ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-17-18)
I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for the bygone era of listening to a baseball game on a crappy-sounding transistor radio. I define nostalgia as the feeling you get when your memory of something is better than that thing actually was. I don't need to bother mustering any warm feelings for the transistor radio, because AM reception is just as crappy-sounding now as it was then.
In the old days Phil Rizzuto was the color commentator. A color commentator was important, because radio broadcasts were in black and white back then. Phil Rizzuto could think up the oddest things to say. It's like he was living in a parallel universe that existed in a southbound lane of the Major Deegan near the Willets Avenue Bridge. An outfielder would catch a fly ball and Rizzuto would say, "Holy cow, that was a can of corn!" And I would think, "It was? Well maybe it was." He would tell old stories of how he would take his chewing gum out of his mouth and put it on top of his cap when he was in the field. How he could chew it from that far away I'll never know. He could explain the merits of a good cannoli so well that it made you want to trade one of your backup infielders for a cannoli to be named later.
You could hear the sounds of the stadium right through the radio. Eddie Layton used to tickle some noodlings out of the organ in between innings. He'd play the "Charge!" theme, and everybody would yell "CHARGE!" After all this time there is still nothing new written for the organ. Thankfully no one really charged, although many were overcharged at the concession stand.
Today a baseball game is something they pass the time with between drop-in ads. "This walk was brought to you by Ford!" That walk didn't need to be brought to me by a Ford, it could have walked to me all by itself. "The last three seconds were brought to you by Celino & Barnes," Although it should be noted that Celino carried it most of the way and Barnes just sat there like a lox. If I had ever known how annoying it was to have all this stuff brought to me, I would have gone out there and gotten it myself. If you're starting a new company, just go ahead and name it "Strike Three, Inc." And someone will be obligated to plug you 9.4 times every game.
The Yankees announcer is John Sterling, whom I like, but he has an annoying habit of guessing what the outcome of the play is going to be before it actually happens, and being wrong an astounding amount of the time. "That ball is HIGH, it is FAR, it is... caught in shallow center field." Turns out it wasn't that high and it wasn't that far. Does this guy realize that we can't actually see what's going on, so he could wait until the play has been decided, and then describe what happened much more accurately? If he wanted to he could watch the game on TV and broadcast it from his bathtub, and we wouldn't know the difference.
When one of the Yankee players hits a home run, Sterling spouts forth with a couple of nifty rhymes extolling the player, making a play on words from his name. He has a different call for each player, and he uses the same one every time. It's the kind of thing that society has passed by without our even knowing it. People think it's corny, people think it's goofy, and so do I. And I wish there was more of it going around. That's what nostalgia does to you, I guess.\
"This broadcast may not be reproduced or re-transmitted in any form without express written consent." We'll see about that. I plan to reproduce it in gaseous form and see if anyone notices. Or maybe liquid form, and as long as we're on the subject of liquid forms, I'm going to crack myself a beer- there's a game on.
I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for the bygone era of listening to a baseball game on a crappy-sounding transistor radio. I define nostalgia as the feeling you get when your memory of something is better than that thing actually was. I don't need to bother mustering any warm feelings for the transistor radio, because AM reception is just as crappy-sounding now as it was then.
In the old days Phil Rizzuto was the color commentator. A color commentator was important, because radio broadcasts were in black and white back then. Phil Rizzuto could think up the oddest things to say. It's like he was living in a parallel universe that existed in a southbound lane of the Major Deegan near the Willets Avenue Bridge. An outfielder would catch a fly ball and Rizzuto would say, "Holy cow, that was a can of corn!" And I would think, "It was? Well maybe it was." He would tell old stories of how he would take his chewing gum out of his mouth and put it on top of his cap when he was in the field. How he could chew it from that far away I'll never know. He could explain the merits of a good cannoli so well that it made you want to trade one of your backup infielders for a cannoli to be named later.
You could hear the sounds of the stadium right through the radio. Eddie Layton used to tickle some noodlings out of the organ in between innings. He'd play the "Charge!" theme, and everybody would yell "CHARGE!" After all this time there is still nothing new written for the organ. Thankfully no one really charged, although many were overcharged at the concession stand.
Today a baseball game is something they pass the time with between drop-in ads. "This walk was brought to you by Ford!" That walk didn't need to be brought to me by a Ford, it could have walked to me all by itself. "The last three seconds were brought to you by Celino & Barnes," Although it should be noted that Celino carried it most of the way and Barnes just sat there like a lox. If I had ever known how annoying it was to have all this stuff brought to me, I would have gone out there and gotten it myself. If you're starting a new company, just go ahead and name it "Strike Three, Inc." And someone will be obligated to plug you 9.4 times every game.
The Yankees announcer is John Sterling, whom I like, but he has an annoying habit of guessing what the outcome of the play is going to be before it actually happens, and being wrong an astounding amount of the time. "That ball is HIGH, it is FAR, it is... caught in shallow center field." Turns out it wasn't that high and it wasn't that far. Does this guy realize that we can't actually see what's going on, so he could wait until the play has been decided, and then describe what happened much more accurately? If he wanted to he could watch the game on TV and broadcast it from his bathtub, and we wouldn't know the difference.
When one of the Yankee players hits a home run, Sterling spouts forth with a couple of nifty rhymes extolling the player, making a play on words from his name. He has a different call for each player, and he uses the same one every time. It's the kind of thing that society has passed by without our even knowing it. People think it's corny, people think it's goofy, and so do I. And I wish there was more of it going around. That's what nostalgia does to you, I guess.\
"This broadcast may not be reproduced or re-transmitted in any form without express written consent." We'll see about that. I plan to reproduce it in gaseous form and see if anyone notices. Or maybe liquid form, and as long as we're on the subject of liquid forms, I'm going to crack myself a beer- there's a game on.
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