hell is this guy?"
Bruce, filling in for Gary Radnich, devoted the entire first hour to deconstructing Monday night's Giants catastrophingly nauseating loss to the Colorado Rockies in extra innings. A loss that was gut-wrenching as well as a loss that all but eliminates SF from the post season according to Bruce. And who could doubt him?
It's that type of "tell-it-like-it-is" persona and style that makes Bruce highly entertaining and refreshing on a station that has become predictable and staid, and that's putting it mildly. At times, KNBR is unlistenable and don't take it from me; read the message boards and industry chatter. Ratings are good, but when there's little competition, they don't mean much.
Bruce's heated, passionate and spot-on critique of the Giants meltdown was both solidly delivered and elequent in its systematic breakdown of the team's glowing lack of offensive spark. And as a comical relief, one of the best Bruce Bochy impressions to boot.
Bruce called out GM Brian Sabean and laid the brunt of the teams problems squarely on the back of Sabean. His rant was direct and uttered without any zany sound "drops", audio histrionics, or moronic hyperbole. Again, Bruce tells it like it is. He doesn't dumb-down the audience or pander to the hard-core "root for the uniform" guys from Fresno who take the 250-mile trip to AT&T Park. He simply lays out the case and lets it flow from there. A breath of fresh air in a big market. This ain't Milwaukee or Phoenix. This is San Francisco.
Bruce isn't everyone's cup of tea. He has a tendency to over-hype himself and has a press box reputation of "I'm great", and "everyone else is 'dreck.'" OK, so the guy has an ego. Surprise, don't we all?
But his array of knowledge and passionate discourse, and his uncanny ability to make one think and consider the argument is both undeniable and incredibly compelling. It isn't three hours of "giggling" and disingenuous banter and manufactured character; it's a, yes, again-- refreshingly blunt assesment of the situation at hand.
Bruce hit it out of the park this morning and cleared the bases. Ooops; forgot about last night.
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Nice post. I have a different take on Bruce. I think he lays out a lot of cases but never much of a case. He doesn't present a lot of reasons for his views. He has views. He has passion. The passion seems to be offered as evidence for his views. Try listening to him and note the sentences and break them into conclusions and reasons--there aren't that many reasons! There isn't that much information, either. There's much passion and sound, but not a whole lot of sense. For example, think of his simplistic stuff on the performance enhancing drug issue. He was arguing by analogies here and leaving it at that.
ReplyDeleteI heard Ted Kennedy on Fresh Air today saying that you need passion when you're communicating so that people know you care. That's an interesting idea. I think in Bruce's case the passion undermines the case he wants to lay out. He hits the passion note, but without the all the reason notes he's not playing chords. For all the loud noise, he sounds a little thin. The passion is more sophistry that reasonable persuasion.
I guess I'd disagree with you on the dumbing-down issue. I think Bruce is making a kind of dumbed-down case most of the time. He's selling us that passion, that contrarian personality, that sound and fury. But this doesn't have anything to do with considered ideas; says nothing about whether or not his ideas are true, reasonable. He's appealing to the emotions. He says believe X because I am angry and direct + my voice.
Do you ever read the comments section below the Giants nightly article? Bruce seems to be addressing these folks and expressing their spirit (not a compliment).
Like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Olbermann, and Dan Patrick, Bruce's voice seems to express his on-air personality perfectly. Have you heard Damon Bruce's voice?