i was watching a game awhile back with my mom and they shared that tidbit about Zardes on air. To this day, whenever a game is on and she sees a dude with bleached hair, she'll ask me if that's "the guy who bleached his hair so his grandma could see him on tv"
It's a great anecdote for casual fans because it's cute and easy to remember.
I had a Europa League game on the other day though, and any time a player came up for the first time, the announcer ran through their playing history from start to finish, it seemed. That's just filling the air.
On Shep and Steve, I genuinely think that they're the best local broadcast team in the league. I do a lot of media criticism, so I'm trying to look at this through an unbiased lens, but I think that's still the correct outcome. Shep definitely takes some getting used to, but Steve is genuinely a great PbP guy. There's a reason he gets picked up by the national networks for the occasional game and the New England bozos (to pick one example) never do.