This is NOT the Promised STD -- It's About Craig Rosengarden's Tickers on This Morning's Teebox and Tickers Generally

I had promised that there would be two consecutive STDs (Scorching Ticket Disquisitions, if you're new to the site), starting with the "Black Ticket" article just below.  But today's Teebox inspired a thought I thought I'd knock off to give the Nation some weekend content:

Whether you like golf or not, the Teebox is a great little show, 8-10 am on Saturdays sandwiched between the dubious (George DeJohn's Train Station Fitness Show) and the sublime (The Orphanage).  Rick Arnett and Craig Rosengarden have a fine old time talking about golfy things but also about other items on their minds and stuff that's happened to them during the previous week.  Always enjoyable.  Even if you haven't ever been up on a Saturday morning to check it out, you will be familiar with its most famous series of utterances -- Craig's "the anus is on him" and Rick's "the anus?!" and "I don't think so."  (My recollection is that Rick's "I don't think so" was not in reaction to Craig's misuse of "anus," but to Craig's attempt to explain his way out of it.)  Yes, Confessors, I was actually tuned in for that immortal exchange.

Anyway, on last week's show Craig expressed the thought that he might like to give Tickers a whirl. 

Today, he realized his dream.

It is not my intention here to criticize Craig's Ticker efforts.   If I understand matters correctly, he wrote the first one, and regular Ticker guy Casey Millen wrote the second one.  (There may have been another one or two but I did not hear the middle of the show.)    He was a little halting and uncertain on the first Ticker, but when he read the second one he'd found his stride -- even though Casey had written in some rather, uh, blue material. 

Here's what struck me -- reading out loud is a skill.  Put aside the skill needed to bang together a mini-broadcast as sporty news piles up during the day, gotta get the clips ready, gotta get a tease ready, maybe a couple of jokes, and then you have to write solid, succinct text that gets the info across in a clear and efficient way. 

Our Ticker guys are really good at all those things.  But again, my focus today is on reading the written word out loud.  Craig, of course, reads just fine.  But he is clearly reading.  It's not seamless.  He's not just talking into a mic, he's obviously reading.  His inflection is non-conversational, his cadence somewhat forced.  But Rich, and Ty, and Sean, and Casey, and all the other Ticker guys just blast it right out.  They're reading too, of course, but there is a seamlessness and polish to their delivery that does not call attention to that fact.  It has nothing to do with speed -- it's just a talent for reading out loud without sounding like a third-grader, on the one hand, or Franklin Roosevelt, on the other.  Expression; pace; continuity.  A mini-speech that is pleasing to the ear and does not call attention to its own delivery. 

So -- Craig's bit was fun, he was perfectly fine.  Rather brave, in fact, to undertake the Tickers. 

But let's take a moment to reflect on the skill it takes to sling out a good Ticker, and to thank the unthanked Tickermen of SportsRadio 1310 The Ticket.