Cavalcade of Color Men.

Jerry Remy's return fills us all with great joy but it is only as a part time gig. (I assume this means he'll just be doing home games.) And so we take this opportunity to review the steady stream of replacement color men NESN has trotted out in the hopes of filling his shoes. (Or as many of them as I can remember.) Why? Because I can.

Dennis Eckersley: I thought that I really enjoyed the days the Eck was in the studio with Tom Caron. He was excitable and brutally honest. He always seemed ready to throw trash cans around the studio or get in his car, drive to the park, and slap somebody for a boneheaded play. It turns out that that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the magic of Dennis Eckersley. He's completely unfiltered, he just goes ahead and says what he thinks. The pitching insights are fascinating. He's a homer. He's amusing. His rapport with Don is fabulous. And yeah, he does use some goofy slang and a lot of it. It might be wise for him to invest in a thesaurus. But he's done a wonderful job.

Dave Roberts: Look, I can't say anything bad about Roberts. He either doesn't particularly like the Red Sox (with the exception of Ellsbury) or tries his very best to stay neutral. His commentary does tend to be just recapping the play and he laughs at his own jokes a lot. If he could just get away from telling me that this, that, or the other was a "big league this, that, or the other" he would be all right.

Desperately hungry Sean Casey: He wasn't much luck. He talked way too much and way too fast. But he was fun and when you could figure out what he was saying, it was usually pretty interesting.

Can't remember his name: He did the first set in Tampa after Jerry left, does games for TBS, says David OR-tiz. I said it then and I'll say it as often as needed: Whatever-his-name-is is not the answer.

Newspaper men: Useless. Every last one of them. I will say this about Tony Massarotti though: While he may look like Peter Jacobson (the guy who plays Dr. Taub on House), with that voice the man shouldn't be let close enough to television to watch it, let alone appear on it. Besides which, he's an idiot.

Frank Viola: Viola has a really strange laugh. That's pretty much all I can say about him--I've gotten really good at muting the television.

Rance Mulliniks: He wasn't particularly memorable but he did get in a jab at Eckersley which was kind of fun. It was after Eck had read Youkilis's lips after being hit by a pitch and then flubbed Masterson's name. Mulliniks claimed to have spent the whole night working on the correct pronunciation of Masterson.

Jim Kaat: Probably because he had the most experience, Kaat was the best they brought in. We will forgive him his Yankee sympathies because he really was interesting.

I'm sure there was a whole slew of other guys but that's all I've got.