Best: Ernie Johnson set for first MLB play-by-play stint

Ernie Johnson understands the potential pitfalls, having seen the postseason baseball glare trip up and eventually swallow whole his TBS colleague, Chip Caray.

And Caray, remember, entered the job with vastly more play-by-play experience in the sport.

But here we are, on the eve of the playoffs, with Johnson set to succeed Caray in TBS' No. 1 booth - thus drawing the Yankees (who else?) in the ALDS - and he insisted he is not nervous in the least.

Not after so many years in the treacherous waters of TV.

"If somebody doesn't like my work, it's not going to devastate me,'' Johnson said. "I know there are some people who don't like me on the NBA. It doesn't ruin my day.''

In fact, there are relatively few who don't like him on the NBA; he presides over the popular TNT studio show alongside Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley.

That likeability, combined with the fact that he is not Chip Caray, figures to secure him the benefit of the doubt in his new assignment.

(It is TBS' turn to show the ALCS, so Yankees fans could see plenty of Johnson. As well as plenty of promos for Conan O'Brien's new TBS show that debuts next month.)

But there also is this: Even though Johnson grew up around the game - his father, Ernie, pitched in the major leagues for nine years and announced Braves games for nearly four decades - and even though he has an extensive resume in TV, he has done little play-by-play.

Before calling about 30 Braves games on local TV and select national games for TBS this season, he mostly was limited to working with his father for parts of four seasons in the mid-1990s.

TBS gave him the job anyway, keeping a marquee assignment in house.

The opportunity arose when Caray was let go amid hugely negative reviews. Johnson believes it went too far.

"I thought people kind of piled on,'' he said. "It became the thing to do to say, 'A lot of these people are criticizing Chip Caray, I guess I better, too.'

"I didn't agree with that. I felt bad for him in that respect, because he had a lot of great games in the postseason. He's a great baseball announcer. So it was tough to read some of those things.''

Regardless, Johnson now has his chance.

"There is something that feels real right about having grown up in the booth watching my dad work and getting a chance to work with him and now having a chance for him to sit at home [in Georgia] with my mom listening to me do baseball,'' he said. "This is something much more than just an assignment on Turner for me. It runs really deep.''

Johnson said that among the things he learned from his father was never to be bigger than the game. That is especially true of a play-by-play man who did not get further as a player than one year as a backup first baseman at Georgia.

The idea, he said, is to "feed'' analysts Ron Darling and John Smoltz.

"He's a pro,'' Darling said. "He's smooth. He knows when to give the meat and potatoes and also is very, very generous. When you sit in the seat I sit in, that's one of the things the great ones are - generous - because they know how good they are and are not trying to force it.''

Johnson, 53, had chemotherapy in 2006 to treat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which forced him off the air for a time.

How is his health now? "It's good, as far as I know,'' he said. "I feel tremendous. I'm raring to go.''