You Can Put It On The Board: Hawk Harrelson Is the Most Biased Announcer in Baseball

Hawk Harrelson, frighteningly energetic grandfather to White Sox fans and hopelessly obnoxious old man to others, has just won the award that he had wrapped up a long time ago: the title of baseball’s most biased broadcaster.

Jared Diamond of The Wall Street Journal watched one nine-inning home broadcast that the home team won for every team and discovered something…not all that surprising. Turns out, Hawk Harrelson uses more biased phrases than every other broadcaster combined.

From Diamond:

“By the rules of our study, anyone with a microphone who used a pronoun like “we,” “us” or “our” to describe the home team was given a citation. Obscure pet names for players were also flagged: The Detroit Tigers announcers, for instance, referred to backup catcher Gerald Laird as “G-Money.” Additional penalties were given for things like excessive moping after miscues or unrestrained glee after big moments…

During the White Sox game—a 2-1 win against the Texas Rangers—Harrelson and Stone (but mostly Harrelson) made a whopping 104 biased statements.

To put that in perspective, the Cleveland Indians duo of Matt Underwood and Rick Manning ranked second with just 23 biased comments and 24 of the 30 teams had fewer than 10.”

True, it was only a one game test, so the usual sample size caveats apply. But for anyone who has watched a single White Sox game with the sound left on, this only confirms all of our suspicions.