Church of Baseball

I love Vin Scully, broadcast voice for the Los Angeles Dodgers home games.  He has become my favorite announcer since the death of my beloved Ernie Harwell.  I now follow the Dodgers on cable somewhat religiously.  So I am up way past my usual bedtime, which is whenever I happen to fall asleep.  Lately not so much.  So I am up watching the Dodgers beat up on the Diamondbacks.  The neat thing about Scully is he is the sole and soul broadcaster for the games, doing both play by play and color commentary.  He is In his 80s  and has a wealth of knowledge about the game.  Right now he is talking about Don Newcombe, whose birthday was today, was the first player to win rookie of the year, MVP and the Cy Young all in the same year, a feat only duplicated by Tigers' Justin Verlander.  Newcombe was also the first African American player to pitch in a World Series.  Fascinating stuff for me to hear.

I have watched parts of more than seven ball games today, including sleeping through parts of two games.  Tigers won but the bull pen almost blew it again.  I am worried about my Tigers.  They have a great team on paper, but the pen has let them down quite a bit.  And then there was a time they couldn't hit for shit.  On paper doesn't go out and win the games.  I get too nervous to actually watch the games so I look for the other ten channels I can surf for baseball games.  I am bereft when the season ends.  Football just doesn't capture my imagination as does baseball.  And you can forget about basketball and hockey.  Nope, for me spring starts sometime in late February when the pitchers and catchers report for spring training.  That hope in February is what gets me through the rest of our unpredictable Michigan winters.

Alright. Tripping down memory lane.  I recall my dad listening to the Tigers on a small transistor radio he kept by his seat on the couch.  All season long he would listen to games while watching TV, the first recorded instance of multi-tasking.  And in 1968 that same transistor radio went to school with me  during the World Series between the Tigers and St. Louis Cardinal.  9th hour Spanish my first year of high school.  The principal let us listen to the games, which were played during the day, unlike the lengthy late night games of current World Series that don't start until almost 9:00 p.m.  As an aside, I think that first year of high school was when I first thought I might be manic depressive.  I would get all hyper during Spanish class, only to crash before the class ended.  In those days the freshmen started classes late in the morning, almost at the same time the seniors got out for the day.  I used to have to walk six blocks in the snow that was year round in them days, only to board a city bus the  mile to school.  And I have bus stories best saved for a future post.  So trudging through the snow those October mornings with my dad's transistor radio in my book bag, walking to the bus, five miles in snow drifts up to my tookus, I listened to the games of the World Series, having manic episodes during 9th hour Spanish.  Life was so good in those days.