(Even before Vin Scully was broadcasting.)
I came across this piece— “The History of How We Follow Baseball” — by Phillip Bump in The Atlantic while preparing the previous entry on the Eephus League scorebooks. It’s a fascinating look at the technology of bringing the game to fans prior to the mass availability of radio (and later television).
If you have ever seen Eight Men Out, you might remember the scene in which Arnold Rothstein visits a club in which butlers (or whatever the heck they were), pushed little baserunners around on a giant board as a narrator read off the play by play from constant telegraph messages. But that was small potatoes compared to the gigantic displays erected by some newspapers to keep the fans up-to-date.
Or in theaters
Of course, now we have streaming info provided by such outlets as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and others
This just goes to the constant complaints by social scientists that all this modern technology serves to isolate us, in a physical sense, from our fellows. Where we used to gather with friends and neighbors on the front stoop to experience the game as a community, now we do it from our computers and i-devices. And while there may be tweeting or other cyber-communications going on, it’s just not the same. Color me old.
is available on Amazon.com,
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Few things are more fun than high fiving a complete stranger after a great play, or running into somebody the next day wearing your freeby hat and this other complete stranger comes up to remark on what happened the night before at the yard. It is absolutely one of the great things about sport -especially baseball.
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