I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few years as the Phillies and Comcast (mostly Comcast?) have rolled a steady stream of color guys through the broadcast booth– Matt Stairs, Jamie Moyer, Ben Davis, Mike Schmidt, John Kruk. Most of them are or were fine (Moyer wasn’t). Stairs was maybe the best, but his delivery was awful. Mike Schmidt just rags on kids these days, but in a way that is somewhat endearing insofar as Schmidt sort of owns his reputation as a prick. Ben Davis and John Kruk* are completely adequate.

That is all a long and rambly way to delay what I’m about to say, because I never thought I would type these words in this particular order: Chris Wheeler was really good.

Yeah, yeah– I know. I KNOW. I have a category on this site called “Shut Up, Wheels.” Wheels’ voice, sort of like Kruk’s, irritated me. He had to talk through every soothing silence. He HAD to let you know when he was right, an annoying trait perhaps best encapsulated in this post after Cole Hamels hit a home run off Livan Hernandez.** Worse, he always felt it necessary to let you know that he was one of the boys (or at least he thought he was). God help the jovial dugout moment that wasn’t accompanied by Wheeler pointing out that someone who sits 12 rows behind him on the plane cracked a smile in the spirit of camaraderie. He just couldn’t let anything stand on its own, and he often talked down to the audience… or at least that’s how it came across.

BUT.

No one ever questioned his knowledge of the game. Just because he didn’t play the game doesn’t mean he didn’t know the game. Perhaps better than anyone in the business – and this includes national guys – Wheels could explain to you – yeah, ad nauseum – what was happening. Even the most seasoned baseball fan always learned something by listening to Wheels. For every big moment he stepped on, there was a small moment he held up. I have no doubt that, even though I’d complain endlessly about him droning on about a 2-1 count during a nine-run game in the middle of May, his wisdom would make some of the dreck we currently have to sit through interesting.

Once Harry flipped on Wheels, he was done. There’s no recovering from that. It’d be like if Ryan Gosling told a group of 24-year-old girls that Netflix rom-coms were a turnoff. No matter how much someone secretly enjoyed Definitely, Maybe, they’d convince themselves and all their friends that it was the worst movie ever made, just because Ryan didn’t like it. And that’s how we felt about Wheels. I think many of us, somewhere deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, liked Wheels. He knew the game. I kind of miss his informed pestering.

*Personally, I can’t stand Kruk’s soft, country bumpkin voice, especially when it’s juxtaposed with his macho persona. And yes, I know this is sort of an unhinged critique, but when you have to listen to someone for three hours at a time, it helps to not disdain the sound coming out of their mouth.

**Who would do such a thing?