A baseball legend will be performing Monday night at Comiskey Park. Besides Carlton Fisk, that is.
Harry Coyle, the award-winning director who was behind NBC Sports`
baseball coverage for more than 30 years, returns to the broadcast truck to direct Madison Square Garden Network`s telecast of the Yankees-White Sox game. ”It`ll be nice to see the guys,” said Coyle, referring to the many former NBC employees, such as Tony Kubek, who now work for the New York cable outlet. It was through those connections that Coyle decided to leave the comfort of semi-retirement (”I`m no couch potato”) in Marshalltown, Iowa, for another day in the director`s chair.
”It was just one of those things,” recalled Coyle, ”where they said,
`Hey, do you want to give it one more shot?` So, why not? It`s been four years since I directed. It`s nice for them to say come back and sit in for one shot.”
Coyle originally was slated to work a Yankees-Mets exhibition game, but a family illness caused him to postpone the engagement.
Now, all is well and Coyle, who keeps up with baseball telecasts around the country by way of a satellite dish, is ready to return. And he has found, even in four years, a lot has changed.
”When I was working with the network,” said Coyle, ”there used to be quite a difference between the network telecast and the local telecast in terms of sophistication. Mainly that was because we had more modern equipment. What I`ve noticed in the last four or five years is the local stations, and especially the superstations such as WGN, have really bridged the gap. They now have all the sophisticated equipment that the networks have, and there isn`t that much difference in the look.”
Part of the reason the gap has closed will be evident when Coyle arrives at Comiskey Park. He`ll find accommodations for TV that were unheard of in the old ballparks.
”With television becoming so important,” said Coyle, ”before they put up a new stadium today, the network, cable and local guys are all called in to work with the architects. In the past, we`d be called in, but they only followed half of our suggestions. Now, I think they follow them all. It has to be different. With the expansion of the local coverage, and the number of cameras needed, there has to be a great demand for space. Sometimes three sets of cameras are in the same (location).”
All those cameras can become a nuisance, according to Coyle, who not only has won multiple Emmys but Directors Guild of America awards as well. ESPN, for instance, uses at least 12 cameras for its Sunday night games, having added ”tight centerfield” and ”high, high home” shots this year, according to Jed Drake, senior coordinating producer, in an effort to provide better coverage of the strike zone.
”In L.A., I understand one of the local stations uses 10 cameras,”
Coyle said in amazement. ”Directors and producers have to be very careful because they have too many toys. Too many cameras can be a problem.
”When the World Series comes, and they start putting in 20, 25 cameras, you reach a point where there`s just too many. You lose the ability to get the value out of each camera. There`s a limit to the amount of cameras you should use (for baseball).”
Coyle revealed his plans for a World Series, with which he was involved for NBC for 36 years. It would begin during the regular season, where he would use only five cameras for the network`s ”Game of the Week” telecasts.
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”When we went to a World Series,” Coyle said, ”I`d use those same five action cameras. So I didn`t lose my reflexes. Then I enhanced everything. So I used 15, 16 cameras, but it was mostly for replays. But you really didn`t want to change your approach because a director sits there for a whole season and knows what camera to use for what plays. If you put so many (extra) cameras into a World Series, you slow down your reflexes. And a slight hesitation can slow down your coverage.”
Of all the local telecasts he has seen, Coyle has the highest praise for WGN-Ch. 9 producer/director Arne Harris, a longtime friend.
”Every director does things his way,” said Coyle, ”but Arne directs a little differently than some of the other guys around the country. Arne works in a lot more closeups. Some of the average guys sit back. Arne works at it. It`s not 1-2-3-kick on directing. There`s hardly anybody who does it exactly the same.”
And nobody does it like Harry Coyle.
– Random thoughts: How come Joe Montana got more air time over the weekend than playing time last season? . . . All that free time on the golf course paid off for baseball analyst Don Sutton, who fit right in on TBS` telecast of the PGA Championship. . . . It sells advertising, but what`s the point of TBS` morning coverage of the third and fourth rounds of the PGA? So it can show the leaders warming up on the practice tee? . . . Now that they`ve made their point, will Hawk and Wimpy quit whining (”Where was it?”) about American League umpires? . . . Dan Hampton obviously is serious about his TV career, since there was a marked improvement between his first Bears game last year and the one Saturday night, when he was insightful and humorous.
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