It was a few weeks ago, while watching the somewhat-less-than-amazin’ New York Mets in the late innings of what looked to be yet another painful loss, that I realized just how desperately our great city needs some new sports announcers in its booths – men (or even women; hey, why not?) worthy, at last, of the exalted traditions in which they follow.

It was the bottom of the eighth inning, and the score was 1-0. (My mind has mercifully expunged the name of the opposing team.) There were two outs, no men on, and the team’s struggling first baseman, Doug Mientkiewicz, was up to bat. I was about to turn off the set in despair when I heard the color commentator that evening, the former Met pitching great Tom Seaver, inform his listeners of his personal perspective on the situation.

“The Mets,” Mr. Seaver said matter-of-factly, “need only one run to tie this ballgame.” Well, yes, I thought for a moment, that’s technically true. They’re down by one run. But there were several other important considerations. Those included the fact that the Mets’ opponents had infinitely more runs than the Mets did; that the Mets were four at-bats away from a shutout; that one of the team’s worst hitters was at the plate; and that the Mets (at that point in the season, anyway) tended to lose more often than they won. Those facts seemed to me more relevant than Mr. Seaver’s mathematical assessment of the team’s chances. Now I have nothing against Tom Seaver, who of course was one of the great pitchers in the history of the ballgame. Sometimes I even enjoy his banter about breaking balls and changeups, and his perspective on the catcher’s signals or the bullpen strength. But when the topic turns to something other than pitching matters, Mr. Seaver becomes a babbling booster in a city full of them.

I peg this disastrous current booth staffing situation (the Yankees have an equally myopic team of announcers in Michael Kay and Ken Singleton) to the decision by Cablevision in 2003 to remove Marv Albert from his position as chief play-by-play announcer for the Knicks – for the petty crime of having criticized the home-court team for its poor ballhandling. How dare Mr. Albert diminish the talents of the team that writes his paycheck! That seemed to be the logic behind the front-office move, which left the Knicks with Walt Frazier bouncing his crazy metaphors off the walls of the World’s Most Famous Arena – and sent Mr. Albert across the Hudson to announce for the New Jersey Nets.

These are sad times for those of us who enjoy an afternoon of sports on the tube. The glory days of Red Barber and Mel Allen in the Yankee broadcast booth, and Bob Murphy calling the Mets play-by-play, are long over. Where are their successors? Where are the Vin Scullys and Harry Carays of the future? Okay, so Caray called the Chicago Cubs games drunk; but maybe, in retrospect, it made some sense for the play-by-play commentators to have the same cloudy perspective as the fans.

We deserve better banter than the men the Yankees and Mets currently employ to state the obvious. Do we need Mr. Kay to tell us that Joe Torre is worried? One look at the manager’s pouty puss in the dugout and we know that already. Maybe, in this era of split-second graphics and multiple camera angles on every play, some would see the role of the commentator as diminished – but I don’t. I long for the humor and frivolity I remember from my own childhood, listening to old ballplayers like Pee Wee Reese, Joe Garagiola, and Ernie Banks regale us with great stories from the dugouts of their youth. Instead we now get the sanitized versions of the old days from whitebread former stars like Tim McCarver and Paul O’Neill.

If Fred Wilpon and George Steinbrenner want to get fans back in the seats when their new stadiums open, maybe they should think about making their teams seem more interesting in the meantime – by staffing their booth with witty and engaging personalities who aren’t afraid to mix it up with each other and the team that employs them. One day this past June, the Mets invited Jerry Seinfeld up to offer some color on a slow Saturday afternoon, and his sardonic wit made a dull game worth watching. How about rotating famous New York sports fans upstairs to spice things up a little? Or making Mr. Seinfeld a permanent part of the Mets broadcasting staff? At least when the score is Opponents 1, Mets Nothing, he’ll know what nothing really means.

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A writer at Salon named Peter Birkenhead has complained that none of the leading men on television is having sex. He lists the stars of several prime-time dramas – among them the male leads of “CSI,” Without a Trace,” “Law & Order” – and deems them a Lonely Hearts Club due to their lack of on-air female companionship.

This kind of opinion reflects the long-term implications of watching too much television. Does Mr. Birkenhead really want to sit in front of his TV set and watch Vincent D’Onofrio take a break from his Holmesian crime sleuthing for a make-out session? Or Gary Sinise overcome his insomnia long enough to hop into bed with a witness for a quickie? I say, let the prime-time crime-solvers do their job, and let the viewers at home – watching TV in close proximity to the bedroom, if not in it – do ours. With the TV turned off.