Mitch Lawrence

sjm said:
I also thought the Pool Party was terrible TV, but Mitch Lawrence was not the reason.

In his capacity as WPBA announcer, Mitch's role is primarily to promote the sponsors and the venues and to coordinate the telecast with his announcing partner, generally a WPBA pro. In this capacity, his work is admirable.

Mitch is a great guy and a smart guy, and is also an enduring credit to the sport of pool.
Very well said. Mitch and Ewa are two very classy person in our pool community. One of the best looking couples. It is always nice to see them together.
 
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I agree

sjm said:
I also thought the Pool Party was terrible TV, but Mitch Lawrence was not the reason.

In his capacity as WPBA announcer, Mitch's role is primarily to promote the sponsors and the venues and to coordinate the telecast with his announcing partner, generally a WPBA pro. In this capacity, his work is admirable.

Mitch is a great guy and a smart guy, and is also an enduring credit to the sport of pool.

I agree. I think it was the format and the whole circus that made it look that way. I hoped no one outside the billiard comunity seen it. Butterflycues
 
Cuaba said:
AZ poster Jay Helfert was an ESPN anouncer for the 2006 World Pool Championship in Manila. He was fantastic. It aired in Europe & Asia but I don't think they will air it here.

I'd like to see ESPN use him for events that are aired in the States.

I agree, Cuaba. Jay does top notch audio work. My ultimate team would include Jay and Buddy Hall,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,if they were allowed to relate old war stories. That is very interesting to a vast US listening audience.
 
Couple of Comments

As most of us know, and as Jay H has reiterated, pool is a major major sporting endeavor in other parts of the world. The quality and amount of the coverage of pool is superior because there is BIG cash money involved. Pool is televised on a regular basis and the interest in it goes beyond just those involved in the sport.

We have a large Filipino population here in SE Texas. The physicians assistant at my doctor is a Filipino. In passing, I asked him if he had ever heard of Efren Reyes and he went nutso. Called him "Bata", spewed out the stats on how many championships he had won, starting talking about Bustamente. This guy didn't even play pool !. It'll never be that way in the US but it sure is around the world.

Mitch Lawrence does a lot of work and commentating on instructional tapes in other sports. He did an entire series of tapes with a legendary golf instructor on which he did an outstanding job. Too bad Ewa wasn't there!
 
Mr. Wilson said:
This would be a prime example of why some of the bigger personalities don't post.


I think AZB should have a rule where any post with mean spirited name calling in the Subject/Title is deleted.
 
I have always like Mitch as an announcer, and I thought that I was in the minority. A year ago everyone hated him.

What's up?
 
I thought there was no name calling on AZ? Twit=fool silly. It's a shame that people on here have to drive all the pro players and anyone else on the inside of pool away. Johnnyt
 
Mitchell Laurance isn't the "twit" here. The premise of the show was the culprit.

Being able to announce an event is actually quite difficult. You really need to be quick on your tongue to describe what's going on during a match and not to sound too repetitive.

Barbara
 
Ewa

catscradle said:
He sure is no buffoon about picking a wife.
You got that right! Ewa is still a head spinner. A friend of mine and I were walking in the Riviera, and Ewa was walking by. She smiled at me. I like to think she recognized me, but it was probably that I had broccoli stuck in my teeth and she was trying not to laugh.

Anyway, my buddy did the head turn thing and commented that she was easily the best looking woman he had seen all week. Even though he is an amateur pool player, he had no idea that she was a pool player. He thought she was in a show or something. LOL!!!

Her look, her walk, her entire being is simply elegant, stunning, classy, all of that.

And to the original post, Mitch isn't the greatest, but he's nowhere near the worst. Barry Tompkins might have that honor.

Fred
 
Mitch is 'aight. But the Pool Party was just a bad bad bad bad bad bad bad idea to begin with. What a waste of valuable pool promotion air time.
 
The only annoying thing about Mitch is his overuse of the word "big" and "huge"...."That miss was huge, big, big, big." < Actual line he used once and you could hear him laugh just after that knowing he does overdo it...

My utopian commentary team would be Jay Helfert, Mark Wilson and Buddy Hall...
________
 
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jay helfert said:
....It's a damn shame that ESPN in the USA does such a crappy job of televising the sport we love. I'm sorry I have to say this..... Maybe if enough of you wrote to ESPN, they would wake up and show some real Pool, live, full length, with expert commentary.....

Drawing this conclusion isn't really fair, at least not with respect to WPBA programming. The quality of the televised pro pool product, for the most part, has very little to do with ESPN production values.

The WPBA pays for its own productions. As WPBA tournament director Steve Tipton often notes, the ESPN annual budget for pool is zero. For the WPBA, having to fund their own productions with a fairly modest production budget limits the number of cameras and quality of the staff invloved in that production.

I have always felt and continue to feel that the WPBA productions are exceptional when considered in the context of the production budget. It's easy to overlook or forget that the WPBA foots the tab for pool on TV, paying for its productions and purchasing its programming hours.

To say that ESPN does a crappy job is inaccurate, as they simply show the WPBA-funded productions with which they have been provided. Writing to ESPN about this would not, at least as it relates to WPBA pool, have an impact.

Where ESPN does matter is that they control a) the number of total programing hours available for purchase by pro pool enterprises, and b) the hours during which pro pool is shown, and c) the number of times each televised event is shown (repeated). Pool is being shown in good time slots more and more these days, and I'm quite pleased about it, and I think ESPN deserves some credit for this.
 
Mitch is not that bad of an announcer. With ESPN cancelling the daily billiards show for strongman shows. I am just glad to see any pool at all.
The pool party show is not my cup of tea either.
 
What's interesting, besides all the stuff about the Lawrences, and I know Eva (personally) is a stand up person, but the big picture? Like Jay said, if the announcers were not good in Manila, or their mix was in need of something else change came about quickly.
One has to wonder how many people, applied, were interviewed and did demos before ML came on board. If history proves me right there was none of that done.
With the new perspective that the WPBA is proposidly taking I think the image/dialogue of their product (announcer) should be looked at as being asw important as the gals and the setting looking great, there are many important cogs in this package.
I look at NFL football, many of the announcers were pro players, many are not that good but some are excellent and add the feel/flavor of the sport within their dialogue. ML is not capabable of doing that (it not his fault) and being in such an "IMPORTANT" position that not only reflects what the WPBA is, but creates the "feel" of the event, they need to look elsewhere. Remember the PBT, they actually had it somewhat going in the announcing dept. they had a pro announcer that was 'evolving' and started to make it fun. Change is needed here for the sport, nothing more, it needs some SIZZLE, and what we have is still barely warm.
 
mitch is cooool!!!!!!! and i saw a vid of efren palm push shot and the announcer had a britt accent i think and he was funny as heck ....
 
A good announcer and/or color man is "The St. Louis Shooter" also know as Mark Wilson from Collinsville Illinois. Mark has his own pool room and a quite nice one at that.
 
jay helfert said:
Thanks for the compliment. There is a huge difference in the way Pool is treated and televised in Asia and Europe. Over there it is a major sport. In the USA, Pool is filler material on ESPN, and is treated like a second rate sport.

Mitch is a good guy and a pro at what he does. I have watched him work and he can do a perfect interview the first time. And he knows how to warm up the crowd as well. True, he is somewhat lacking in his knowledge of the game, but I don't think the honchos at ESPN really care.

I greatly prefer to work overseas where Pool is given top tier coverage. For example, this years WPC was shown LIVE all over Asia and Europe for SEVEN to EIGHT hours a day. For NINE days in a row! And you got to see the ENTIRE matches while they were being played. Now that's Major League coverage! Unlike ESPN, where you already know the winner of every match being shown (and it is edited to fit the time frame).

In Manila, it was clear to me that the Producer and the Director were conscious that what they were airing was important to the viewing audience (a huge audience by the way). They continually strove to make the programming interesting and exciting. All the fellow commentators I worked with were PROS at what they did.

I only wish the US audience could see these shows in their entirety (while they were happening too). You would all be glued to your TV's. I promise you. To see the best players in the world, battling on tough tables for all the marbles. I got excited both while commentating, and when I was out of the booth I still watched matches. You see I appreciate the skill it takes to play this game well. It really is the way Pool should be aired over here. Then we WOULD get good ratings.

It's a damn shame that ESPN in the USA does such a crappy job of televising the sport we love. I'm sorry I have to say this. I wish all of you could see the shows we made over there (in their entirety). I'm proud to have been a part of something good for Pool. And I want to publicly thank Jerry Forsyth for bringing me back on board. I hadn't worked a WPC match since 2000. After 9/11 I wouldn't fly for nearly three years.

This is something that needs to be said. So that you guys know that Pool is popular on television in most of the world. It is only over here that we must suffer with this second rate coverage. I personally can't stand to watch these shows. I'd much rather watch an Accu-Stat match.

Maybe if enough of you wrote to ESPN, they would wake up and show some real Pool, live, full length, with expert commentary. And yes, I agree Mark Wilson could do an excellent job if given the chance. And I'd love to be in the booth with him.

Jay,
I've tried to watch the WPBA on ESPN and I just can't sit and watch the match when the crowd applauds after every shot. A player can shoot a straight in 3 foot shot and the crowd claps like they just won the match. I can't take it so I just don't watch it. I can see an applause for a good tough shot, but clapping after every shot is rediculous and it just shows the audience's lack of knowledge of the game.

When they do show a Men's match it's cut up so bad that you don't see half of the match and it's not worth watching.

I personally don't think pool will ever be covered on TV well because there's no big time corporate sponsorship like the other sports have and since Don Mackey sued RJ Reynolds there probably never will be any big sponsorship, but this is just my opinion for what it's worth.
 
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