The World Series 2014

The 2014 World Series is history and it wasn't a bad series -- the wonderfully named Madison Bumgarner did a great job pitching for San Francisco and the Royals did have the tying run on third in the ninth inning of game 7 -- but it was marred by the lack of radio coverage, the poor quality of the announcers and the ridiculous TV coverage.

I grew up listening to the World Series on radio, especially since most games were broadcast during the day.  Not long ago the NY Times used to list not only the TV stations for sports but also the radio stations.  That they no longer do this just indicates how increasingly irrelevant radio is in this country.  In the case of the World Series this year the radio rights went to ESPN radio, but in New York if there was a Knicks game, a Rangers game or a Jets game those games were broadcast instead; presumably New York fans do not care about the World Series unless the Yankees are in it!  Yes, one could find the game on the radio if one really tried, though the stations were not listed in the paper or even on the ESPN website, being broadcast on AM stations 570 and 1170, stations that parts of the NYC area could not even receive!  If one did eventually find it on the radio and stayed up past midnight to hear it all, Dick Shulman did a decent, if uninspired, announcing job, though his sidekick Aaron Boone had nothing at all to contribute.

And who decided that former players made good announcers, or is it just that their names impress people?  Harold Washington on TV was not much better and writer Tom Verducci had little to contribute; as for loudmouth Joe Buck the less said the better.  On TV at least one could turn off the sound and the irrelevant announcers but then one was left with the videogame style of the broadcast itself.  Producer Pete Macheska has gone on record (see my posts from last fall) as saying he thinks baseball is boring so he has to jazz it up to make it more "exciting."  So he uses 38 cameras to show everything but the game itself:  endless shots of the fans and the dugouts, extreme low-angle shots of the batters and close-ups of the faces, none of which has anything to do with the game.  I don't like to sound like an old fart (not too much, anyway) but the beauty of baseball was captured much more effectively in the fifties, with no distorting telephoto lenses and two cameras, one elevated behind home plate and one down the left field line.

As for the off-season, I will be following the various trades and free-agency signings and catching up on my reading, including Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s biography of Ted Williams.  I have tried, and failed, to like football, basketball, and hockey, but I just can't get excited about perpetual motion games or games played against the clock; I like the beauty and pace of baseball and the way it incorporates players of all sizes, especially now that the steroid period seems to be ending and one hopes to see fewer home runs and more fundamentals.