Radio Baseball

Baseball season has come around again, and while your lofty-minded pop philosopher will talk of renewal and fresh starts in life, for me it stays a thing of baseball. I do mean to start afresh, but strictly within that realm. I used to watch a lot of games, but then that was largely because I was going to most of the home games. I would miss a lot of the road games on television, but you can only take so much. I took more than most.

These days I catch almost no games. I was at one last year, which is quite a drop from seventy or eighty in a season. This year will probably be like last year. I don't catch many more games at home, either. I don't get the channel that most of the games are on, so I can only see the ones on free television. That leaves the radio broadcasts, which mostly are heard by those who are driving while the games are on, or by the truly irredeemable, inveterate fans who tote radios at the games.

It really is a shame to have so few games to watch on TV. You can watch games on TV with a friend, because talking doesn't preclude you from following the action visually. Radio doesn't allow for that. You both have to shut up and pay attention, so the question is there of whether you ought to actually be listening together. It takes friends close enough that you don't have to talk all the time that you're together. Maybe it takes a married couple.

It's somewhat important to me that I at least hear what games I can on the radio, and you have to make the time and energy for doing the things you value. I'm not going to decline a lot that puts me around people so that I can listen to the game by myself, but when I'm unoccupied and the game is on the radio (or especially on the TV), I want to take it in. That's the way in which I hope to have a new beginning this spring.