Michael Kay: Love Him or Hate Him?

[RYMASTER or Ryan_Yankees]

BTW its a must for any Yankee fan to follow the fake Michael Kay on twitter.

Except I got like 60 (no lie) text messages from fake Michael Kay's Twitter on Opening Day. Drove me nuts.

[Shane_Spencer]

He's an above average commentator. Don't see much to complain about to be honest.

[randy06]

He's decnt in my opinion, ive grown used to him.

[4trainEddie]

Like him ..... have met him a few times ... definetly comes across as a nice guy.
always polite and humble.

he does have some cosell/mccarver in him when he's on the air,
I mean he will try to deliberately cause trouble with an opinion,
not too often on YES but its very easy to tell this when he's on espn radio,
but he has to there, controversy means much needed ratings.

if he had to go on partnering with Sterling, he would have jumped ship or off the GWB long ago.

when it comes to announcing, he certainly doesnt sux.
I can do without calling guys by their full names ... Andrew Eugene Pettitte ... please stop doing that.
but have you heard some of the other announcers around MLB?
imho, Vin Scully is not great, he's very good, but too bland.

[GordonGecko]

Like him ..... have met him a few times ... definetly comes across as a nice guy.
always polite and humble.

"humble"

[JL25and3]

I think he's not a great play-by-play guy, but he's pretty good at drawing out the various ex-ballplayers. Overall, I think he's OK - certainly not great, but I don't hate him.

[Yankees1962]

I think he's not a great play-by-play guy, but he's pretty good at drawing out the various ex-ballplayers. Overall, I think he's OK - certainly not great, but I don't hate him.

I agree with you, the Yankees can do better than Kay, but he's OK even though he trys to get too controversial at times instead of just doing a fine job calling the game.

[Joba-Walkee]

At least he's working on it, he says every single day that "he's trying to make sense of it all". His head must be hurting like crazy. Someone let him pet the rabbits or something

Combined with the stress gravity puts on his ginormous head, it's a wonder he hasn't blacked out during a broadcast yet.

[ace]

One thing I like about the new Yankee Stadium is that it no longer has the little bat on top of the flagpole. That means we no longer have to hear the story about how Don Mattingly told Michael Kay how weather vanes work.

I can't stand how he repeats some stories ad nauseum like that. Whenever he's with Leiter, it's always about the 160 pitch game in the World Series and Sojo's bouncing base hit. Every. time.

[destiNY]

He is off to a bad start this year, every game I like him less and less, he just doesn't sound like he knows a lot about baseball. The downhill for me started when I listened to his radio show years ago, its pretty bad.

[bigjf]

I don't have a big problem with Kay. I understand the hatred, but anyone who has heard the broadcasts of other teams can at least appreciate how he tunes down the homerism and all. Sure he gets repetitive with his stories, treats all us fans like we know nothing about baseball by explaining the simplest rules, and he sounds like a moron when he says things like Vlad isn't a HOF, but I'm sure glad we don't have Hawk Harrelson as our play-by-play.

[fredgmuggs]

One thing I like about the new Yankee Stadium is that it no longer has the little bat on top of the flagpole. That means we no longer have to hear the story about how Don Mattingly told Michael Kay how weather vanes work.

You might think that but you would be wrong. On the Friday night broadcasct they showed the flags blowing at the stadium and Kay started talking about how Girardi looks at the flags on top of the stadium and not the flags in CF. Yep, you can guess the rest after that.

[BillBuckner]

He's way too opinionated for a play by play guy. Other than that, he's okay.

[hellonewman]

It was too funny today when they showed a montage of the old Stadium, beginning with footage of what was clearly a World War II-era plane flying over the Stadium, and Kay goes, "there's Opening Day when the Stadium opened in 1923, they had a flyover." Really, Kay?

Of course, Flaherty topped him a few innings later when he observed that Tanyon Sturtze's career "took off" after he got to the Devil Rays. Trust me, Flaherty, Tanyon Sturtze's career never "took off." It just sort of oozed out.

[Yankees1962]

He's way too opinionated for a play by play guy. Other than that, he's okay.

I think that's the main complaint against him from Yankee fans. He needs to turn off his sports radio host persona when he's calling a game and leave the opinions to his analysts.

[OlgMvp]

I'm still disgusted about how he whined for 3 innings...during the Lester game against the Yanks.


"Yeah but if Gardner's the everyday LF'er...then why is Thames starting?" Singleton kept answering the question in different ways and Kay kept posing the question in different ways...extremely annoying...shut up and call the goddamn game. HATE HATE HATE Kay.

[BillBuckner]

One thing I really admire about Kay though (among his many undesirable traits) is despite his sometimes seemingly arrogance, he does have a wonderful self deprecating sense of humor. Him and O'Neill in the booth is pure gold sometimes.

[Kentucky Bomber]

Kay didn't bother me till this year. He seems to have gone off the track, completely self absorbed during the game and using it as a personal forum (or 3 hour tweet, if you will) to the point of just flat out ignoring pitches. When he actually remembers he's doing a game he's not as bad. There's a meanness to his attempts at banter with his color guys that's vey off-putting. Kind of "I'm a professional announcer and your an ex-jock and I'm going to needle you the whole way". One of these days somebody's going to take a bat to that giant pumpkin attached to his neck.

My wife gets his ESPN show on the drive home on XM radio and tells me he's pretty hard to take there, but then again that's a talk show radio persona, so I'll give him a pass.

[delv]

A lot of people have observed a difference in Kay this year. I think so, too, and I think I know why. In the middle of ST this year, some caller on his radio show called in and basically called Kay out for talking crap on his radioshow but never on YES.

so I wonder if this is Kay's attempt at proving his mettle, so to speak.

[fredgmuggs]

A lot of people have observed a difference in Kay this year. I think so, too, and I think I know why. In the middle of ST this year, some caller on his radio show called in and basically called Kay out for talking crap on his radioshow but never on YES.

so I wonder if this is Kay's attempt at proving his mettle, so to speak.

He seems as annoyingly the same to me as he has been in the past.

[Pinstriped2]

He's been getting on my nerves more and more over the past few years. He is way too repetitious. You can pretty much predict his story given the situation or team the Yanks are playing. Plus he is like a dog with a bone on certain topics... he just won't let go.

However, that said, I have now listened to a lot more baseball announcers both on TV and on the radio thanks to the MLB app, and I'll take him over the vast majority of those guys

[THEBOSS84]

Out of the 3 main play-by-play guys we are used to hearing, I'd take Kay over Buck and Miller without hesitation. I don't know what it is that you guys are looking for. Some of the older fans fawn over Scully, but I don't get the love.

[delv]

^Yeah, just to clarify, I'm not in the "Kay sucks" boat. He's still way better than most.

[stazsanity]

Other than the fact I'm ridiculously jealous of the fact that he gets paid to go to work and talk about the Yankees for 2.5-4 hours a day (sometimes more when the Red Sox are involved), I think he has his pros and his cons.

PROS: his passion for the Yankees bleeds into his commentary, he is extremely knowledgable about both past and present members of the pinstripes, and he seems to have a decent raport with the majority of the color commentary guys, which makes for a fun booth to listen to.

CONS: I have to admit, I can be nit-picky at times about Kay, but I"m going to bring up my two main gripes: one, sometimes, Michael Kay needs to shut up and let the moment happen. In this manner, he can take a lesson from some of the all time greats- he needs to stop trying to make the moment about him. Case and point: his little rehearsed speech when Jeter broke Gehrig's record...obviously rehearsed (and to his defense, rightfully so...a big moment in Yankee history and he probably didn't want to screw it up) but did we really need him talking over the moment? Although it is his profession, not mine, if he asked me for my opinion I'd have told him to allow the moment, which clearly speaks for itself, to do so. Secondly, he's a bit opinionated for a play-by-play guy...but many others have already commentated on that, so I'll leave it at that.

[JL25and3]

You might think that but you would be wrong. On the Friday night broadcasct they showed the flags blowing at the stadium and Kay started talking about how Girardi looks at the flags on top of the stadium and not the flags in CF. Yep, you can guess the rest after that.