A little piece of me - my past and my summers - died yesterday.
The "crackle" of baseball is no more.
Oh, the Phillies will still play and continue their rebuilding process. But their games will not be broadcast on AM radio. Somewhere Bill Campbell, By Saam, Richie Ashburn and Harry Kalas no doubt are shedding a tear.
Sure, I will still delight to the sounds of Scott Franzke and Larry Anderson, but the "sound of summer," the crackle of AM radio, will no longer accompany the crickets on those steamy summer nights.
The Phillies announced yesterday they are moving all their games on radio to 94.1-WIP on the FM dial. The Fightins will no longer be magically transported up and down the East Coast on the AM dial on 1210 WPHT. You can read all the details here.
I know that to a lot of people that is not a big thing.
It is to me.
I grew up looking out the window each night to see if my father was in his usual perch, sitting at the picnic table in the back yard, a cigarette in hand, his transistor radio at this side, and a cold Schmidt's beer in his glass. A point of order here. Never from the bottle or can. Always poured into a glass.
When I looked out the window and saw the red glow off that Tareyton and the illuminated dial on his dad's radio, it reminded me that everything was right with the world.
My father,a die-hard Philly sports fan, was one of the few men I ever encountered who preferred to listen to games on the radio. In fact, when he would wander into the house for another beverage, I would sometimes ask him why he didn't want to watch the game on TV?
He always answered the same way.
"I can see the game better on the radio," he would respond. It took me a long time to figure out what he meant.
Not anymore.
He imparted a love of sports in his sons.
And his youngest acquired his taste, that baseball is best enjoyed on the radio, the aural enigma of the game accompanied by the pictures in your imagination.
Baseball, the designated hitter abomination not withstanding, is the most cerebral of games. It is perfect for the radio.
These days, summer to me means a T-shirt and shorts and the Phillies on the radio.
It is not the only oddity that accompanies the slow, lazy sojourn from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
I like humidity, the thicker the better. Give me the kind of night where you can cut the air with a knife, put Messrs. Franzke and L.A. on the radio, give me a cold beer, and I'm in heaven, accompanied only by the crickets and the stars above.
But this summer will be different. I will not need to scramble to pick up an AM signal. I would curse the fates that allowed WPHT's 50,000-watt signal at times to be picked up as far away as North Carolina, but somehow escape my feeble radio.
Yes, I am aware that you can actually subscribe to a package offered by Major League Baseball to get the games on your phone. I'll pass. I will continue to trust my handy portable radio.
But I will miss the staccato of that AM dial.
I think dad would understand.
Where have you gone, Bill Campbell?
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