Did he, a few short months ago, deliver the greatest call in sporting history?
Sporting history is littered with amazing calls by equally amazing broadcasters. Vin Scully describing the last batter of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, “He is one out away from the promised land, and Harvey Kuenn is comin’ up. … So Harvey Kuenn is batting for Bob Hendley. The time on the scoreboard is 9:44. The date, September the ninth, 1965, and Koufax working on veteran Harvey Kuenn. Sandy into his windup and the pitch … a fastball for a strike. He has struck out, by the way, five consecutive batters, and that’s gone unnoticed…”
Bill King describing an Oakland Raider fumble, “The ball flipped forward is loose! A wild scramble, two seconds on the clock. … Casper grabbing the ball … it is ruled a fumble … Casper has recovered in the end zone! The Oakland Raiders have scored on the most zany, unbelievable, absolutely impossible dream of a play! Madden is on the field. He wants to know if it’s real. They said yes, get your big butt out of here! He does! There’s nothing real in the world anymore!”
Vin Scully, again, describing “The Catch,” “Montana … looking … looking … throwing in the end zone … Clark caught it! Dwight Clark! (Crowd noise for 29 full seconds)It’s a madhouse at Candlestick”
Chick Hearn drawling, “This one’s in the refrigerator, the door’s closed, the light’s are out, the butter’s getting hard and the jello is jiggling…” near the end of every Los Angeles Laker win.
I could go on all day! But do you want to know a call that gets finer and finer every time I hear it, and I’ve heard it many many times recently? Joe Turpel describing the Mick Fanning shark incident of ’15! The cool calm in his voice, his refusal to get rattled, and that initial priceless description, “As we look at Fanning on the rankings. Oooh we can see a little splash…”
I’ve written about his work that day once before, right after the incident, likening his use of “Mick gets back on the ski to reset” to Edward R. Murrow’s “Good night, and good luck.” But these things take time to enter the historical pantheon and, months later, I think it is very clear that Joe Turpel delivered the greatest call in sporting history. And it is the front half, the initial sentence, that soars. The “oooh” so delicate, air sucking slightly in, placing the word “little” before “splash.” I mean, seriously, does a call get any better than that? Does it? I have to say no. I have to say Joe’s calm juxtaposed against the very clear enormity of what was happening on screen makes it the greatest of all time.
Turn your speakers loud. I dare you to disagree
“Fine wine” as in fine wine makes him (almost) tolerable?
Pottz was real! Jake Paterson and Occy were real! Fuck get Boby M on the team. Turpel can Fuck right off!!! So Vanilla like a lot of things in surfing atm….
commentating on commentators. what a wonderful world!
My speakers are off so I can’t check for myself but I strongly hope that, even in extremis, Joe held his trademark future present tense form and informed us of Mick’s intentions to hop on the sled moments after he’d actually done so
(I actually don’t mind him too much. Considering he has to work alongside Martin Potter and his death drone, throbbing with self-regard like a proudly erect cock, I think he does an OK job)
ha!
My favo bit is Pottz swearing under his breath and then apologising as the words were coming out of his mouth.
Sad day when someone like this is considered “the voice” of anything. Scully, Benaud, Hearn, et al., rolling over in their graves on this one.
What????
Boom goes the dynamite!
A fav.
i’d be more inclined to give him points for staying cool if he had ALSO managed to describe what he was seeing in front of him.
when i turn my speakers loud, i hear the audio equivalent of a deer in the headlights
Agreed, he was, literally, dumb-struck. He was not being cool, or letting the scene speak for itself, he was speechless and witless. I had time to call my buddy to say ‘Fanning’s been hit’ whilst Turpel’s silence rang on. The same man who cannot control his constant drivel of hyperbole when calling a Micro Hall ride at a Rio beachbreak was unable to conjure up a single adjective. Here’s Herb Morrison calling the Hindenburg disaster as a counterpoint.. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
i love making fun of Turpel but that was fairly horrific, the quotes are bad but in the heat of the moment he did a great job. i would have lost my shit
Sports fan friends of mine, who are not surfers and don’t watch the WSL, thought the commentary was exceptional. Presented with horror, there was no speculation, just talking about what could be seen. Respecting the horrible moment.
Chaz, your commentary examples don’t seem very analogous. Your examples describe interesting moments with bouncey balls. That’s not quite like Sandy Koufax being attacked by a grizzly bear.
“there’s nothing real in the world anymore!”
I know Chas is being hyper-ironic and good luck to that and I do want to see it that way but I heard nothing but fear and a total refusal to acknowledge reality: a WSL mouthpiece so well trained that he could eye-witness a shark attack/encounter on a live broadcast and ignore it’s very existence. Thats the WSL in a nutshell, an organization so besotted with it’s own marketing propaganda that even the person calling it live is prepared to say black is white when the whole world is watching live and can clearly see with their own eyes it’s black.
Fair play, that is a very special talent that takes people a long way in the world, but we can never say of Joe Turpel: he called it as he saw it. He called it as the WSL wanted the world to see it.
Completely agree Longtom.
The WSL commentators , especially Turpel, are robots , programmed for zero negativity at all times.
If they want to keep their pretty bloody epic jobs they will speak as they are told to speak.
What would you do if you were in their( free )shoes?
Ok. Let’s go toe to toe on this one dear Long Tom…I completely understand where you are coming from and am not a big fan, generally, of the WSL machinations clunking along in the booth. You are very very correct all the way through your analysis and I know because I have been in the both. Big, giant, conservative no-nos rain from the heavens. It is a bland product. Except EXCEPT as it relates to this specific incident. This is the moment that plays on the news and how cool, how amazing do surfers sound for five seconds? The shark fin is clear. The tail is clear. The fact that is wrestling Mick is clear. Joe treating it as a minor thing? We are all Clint Eastwood for that moment.
Longtom is one word Chas. It’s a needle-nosed fish full of super sharp teeth. Like a well armed and belligerent ballyhoo. Quite common in the Indo-Pacific region. My mate was attacked by one once and ended up wounded and in the newspapers, the only documented attack worldwide, as far as I know. He ended up addicted to meth, became a great spoken word poet who was able to solve the problems of the Middle east in an afternoon and later chopped off a finger with a machete in front of parents to send to a drug dealer.
Other than that, we merely have a difference of opinion.
One of the most composed calls of all time in any sport
Ice water running through his veins to make a call that chill…not even a mention of the landlord showing up
applaud him for not making it all about himself. something that’s lost on todays journalist, broadcasters. He was smart for letting it breathe and playout.
Yeah right that wasn’t all about himself! That was Joe Turpel’s way of coolly saying, “If I, Joe Turpel, was molly-whopped by a shark, I would simply hop on a jet ski, reset for a moment and then be good to go.”
You’re a deadset clown