Red Right 88

Radio home of the Indians drops the ball during broadcast

We were running errands this afternoon and listening to the Cleveland Indians game on WTAM, the flagship station of the team.

The Tribe was trailing, 2-1, heading into the bottom of the seventh inning as they were looking to sweep the Chicago White Sox in the weekend’s three-game series.

Just as play-by-play man Tom Hamilton was setting the table during the seventh-inning stretch, we were ripped from Progressive Field by the 3 p.m. “news update” from WTAM’s weekend news staff.

Believing a technician must have inadvertently flipped a switch and we would soon be back at the Tribe game, we hung in there only to be surprised by what we heard next – the pregame for the Cleveland Cavaliers game with Philadelphia.

What?

Instead of letting fans listen to see if the Tribe could make a comeback (they couldn’t), WTAM gave Cleveland fans a hot, late-season match up between two teams that are a collective 46 games under .500 and a playing out the string to the NBA season.

Maybe the Browns had the right idea when they decided to switch stations for the upcoming season.

Apparently when WTAM advertises that they offer “Total Tribe Coverage” that coverage doesn’t extend to the actual games. Or else someone at the station must not have received the memo that this is a “Tribe Town.”

And judging by the fact that, after drawing 41,567 fans on Opening Day, the Indians have only pulled in 47,631 total over the past four games, a lot of people in Cleveland missed the memo as well.