Welcome Dave O’Brien (For Real This Time)

The radio crew for the Red Sox was announced today and the good news is Dave O’Brien will do a minimum of 135 games. Dale Arnold and John Rish will also be a part of the mix, along with Joe Castiglione.

That has the makings of a solid team, but the main point is O’Brien has a chance to become the radio voice of the Red Sox, and we’re all for it.

There is no professional sport where the fans need, nay demand, a connection with the voices on the radio quite like baseball. Because every NFL game is a national broadcast, Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti also fill a special niche, but they don’t live with you for six months like their baseball brethren.

They live in your car on long drives, and keep you up-to-date on the Cape. Before coming back to Boston, I used to be able to get Joe and Jerry Trupiano on the Hartford station if I was in the right part of Philadelphia, and yes, I was Truped more often than I care to admit.

When I heard either Joe and Jerry, I knew I had found the signal. Which is why Glenn Geffner was such a disaster. There is no sense in beating up Geffner any further, other than to say that he may as well have been calling Kansas City Royals games.

In O’Brien, the Red Sox have a skilled and polished play-by-play man with national cache. Unfortunately, because of his schedule, one never truly got the sense that O’Brien was anything more than a stand-in last year. So, welcome to the family Dave. We hope you stay a while.