Warner Wolf is in a 'Foul' Mood

Quiet day in baseball yesterday, though Reds catcher Ramon Hernandez did make some noise by rattling a tiebreaking homer off the Oakland Coliseum foul pole in the 10th inning, pacing the boys from Cincy to a 6-4 win.

Shots off the foul pole have to remind any New York native of a certain age of the inimitable Warner Wolf. Wolf of course was our local channel 2 sports guy who brought some SportsCenter shtick to the airwaves before there even was a SportsCenter.

Among his bits were a hearty "Let's go to the videotape!", "Gimme a break!," "BOOM!" and a little act he'd do every time a hitter rang one off the foul pole. No, it wasn't the foul pole to Wolf--it was the fair pole.

"Cuz if the ball hits it, " Wolf would exclaim, "it's a fair ball! C'mawn!"

Local sports guys are lucky if they get a few minutes in the newscasts today, and luckier still if more than a handful of people in the market even know their names in this ESPN age. It's hard to imagine people talking about them 20 years down the road.

Wolf left channel 2 about six years ago, and is currently toiling on the Imus show on radio. I also hear Warner Wolf's voice on various commercial voice-overs for cars these days.

It doesn't seem like any of Wolf's shtick bits held up all that well over time--you really can't "go to the videotape" in the digital age, Nell Carter bogarted the "gimme a break" phrase, and you really can't work a sanguine "BOOM!!" into a car commercial.

The fair pole, on the other hand--maybe ol' Warner had something there. No less a source than UrbanDictionary.com has an entry for "fair pole", and there's a blog that had some momentum until, oh, late 2008 called The Fair Pole.

And this being 2010 and all, Facebook, of course, has a page dedicated to "Fans Who Think the FOUL Pole Should Be Renamed the FAIR Pole."

Warner Wolf does not appear to be among the 33 Friends of Fans Who Think the FOUL Pole Should be Renamed the FAIR Pole.