CHICAGO – How basketball great Bill Walton will adjust to calling baseball alongside Jason Benetti when they reunite for a White Sox-Angels game on Aug. 16 for NBC Sports Chicago is anyone's guess, but expectations are high.
Walton and Benetti's ESPN work together in November at college basketball's Maui Invitational — full of weird and wacky tangents — was utterly riveting TV. They were a hit on social media.
Walton is set to fill in for Benetti's regular White Sox TV announcing partner, Steve Stone, who is skipping the Aug. 15-18 series in Anaheim, Calif. Substitutes for the other three games have yet to be finalized.
"There is nothing more entertaining than working with the neural fiesta that is Bill Walton," Benetti said. "I'm over the moon about it. When he said yes, there was a fist pump.
"I think it's amazing. I left Maui having done six games in three days with Bill, and it was a rapturous experience. My mind fired in ways that I never could have imagined simply from being next to him and following the conversation and thinking, 'Should we do the game right now, or should I follow up with the thing that he just said?' It was all over the map in the most entertaining way."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
