Great Catch

I'll admit up front that it's a bit odd, but one thing I'll say for listening to baseball on the radio is that there's an added dimension of the game when you can't actually see what happened. Two dimensions, really.

I was listening to yesterday's Detroit Tigers game (Bally Sports and Xfinity don't appear to care whether I can watch live baseball) and, at one point, Tiger outfielder Riley Greene made a spectacular catch to save, the announcers felt, two runs. 

It was euphoric to hear. Dan Dickerson, the play by play man (who has a great announcer's voice by the way) described the action. He sounded excited and concerned all at once as the ball fell to earth, telling his audience about Greene's rush towards it, and exploding himself in happiness when the catch was made. I about jumped from my seat too.

This leads to the first point: having the play told to you adds more excitement than seeing it. Secondly, I actually felt greater relief at hearing about the ball caught than seeing it done. It's almost like reading a book rather than watching a movie or TV show. You interact more profoundly when you have to invest yourself in the process. You don't have to pay as much attention when you see something. You have to hang on each word as you read or have a description delivered to you.

I found I had a greater satisfaction for the result hearing it instead of seeing it. Imagination can be better than reality I suppose. At least at certain times with certain things.

Tigers Go Out With a Win

I realize that the attention of most Detroit sports fans is on the Lions right now, and I get that. It's October, and the baseball Tigers (other than with Miguel Cabrera's retirement, which sold out Comerica Park yesterday) weren't going anywhere while the football team looks more promising than it has in ages. But, for me, it's still more about baseball, and there's always a tinge of sadness when the Tigers are done for the year.

When that last out is made, there's a finality which I rarely experience elsewhere. Listening to yesterday's game on the radio in the garage at Hessel, I sighed as they went to commercial when the game had ended. With the push of a button came the realization there would be no more Hessel baseball until about May next year. But the 5-2 win over Cleveland left us in second place even with the mediocre record of 78-64. And like the Lions, I think there are better days ahead.

For starters, if you take away the AL East against whom the Tigers were an abysmal 3-17 (or about that; I'm too lazy to look it up this morning) they had a winning record. Lift that figure to .500 and they would have been in playoff contention until late. The pitching has looked good. Even if Eduardo Rodriguez doesn't return we have several other reliable arms, plus Casey Mize returning from Tommy John surgery. I don't know what that is myself but it's saved a lot of careers. If we can improve upon hitting (the team was batting .233 last time I checked, a far from impressive number) we can compete in 2024, especially in our weak division.

Spencer Torkleson had a breakout year and Kerry Carpenter looks like the real deal. If Riley Greene is available after his own Tommy John surgery, seeing him in an outfield with Parker Meadows will allow the team to cover a lot of ground out there. Get another bat too, boys. Maybe a pair.

Yes, there's still another month of baseball and I will watch my share of it. But 2024 is stacking up to be interesting for the Tigers, and I will be pining for it.

Just as Well

One of life's little pleasures for me is going old school and listening to baseball games on the radio in the garage of our place when in Hessel, in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. There's something about the anticipation of waiting to be told what's happening which adds excitement to hearing my Detroit Tigers in action. In certain ways, it's better than actually seeing the game. It sparks the imagination. Radio is a book for the ear.

Imagine, then, my consternation when the power went out in the third inning of yesterday's game. Zach McKinstry had just aggressively took third on a Riley Greene single. Dan Dickerson, the play by play man describing the actions, had just called McKinstry safe when the radio clicked off. 

Hitting the on button did not turn the thing back on. I checked the power box in the garage and the breakers were on. Trying the house itself, I found the breakers all on in the electric panel in the back bedroom closet. Flipping lights throughout the house with no response told me what I had by then presumed: there was a power outage. I looked up the local power company on my phone (for of course I had no other Internet access with no power), Cloverland Electric for what that's worth, and reported the issue. Their site told me that around 1300 people in my area had no electricity but they were working on it. So, as the afternoon had bright sunshine in a cloudless sky, I settled into a lawn chair under a cedar tree and read a book.

A couple of hours later as I was in the kitchen, the light came on. Racing out to the garage, I turned the radio on just in time to hear Dickerson proclaim, "...and Texas beats Detroit in the the first game of this series, five to nothing."

I guess it wasn't the worst time for the power to go out. It saved me a bit of anguish.

What to do in Hessel

Nothing. But that's not a bad thing.

Okay, to say nothing isn't really true. There's always something to do no matter where you are, the refrains of your typical teenager notwithstanding. In my case, in the case of Hessel, the nothing to do is in fact something.

I read. So far I've read two Ellery Queen books and a book on the aftermath of World War II in Asia. I've read the Sunday paper and done the Sunday crossword puzzles (still in pencil, Pops). Sometimes I just sit on the porch and sip coffee. 

I watched a hockey game when I actually turned on the TV Saturday night (Vegas won) and listened to two baseball games in the garage. I've even cleared the driveway of cedar tree debris (yes, I was going for the rhyming alliteration there) and a bit of overgrown grass. That last bit was certainly not the nothing I praise. But I felt rather satisfied at the appearance of the driveway when I was done.

Today I will read a little more and finish what food I have, and return home tomorrow. This week, Tuesday is my Monday. I'm okay with that.

Ernie

Thank you Paul and good evening everyone. Here's the first pitch of the ball game and it's a strike, and we're under way at the corner of Michigan and Turnbull.

That's an approximate recreation of how Ernie Hartwell typically began a radio broadcast of Detroit Tigers baseball. His on air partner, Paul Carey (who had a good baritone voice) would open the game and hand the reigns over to Ernie, who would take it from there. Facebook reminded me yesterday that my son and I had went, along with thousands of others, to pay our respects to the late broadcaster as he lay in state at Comerica Park after his passing in May 2010.

Eleven years after his death and nineteen since he called his last game, Ernie is still remembered fondly by the Tiger faithful. Perhaps I'm simply caught up in the sentimentality of the moment, but I don't know that anyone can ever match his vocal association with the Motor City Nine.

Having a sportscaster who almost is your team seems rare these days. It wasn't only a Detroit thing: there was Vin Scully with the Dodgers, Harry Caray with the Cubs and so forth across the land. Here in Motown we even had Bruce Martyn and his distinctive voice calling Red Wings hockey over the radio as well. Such associations, such distinctive voices, don't seem to be the case anymore.

I'm not going to make the mistake of the reactionary sentimentalists and try argue that sportscasting today is bad. But too many play by play callers are bland and Midwestern. It does, I think, take a bit of the intimacy away. Although I do like the current Tiger radio man (Dan Dickerson) he is in the unfortunate position of not being Ernie. 

To be fair I don't think even Dickerson would put himself in Harwell's class, and at the end of the day I'm not talking moral imperatives but merely differences. Still, no one filled the baseball airwaves like Ernie. Perhaps one day, but I don't see it.

Baseball, me, me Pops, and September 27

Today it has been twenty years since Detroit's Tiger Stadium saw its last major league baseball action. I still remember the first game me Pops took me to. He wore a suit because in those days you wore a suit even to sporting events, and I held his hand as that wonderful green cathedral opened up before me as we entered the stadium through a runway. We played Kansas City that day and won 9-7.

The Tigers beat Kansas City on September 27, 1999 by an 8-2 score. Me Pops wasn't at that game (though he went the day before with a bunch of us) but I was, along with my family. It was a great if bittersweet time, capped by a Robert Fick grand slam in the 8th inning and a Todd Jones strikeout to end the Ninth and thus the ball yard's history.

Then the Tigers played Kansas City on this date in 2012. In that game, Doug Fister (on the mound for Detroit) struck out nine straight Kansas City batters to set the American League record for most consecutive strikeouts in a game. We listened to that game at the Shop, the old barn, me Pops and I hanging on every pitch as Fister struck out batter after batter. The old man laughed happily at every strikeout after about the sixth one. It was one of the best times I had listening to games with him. And though I did not know it that day, it was the last Tiger game I ever listened to on the radio with me Pops.

It's funny, isn't it, the symmetry we so often find in life. The last game at Tiger Stadium was against Kansas City. The first game me Pops took me to was against Kansas City. The last game we shared was against Kansas City. I don't about you, but, I like it.

I love baseball

I love baseball.

I love baseball because of the crack of the bat, the smell of boiled hot dogs, and the crunch of stale, salted peanuts consumed while watching a game.

I love baseball because of the Bird on the mound, Al Kaline in right, Ernie and Paul on the radio, and Willie Horton throwing a strike to Bill Freehan as he blocked the plate, causing the Cardinals to lose momentum and the Tigers to win a World Series.

I love baseball because it is the perfect game. Everyone, except the pitchers in the American league and too much of the organized game (and that is a true travesty), plays both ways, offense and defense. It ain't chess: it's more than chess. It's inspiration.

I love baseball because me Pops came out on a sweltering summer morning in North Carolina as we visited Mother's relatives one August, when no one else was up and about, even though it was already Noon, and I was tossing a ball up in the air and catching it, and he played catch with me. We threw the ball back and forth for hours, hours, until the sweat burned in my eyes, and I wasn't about to stop, because I was having a catch with my old man and I didn't want that moment to end.

I love baseball. It is the game.

Tuning Out toTune Back In

Last night I did something that I rarely do. Rather than watch the Tigers baseball game on the tube I elected to sit in my bedroom and listen to it on the radio. And while it was not exactly like the days of yore, it did allow me a little taste of that childhood of mine spent next to the small transistor radio of my Dad's hearing the wonderfully dulcet tones of Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey as they called Detroit games back in the day.

It probably helped that the game ended dramatically. Ryan Raburn hit a pinch hit walk off two run home run for the Tigers to down the Chicago Cubs 5-4. Further, there is strong link to my Tigers childhood fandom in that one of the current announcers, Jim Price, was a backup catcher on our 1968 World Series Championship team. The other, Dan Dickerson, has a great radio voice, a necessity when it comes to sports broadcasting on the small box.

Any way you slice it, It was a great way to rediscover the joy of listening to a game rather than watching it. To be sure, seeing probably trumps hearing, but I have to admit there is an added excitement in having to wait for someone else to tell the story. On TV or in person, you see what's developing and usually know what's about to happen as it unfolds. Yet when someone else controls the tempo, it adds something to the event. The unknown gets thrown into the mix; how can that not be enthralling?

I don't want to risk overstating the point, but it's a little like being read to by your parents. You're arguably more engrossed in the action precisely because you must actively imagine what's going on, and perhaps anticipate just a bit more what may happen next. It isn't simply there in front of you. You must take some part in the construction of the story. You must be able to accept that just maybe a guy from Franklin actually caught that foul pop into the stands and is taking home a souvenir.

Undoubtedly part of my reaction is nostalgic. I do miss Ernie and Paul recreating the action from old Tiger Stadium during those pre-teen nights, their words emanating magically from my father's old black and white transistor radio. But why should we ever want to leave our past completely behind us? Especially when we are talking about the good old days?