The great Joe Tait steps down

Cavaliers announcer Joe Tait announced yesterday that 2010-11 will be his last season as the team's mouthpiece. It's kind of hard to imagine there being Cavaliers radio broadcasts without Joe, who has been announcing Cavs games since the team's inception in 1970-71, but for a couple of years in the early 1980s when Ted Stepien mucked things up for him.

I've always been a baseball fan first, and I'll always remember Tait's tenure at WUAB-43 announcing Indians games with Bruce Drennan in the 1980s. They were an entertaining pair, and they livened up what was usually some terrible baseball in Cleveland. But then the Cavaliers decided to make him an employee, and he stopped moonlighting on baseball.

It's hard to overstate how good Tait has been, broadcasting basketball games for four decades, most of that time without a partner. He has announced some phenomenal basketball teams (albeit none that have quite scaled the summit), and he has had to describe some awful basketball teams. I heard a quote on WTAM yesterday — which I can't find online anywhere, so I have to paraphrase — that he had nothing to do with the great basketball or the terrible basketball, he was just along for the ride. He will be inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame's broadcasters wing later this year, and deservedly so.

Joe has been an entertaining, informative voice on the Cleveland sports scene for my entire life, and I'm sure going to miss him.