Nothing
Up My Sleeve
Jon
Gallagher
Play
Ball
I
know John Ring has a lock on the Zephyr
Sports Department, but I’m gonna sneak over into his domain for just a moment
because the four words I’ve been waiting all winter to hear have finally been
uttered.
PITCHERS
AND CATCHERS REPORT!
I
can’t remember NOT being a big baseball fan. I’ve been following the Dodgers since somewhere in the early
60s when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were terrorizing National League
hitters.
The
trouble with being a Dodger fan in central Illinois is the simple fact that I’m
here in Illinois, and they are based out of Los Angeles. When I was a kid, the Journal Star never carried their scores
because games in Los Angeles always started at 10 PM our time and by the time
the games were completed, the Journal
Star was already being printed.
I got used to seeing the words “Late game not included” whenever I
turned to the sports section of the Peoria newspaper.
The
Register Mail wasn’t much
better. As far as they were
concerned, there were only six major league teams: The Cubs, the Cardinals, the White Sox, and whoever they
were playing.
Galesburg
radio stations were only a tad bit better. Announcers there would give their baseball results by
announcing the winners of the previous night’s games, but not giving either the
losing teams nor the scores. That
made following pennant races a little challenging since you had to know who
everyone was playing to know who got beat.
Impetuous
as I was at a young age, I took it upon myself to call the newspaper and
express my concern for the lack of Dodger coverage. More times than not, I was met with a gruff “Yeah, sure
kid,” and a receiver being slammed down in my ear. The same went for the radio stations.
I
found a few ways to follow the Dodgers while I was growing up. I actually spent a summer subscribing
to the LA Times. The trouble with that was that it took
about a week for the paper to find its way from Los Angeles to Knoxville, and
by then it was old news. It was
still fun to read about my heroes, even if the news was a week old. But that was expensive and the folks at
the post office hated me for having to heft that large newspaper to my house.
Once
in high school on a band trip, we went to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play
the Dodgers. I was ecstatic at the
thought of seeing the Dodgers play live (they ended up losing). After the game, we were all on the bus waiting
to go home. The entire left side
of the bus erupted in shouts of “JACK!
JACK!” I looked out and saw
legendary Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse standing outside the stadium talking
to a colleague. Jack waved at us
and the commotion died down enough so I could get a better look. Then it was my turn to go nuts.
“VIN! VIN!” I started yelling. Jack was talking to even more legendary
Dodger announcer Vin Scully. Both
Jack and Vin got a good chuckle out of a crowded bus with a solitary soul
yelling to get Vin’s attention.
To
follow the Dodgers more closely, I often used an AM radio. Since AM signals bounce all over the
country late at night, and since the Dodgers played on the west coast, I could
listen to a lot of their games using the opponents’ announcers. The Cardinals and Cubs were easy to
find on the radio dial, but it got to be more of a challenge to find the Reds
(WLW), the Pirates (KDKA), the Phillies (WCAU), the Braves (WSB), and the
Astros (I don’t remember their station).
Sometimes I could pull in the Mets and on a really good night, I could
listen as the Montreal Expos played in Los Angeles.
There
was a slight problem listening to the Expos-Dodgers games; the games were
broadcast in French. Now you know the
real reason why I took two years of high school French and two and a half years
of college French. I just wanted
to be able to understand the broadcasts (et oui, aujourd’hui,
je parle Francais). I could have saved a lot of time by just
learning the numbers in French.
The
reception of these games left a lot to be desired. There was a lot of crackling and static, and sometimes other
stations bled through. Still, I
needed to hear my Dodgers and I’d put up with hearing every fifteenth word just
in case it was an important word.
The
last few years have been heaven.
The internet has brought Dodger baseball into my front room. I can get up to the minute details on
every facet of the game. I can
listen in to live broadcasts from the internet. I can get complete boxscores including pitch by pitch
results. I no longer have to
depend on the whims of the sports editors of either the Journal Star or the Register
Mail to follow my games (and it was a pleasure to tell both places to
“cancel my subscription” after the abuse I’d received from their sports editors
over the years).
I
no longer have to listen through static to hear radio broadcasts. Both my car and my home are equipped
with XM-Radio which broadcasts every single game for every single team in the
major leagues. I can pay for
MLB-TV on the internet and watch most of the games on my computer. Or I can pay mega-bucks and get
Direct-TV to send them to me.
I
may be the only Dodger fan in the world who has never seen a game at Dodger
Stadium. The closest I got was
back in 2002. My wife and I were
in Las Vegas and decided to rent a car and drive to California (so we could say
we’d been there). On the way, she asked
if I wanted to drive the rest of the way into California and catch a Dodger
game that night.
I
could hardly contain my excitement.
We didn’t get far though.
An hour into the trip the radio station we were listening to announced
that the game that night versus the rival Giants was a sell out. We went back to Vegas and caught an
Elvis imitator instead.
One
of these days I’ll live my dream.
I’ll be seated behind the third base dugout, Dodger-Dog in hand, Dodger
hat on head, watching the boys in blue lose again (I’ve only seen them win once
in person). In the meantime,
I won’t have to chase them around the AM dial or wait for them to play one of
the area teams to find out if they won or not.