"I watch a lot of baseball on the radio."
-- Gerald Ford
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| Garage radio 4-25-14 |
"I would get a pillow and I would crawl under the radio,
so that the loudspeaker and the roar of the crowd would wash all over me,
and I would just get goose bumps like you can't believe.
And I knew that of all the things in this world that I wanted,
I wanted to be that fella saying, whatever, home run, or touchdown.
It just really got to me."
-- Vin Scully, aka The voice of the Dodgers
"Part of the ineffable radio experience is the pace of baseball,
fraught with its pauses and ellipses.
The flights of memory and wit that fill these gaps are why baseball's
great radio voices are also master storytellers."
-- Bruce Dowbiggin, "What's Better Than a Road Trip
With a Baseball Game On The Radio?" The Globe and Mail
Our TV was on the blink for a couple of days -- something went funky with the cable or something. It would only stay on for 15 seconds or so before the screen went blank.
Which is a problem when the game is on.
So I went Old School for the last two Indians/Royals games and listened to them on the radio.
Sure, I listen to games on the radio from time to time, if I'm working outside in the garden, or on a project that keeps me upstairs in my workspace, or if I'm in the car. But this time I didn't even try multitask. I just stretched out on the floor under a blanket and listened to the radio voices tell me pitch by pitch, hit by hit, out by out, play-by-play, inning by inning, exactly what was happening on the diamond at Progressive Field.
And you know what? I didn't miss the visuals at all, because the familiar voices of Cleveland's ace broadcasters Tom Hamilton and Jon Rosenhaus expertly painted in all of the colors and shapes and details and atmosphere for me, while my very own imagination supplied all of the imagery.
And because there weren't a dozen little icons constantly reminding me of strike counts, and pitch counts, or how many outs there were, or what inning it was, or who was at bat, or where the base runners were, or the arc of the ball or the location of the pitch etc., I had to think a little bit and stay in it and pay attention.
It was like listening to a really great story where I had to remember what happened earlier, and didn't know what would happen next, and couldn't wait to find out. It was like reading the book instead of taking the easy way out and watching the movie instead.
The TV is fixed. Which is a good thing. I guess.
