John Rhadigan gets Jason Botts treatment

Friends, don't let anyone tell you that democracy is dead.

Fans of the Texas Rangers have proven this.

John Rhadigan was relieved of his post as play-by-play announcer of the television broadcast yesterday, a mere 50 games into his tenure.

Everyone knows the story here. Rhadigan was a longtime studio host and TV guy for the last 20 years, really. Over the off-season, the Rangesr jettisoned the polarizing Josh Lewin and hired Rhadigan despite having no play-by-play experience.

By all accounts, it was a disaster. This is no knock on Rhadigan. He's really good at what he does. However, getting good at play-by-play takes A LOT of time and the Rangers were not willing to give it to him. Without knowing any more about it, it would appear that complaints from fans were was lead to the move.

I thought Rhads was a bit off. I felt he was calling the game on a two-second delay. What I was seeing was always a little before the call. It actually makes you appreciate what Lewin, Eric Nadal, Dave Barnett, Mark Followill, Ralph Strangis and others do night in and night out, and all of them do it quite well.

The loser in all of this, kinda, is Rhadigan. Granted, he'll get his spot on the Fox Southwest desk back and all will go back to normal. But there has to be a little resentment considering they weren't willing to give him the chance to succeed and that they hired him in the first place.

Barnett, who I really like, will go to the TV broadcast and Steve Busby will pitch in the radio broadcast for the time being. I can't imagine them bringing in a full-time TV guy mid-season ... but I never thought they'd give Rhads 50 games to perfect something that's taken some years to get good at.