There has been some discussion on thearbiters that would erroneously suggest that there is anything tolerable about Al Trautwig. I will now dispel such suggestion. To be fair, I acknowledge 2 reasons why I might consider not hating him:
1) He has some pretty nice pipes, and I cannot complain about volume, tone, or timbre.
2) To my knowledge, his ratio of oxygen intake to carbon dioxide expiration is no worse than the common man and thus the effect on my environment is that of an ordinary citizen.
But aside from these 2 reasons, there are 472 distinct violations of the viewer/announcer social compact, which must be enumerated in the hope that he cease pollution of the air- and videowaves.
PART I: #472-455
472) Faux sincerity. This will obviously need to be further explored, and will appear in citations #205-193 and again in #116-113. I accept that this is a necessary evil of the profession, as announcers have to spin an essentially frivolous activity into serious entertainment. But Al, this is not war correspondence, it’s sports. Either genuinely enjoy the event or go with the admittedly stale ESPN sarcasm motif.
471) Repeating obvious items. The Chinese gymnasts are underage. You don’t say.
470) Repeating obvious items. On the off chance I only tuned in now and missed the previous underage gymnast, I guess it’s responsible journalism to say it again.
469) Repeating obvious items. Still that chance.
468) Respect women’s sports. The biggest hurdle for covering women’s sports on TV was when announcers finally had the guts to say something besides “she’s trying really hard.” McEnroe was the first to break this barrier and criticize bad tennis, thus good tennis received due praise. The days of “what a shame, they’re all winners” is long past, someone cc Al.
467) Knicks. Someone has to cover the Knicks. Might as well be Al.
466) He replaced John Tesh. Somewhere there’s a producer out there who observed “Tesh isn’t getting the job done, who’s the next cheapest blond guy?”
465) His children are demonspawn. How can I respect the commentary of someone with demonspawn running around his house?
464) He has an association with Elfi Schlegel. I’m not sure who exactly Elfi was that she got this gig, but she’s terrible, and Al is guilty by association.
463) He’s not as good as Tim Daggett. Daggett is lacking in presentation, but he knows his stuff and points out things that a quadrennial viewer could never notice. Al doesn’t deserve to sit next to him. This reasoning might appear selective compared to #464, but I assure you it is not. Al Trautwig merits no benefit of doubt.
462) He’s no help for Walt “Clyde” Frazier. It’s not always clear that Frazier is watching the game that MSG is showing me on TV, but the last thing the world needs is Al egging him on. Frisman, perhaps you’d like to chime in about Walt’s nickname, since “Walt” strikes me as a pretty good smooth-black-guy name, so why have a nickname which is just a different smooth-black-guy name?
461) He adds nothing to the Tour de France coverage. They already have a knowledgeable British guy, another British guy who is going the way of Pat Summerall, and an insane person. And the race is on for about 5 hours a day, so these 3 guys can tell me pretty much anything I might need to know. I don’t need carpetbagger Al to say “grueling” a lot and confirm that a bike has 2 wheels. Professor, is he off this thing now or was there an Olympics conflict?
460) He calls the NYC marathon. Mercifully, I am unlikely to get up early enough to catch coverage of the marathon and don’t have to listen to his crap.
459) Somehow, he is responsible for the get-to-know-an-athlete junk pieces. More guilt-by-association. The fact that they always use him for these, which are the worst thing in sports coverage (and possibly the worst thing about anything, aside from Al Trautwig himself), clearly demonstrates his terribleness.
458) Douchebag. Douchebag. Douchebag.
457) He’ll pimp himself out for any movie role. Doesn’t matter if it’s the Guatemalan iceskater movie or the three-legged horse movie, Al will play the fake sportscaster. Apparently every casting director out there has figured out Al is perfectly qualified to be a fake sportscaster.
456) He covers arena football. If you watch enough Sunday football, you’re bound to get down to the #13 team doing the Cardinals-Chiefs game. Usually Steve Tasker and his nephew’s roommate. Al can’t even crack this list.
455) Radio coverage. Apparently Al had a job doing NFL radio, which didn’t even last a full season. Considering nobody listens to football on the radio, it’s quite a feat to not last a whole season. I guess that exec realized that if you have to listen to this putz (read here to mean actual six-foot penis, not some polite euphemism) without any video distraction, you might go mad.
And if someone knows how to turn off the autocorrect that is changing ‘eight-parenthesis’ into smiley faces, I’d be much obliged. I don’t have time for this, busy working on #454-431.
HR Melvin
The Arbiters 
Odd, but Trautwig doesn’t bother Grumble that much. And I do like to have the monopoly on over-the-top scabrousness (scabrousity?). Sure, he’s sonorous, prone to irritating side-comments, a little uppity in his relations with fellow broadcasters, sort of a Costas-manque. But I have a theory, Homer: you don’t like him, and I don’t mind him, because I see the root of his personality and you don’t. Moreover, I _feel_ it: it’s self hatred. His loathing of others is mixed with his loathing of himself for not being a major-sport network voice (or whatever these people aspire to) and that is what produces the personality you are beating up on. Never seen him in a movie, didn’t know he did more awful profile stuff than most. He’s a mid-level shmuck, why hate on him?
Also, Tim Daggett is awesome. With a vocabulary of only nine or ten words he can actually communicate to the typical gymnastics-ignorant fan the meaning of what they just witnessed. “A big mistake!” “A very big mistake!” “A disaster of epic proportions!” “That was great!” “That was really really great!” Melifluous, no. Interesting, no. But informative. That’s actually what we need to know, watching the quadrennial gymnastics meet that more than %.012 of the world’s population cares about.
And Maddux ERA watch RIP, for a while. Fucking Phillies.