We got rid of our cable a few months back. We realized that we were just watching Netflix and sports, and I was watching too much sports. With 250 cable channels, there’s always a game on, and in the moment I could make myself believe that Rutgers v. Maryland was the best possible use of my Thursday night. So we cut the cord.
When we did that, we lost one thing I did care about: the Atlanta Braves. They’re really good this year. Ronald Acuna Jr. has 41 homers from the leadoff spot. Max Fried, who looks like John Mulaney’s little brother, leads a group of strong young pitchers. The bullpen was a disaster early in the season but seems to have righted itself for the playoffs. It’s the most fun Braves team in my memory. But all of a sudden I couldn’t watch.
So I started listening on the radio.
These days, except for the station where I work, I don’t listen to the radio much at all. It’s all podcasts and Spotify. Occasionally I’ll catch the beginnings of a Panthers game if we’re late getting home from church. But that’s about it.
The Braves aren’t on local radio in Charlotte. Stations in a couple of the outlying towns carry the games, but the signal’s not strong enough. But I have a Sonos doohickey that connects my phone to my stereo, and I found a digital feed on the phone. So I set that up in the living room, grabbed a book, and settled back to listen to the game.
I had forgotten what a joy that was.
Part of it is nostalgia, I’m sure. I have strong memories of riding around South Georgia with my mom and dad in our old VW Beetle, back in the ’70s when the Braves were terrible. I’d beg my folks to turn from the country station to the game. In my memory, Buzz Capra always pitched his heart out but the Braves never got him enough runs. It didn’t matter. Ernie Johnson was the announcer, his voice as warm as bourbon, and I could imagine the ballpark and the blurred chalk of the batter’s box and the fly balls that died on the warning track.
That’s the beauty of the radio — of all audio, really. Your mind conjures the visuals. I was a devoted MTV watcher back in the ’80s, and some of the videos were fantastic short films … but they were never quite as magical as hearing a record for the first time and imagining everything about the band with nothing more to go on than the sound.
As I listened to the games over the summer, I’d find myself drifting in and out. But one thing I didn’t do was change the channel — there was no remote in my hand, like an unfired gun, making me antsy to look for something better. I even listened to the ads. There’s an exterminator company that still uses the same earworm jingle I remember from 30 years ago: Lookie lookie lookie, here comes Cookie, Cook’s Pest Control.
Now I’ve got that dumb jingle stuck in my head. But I’ve also got the sound of the home crowd when a home run lands in the stands, and the tension of a 3-2 pitch you can’t see, and the warmth of a couple of announcers telling stories to pass the time on a lazy summer night. (The Braves seem to have a rotation of sorts on the radio. I think it was Jim Powell and Ben Ingram on most of the nights I listened, and sometimes Joe Simpson, and maybe some other guys with one-syllable first names and two-syllable last names.)
A few weeks ago I bought a streaming package for the TV. It’s football season, and despite the moral dilemmas of watching football, I’m still drawn to my Georgia Bulldogs.
The streaming package also came with the channels the Braves are on. I would like to tell you that I ignored those channels and kept listening to the Braves on the radio, but my will is not that strong, and besides, the playoffs are coming.
But that’s fine. Now that I remember, I’ll still listen to a game now and then. At the beginning I thought of the radio as a passive way to take in the game, as opposed to the way TV captures more of your attention. But it’s not passive. Your mind does more of the work. Limitations free your imagination. You can create a whole world from the crack of a bat.
— TT
