Bruce Drennan=July Savior

So, it's late July and your baseball team sucks. My team, the Tribe, really really sucks. Not like poor Cecilio's Scribe's beloved New York Metropolitans, who lead the NL East by 1 game (although to hear him tell it, they should be competing in the International League). How dare you CS, get back to me about how terrible the Mets are when they drop at least 10 games below .500. Football is still a month away so football coverage currently consists of nothing but endless jibber-jabber on who might be good or who might be bad this year. I don't even waste my time with that crap anymore. We don't know jack sh** until they start playing the games so it's a waste of time to even speculate (by the way, I'm pretty confident that the Browns are going 19-0 this year). There's no Tiger in golf this summer. The Olympics are coming up, but who gives a crap? I guess it'll be entertaining when it gets here, but not that entertaining. So how's a guy supposed to get his sports fix?

If you're in the greater Clevetown area, you can tune into All Bets Are Off with Bruce Drennan. Drennan's show on my new favorite channel, Sports Talk Ohio, provides daily entertainment for 2 1/2 and 3 hours a day. Drennan is a Cleveland broadcasting legend. He's been around Cleveland sports for a long time. The name of the show is a reference to some betting scandal that Drennan was caught up in. I estimate that approximately 60% of his first show was Bruce saying he's sorry for his gambling past. He still manages to squeeze in a remorseful reference or two regarding his past fairly regularly. I love it! I have no idea what this scandal was (and I probably wouldn't care about it even if I did), but he constantly reminds me and his other viewers of it.

Bruce's on-air speaking voice fluctuates between calm but stern and yelling throughout the program, leaning more towards the yelling (he softens it up for interviews and small talk with the cutie who does the sports updates). My favorite part of the show (besides the cuties' updates) is watching Bruce talk to callers and read fan e-mails. With the absolute craziness of the Cleveland sports fan, this leads to awesomeness.

By awesomeness, I mean facial expressions too brilliant to put into words, and good old beratings of the callers. Callers topics this week have ranged from the possibility of the Indians getting back into the playoff race (ha!) to using Paul Byrd as a closer. Bruce usually lets these people hang on the line for awhile while he slips into yelling mode, and he kind of gives them a chance to respond before hanging up on them. Watching his incredulous reactions never gets old. When he gets a string of bad calls (this happens at least 3 times per show), he really gets rev'd up and lets it fly. As an added bonus he constantly dogs his research guy, Geno, for good measure. On a good day, Bruce cracks himself up a few times and laughs uncontrollably.

Bruce, keep on yelling. Your gravelly voice is the only music keeping me going until football starts.