When the Phillies are good – real good, not “playing well” good – the broadcast is forgivable. When they’re bad, man it’s rough. T-Mac is one of the cheesiest dudes to ever talk into a microphone, Ben Davis has gone full homer this year and sounds like you’re talking to your buddy from grade school (some love this), and Matt Stairs is improving but needs to work on his delivery. And then, once in a while, there’s Mike Schmidt. Even if the broadcast is going smoothly, Schmidt has this superpower of being able to bring it to a grinding halt. The man has decades of interesting baseball tidbits and insights, but he just can’t. get. it. out.

And then he does things like this:

That’s Mike Schmidt, stopping himself from complaining about Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton (but not really) on the air in front of a Canadian and a man so terrified of going off script I’d bet his body temperature dropped five degrees the second that left Schmidt’s lips. Schmidt isn’t Brett Myers or Curt Schilling, but he’s hardly Chris Wheeler either.

There are great baseball minds. Among those, there are guys who can really express their insights. Then there are ones to bring a cold chill across the broadcast booth. Schmidt is the latter.

UPDATE: And then there was this: