John Imbriale
 

Having tough time at Saratoga.Getting killed on twitter

Back in the day some were tough on Jesus Christ for consorting with prostitutes.


I enjoy Johns calls.

John Imbriale :ThmbUp::ThmbUp::ThmbUp:

Twitter :ThmbDown::ThmbDown::ThmbDown:
Poisonous as all Hell.

Imbriale is my favorite announcer and Twitter is my least favorite platform

:ThmbUp:
Imbriale is fine and seems like a class act.

Twitter? - A lot of good horseplayers, but the topic is seldom genuine horseplaying discussion. Have an urge to start a thread or two here to scratch that itch.

John's fine. I think the problem with both Collmus and John is that they followed Durkin.

Johnny I,
He's they guy!

Twitter, twitter,
A virtusal........

Imbriale does a solid job all year, I've always enjoyed his calls going back to the mid 90s. He's also an extremely nice guy.

Twitter is absolute garbage.

I pay a lot of attention to track announcers and it's truly a big reason why I choose to follow certain tracks. In my estimation, Johnny I has definitely evolved since taking over full time, getting more confident in his calls, building more rhythm, really representing the brand of NYRA and adding his own unique take.

That being said, I am huge fan of Larry and am sad we don't get to hear him more. I wish he and NYRA could have gotten a deal done. I think his voice and cadence is great. On the subject of voice, I actually also really like John Lies, for whom I think people have mixed opinions.

Tom Durkin was a fantastic personality and being at his call of the 2009 Woodward is one of the best live sports moments I've ever been at, even if he did call her "Rachel Alexander" a few times. :) Rachel did, indeed, raise the rafters at the Spa that day.

+1

Seems like track announcing can be a pretty thankless job - people rarely go online to say "X called a great card today!" but sure feel free to rag on the announcers. Twitter provides a megaphone for the biggest loudmouths.

A fair point. Big shoes to fill. Durkin is one of the top 5 race callers of all time, IMHO.

But while I also like John Imbriale and think he's one of the best current callers, I don't miss Collmus at all. Not saying that's a popular opinion, just mine. I do not much care for the "yellers", which includes Collmus, Mark Johnson (formerly of CD), Vic Stauffer and others. I do think both Collmus and Stauffer deliver a professional call and updates before and after the race, however.

I prefer more of the laid back delivery of the likes of Marshall Cassidy, Greg Miles (another top 5), Darren Flindell (formerly of HK, now in Aus), and Paul Allen.

An exception would be Phil Georgeff, who was often quite animated. As my buddy at Fairmount Park once said, "Phil can call a $4,000 claimer and make it sound like a Grade 1 event". Spinning out of the turn, indeed.

Imbriale imo has been average so far..

This seems like a good place to put in a good word for Larry Lederman. He used to call them at Freehold. His race calling was a separate part of the entertainment. We need more of his kind.

Larry is still around from time to time. He got past a very serious health scare and fills in at times. I've heard him at Freehold, The Big M, and I think Parx within the last few years.

I think NYRA's employment of Imbriale proves my point about race-callers, which is even if fans enjoy listening to them, they aren't really important to the product. I assume NYRA's moving from Collmus to Imbriale made sense for them financially, and that's all that matters.

Having said that, Collmus may be the best I've ever heard.

And the other thing about this is you can be sentimental about particular voices. For instance, I understand some people don't really like Vic (including one person in this thread), but I associate his voice with Hollywood Park, wafting over what was often sadly a fairly empty grandstand after the last race and rattling off all the legendary horses who had raced there as part of his sign-offs. And I miss that, as I miss Hollywood Park.