If you’re a “true” baseball fan then you know Spring Training has begun and you’re excited to see your favorite team back on the field or hear about it on the radio and you’re counting down the days until regular season play.
Perhaps your love for the game came about on your own backyard ball field, or going to the game with your Dad or Grandpa, or sneaking your radio under the covers to hear the game broadcast late into the evening. We found an awesome article on the relationship of announcers, commercial radio and fandom that really hit to the heart of what we often hear – radio is community and sports radio is no exception, in fact it may be the inception.
Vice Sports Writer Mabel Rosenheck wrote – When we listen to games on the radio, we commune with our cities and our fandoms. Why radio particularly persists has something to do with nostalgia, certainly, but it also has to do with particular relationships of privacy and publicity that were created in the first half of the twentieth century and which are still with us in the twenty-first.”
There are folks who regularly call us to try to figure out what options they have for receiving the game. They love the play-by-play of their favorite announcers and often take a pocket radio to the game so they can listen while they watch. If you’ve been to a game – it makes more sense. So much of the time you have no idea what just happened if someone was injured or there’s a delay, but if you have a radio – the announcer keeps you informed and is communicating throughout the game what’s happening and what might happen (this hitter has 4 home runs, or has struck out the last 6 at bats).
We’ve written before about how Sports Radio is one of the few areas of radio that actively grooms talent and often keeps long term local talent because of the knowledge base required in order to have credibility in a particular market. If you grew up watching the Cubs and are an avid fan, it would be tough to pick up those roots and go over to cover the Giants on a deep level. Sports listeners expect their announcers and broadcasters to know who played 1st base for a club in 1972 and when a particular player retired or was traded. ListeEners know when you’re not credible and will tune out. The best announcers are story tellers, they make you feel like you are watching a game with a good (very knowledgeable) friend who is introducing you to each player.
Baseball continues to be a radio favorite and if you’re a true fan, you’re a part of this special community. It’s game day and you wear the hat or t-shirt or at least sport the colors. You can be out walking and have something in common with a complete stranger who is representing the same team and while listening you can enjoy the action and share in the camaraderie knowing there are others listening the same way you are.
Enter to Win! Please tell us in the comments – “Why do you enjoy listening to baseball on the radio?” and be entered to win a CC Pocket Radio. Drawing to be held 4/10/19. Please, one entry per person.
*Only comments from 2019 will be entered into the drawing.
2019 Winner!
Congratulations to Chris Hosford for winning a new CC Pocket Radio! Thank you to everyone that participated and good luck with any contests we do in the future!
2018 winner!
Congratulations Bill Cain for winning a brand new CC Pocket Radio! Thanks to all who participated. We value our TRUE C. Crane fans too. So many enjoyable comments that took us all WAY “back in the day” as if we were there with you! See you next contest!
Listening to baseball on the radio takes me back to childhood summers at camp, when the whole bunk would huddle around one radio after “lights out”, with the volume low to avoid alerting the counselors. Inevitably someone would yell after a great (or terrible) play, and we’d have to pretend to be sleeping until we could turn the radio on again.
I started listening to the Red Sox on the radio in 1967, when I was 10 years old, on WHDH 850 AM. At the time during the summer, my family would often go on boat trips, and I could listen in the evenings when we were in port. I picked a good year to start following the Red Sox because 1967 was the year of the Impossible Dream. The Red Sox went from last place in 1966, and won the Pennant in 1967. I listen to more baseball on the radio than on television because listening on the radio allows me to do other things, such as pay bills, and cut the grass while wearing earbuds and noise canceling headphones. I couldn’t do that while watching baseball on television!
I love to listen to an O’l Ball Game being called on the radio better than the tv, because it causes you to use the imagination and as we all know the imagination is better than reality
Listening to baseball games on the radio (specifically the Red Sox), I feel like I’m at the game. Radio broadcasts offer a level of entertainment unlike that found on the TV.
Been listening to Chicago Cubs radio for over 60 years. The announcers have been great, each has had an iconic personality, and a slant on the game, all his own. They have truly been the encyclopedia of baseball facts.
Because Baseball…aka, The Game, is never sweeter than when your radio connects you to it! TV doesn’t come close.
Every baseball game is unique…each game has a different “story’ to tel…no two alike, and when your radio’s “tuned in” your sitting right next to greats like Lon Simmons, Red Barber, Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Jon Meyer…you cannot do better! These are great, enthusiastic who share your love for The Game and they’re right there with you! It’s like you’re up in the booth hanging out…taking in the game, even though you’re sitting on your porch with a couple of friends and some cold ones, or you’re by yourself, out in the shed, tinkering with the mower.
When you’ve got the game on the radio, it’s not just Baseball coming outta that speaker…It’s the Music Of Summer!…and Spring and hopefully, Octoberball!
I remember listening to the World Series at school on a small transistor radio. It was the 1963 World Series against the Yankees and the Dodgers. Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford etc was playing for the Yankees and Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale was pitching for the Dodgers. I remember early in the afternoon game our teacher, a nun, bought in a little 12 inch Black and White TV and a whole class of thirty 4th graders sat on the flour and watched a couple innings of the game. That was a pretty cool time and a nun who really loved our national pastime.
I grew up listening to Jimmy Dudley describing the mighty Cleveland Indians set the best W-L record in a 154 game season: 111 wins and a trip to the World Series. Nothing else could have stunned my 10 year old bones as much as hearing Jimmy D call the next, at least, 4 games. Why worry…Feller, Wynn, Garcia and Lemon would continue as my heroes for one more series.
But to lose four straight to the dirty-rat Giants was that blow, to me…just as real as a Marciano punch to my gut. and as I recall, Mr. Dudley was rocked as well. I thought I would never listen again…until opening day of the 1955 season. I can still hear, through my AM radio: “Now batting in the fourth position, Number 7, the third baseman, Al Rosen” and the chill went up my back all over again.
Today Tom Hamilton, to my pleasant surprise, has equaled, yes, exceeded the Dudley descriptions with unprecedented color and sincere sounding enthusiasm. I don’t want the neutrality of the big network announcers…gimme that old fashioned dedication to the Tribe as I have heard since that 1954 collapse. My gut can still take it and I still love to hear it!
Nostalgia. I have fond memories from 40-50 years ago, eagerly listening to the Boston Red Sox… hearing Yaz (Carl Yastrzemski) at the plate… hiding under the covers with my radio (was supposed to be asleep), turning the radio this way and that to find the best reception. Waited for Yaz to hit one of his famous home runs and cheered when he hit a grand slam. I still love listening to baseball on the radio and eagerly waiting for Opening Day.
I’ve listening to baseball on the radio since the 60’s. Most afternoons there was a game on the radio, and I could listen to baseball while I went about my other activities. This is still my practice; when I go into my man cave, the first thing I do is turn on the radio. Usually I listen to sports talk, or a game if one is on. A pocket raid is nice because I can move around and keep listening to the game.
I love listening to the radio. I enjoy it more than any tv. Listening to a game on radio let’s you hear all the details & you can close your eyes and you are transported there. It’s gteat.
I first began listening to baseball radio broadcasts in 1960 at age 10.I will never forget Phil Rizzuto’s radio call of Roger Maris hitting his 61st home run on October 1 1961. Like most baby boomers who grew up with baseball I listened to games on my radio under my pillow late at night. I don’t attend baseball games in person anymore but when I did from 1961 to 2005 I always carried whatever portable radio I owned at the time to the game to listen to the play by play of the Yankees and Mets radio announcers. When I traveled to watch baseball games in other cities I always had my radio to listen to the home team announcers. Over the years 1972 to 2005 I visited all the major league stadiums with my radio,I even visited minor league stadiums in Denver,Salt Lake City.and Albuquerque during the MLB strike of 1981. Of course, I took my radio to those minor league stadiums also! Now I listen to the Mets and Yankees radio broadcasts at home and while walking for exercise. I also listen to any out of town broadcasts.I can hear with my C Crane radios,I usually can hear the Boston Red Sox,Baltimore Orioles,Cleveland Indians, and Washington Nationals radio broadcasts.
As a kid we visited my grandma for Sunday dinner. She lived ten blocks from Yankee Stadium. I would open her window and listen to the game on her radio. I was able to hear the roar of the fans in the stadium when anything exciting happened, but best of all the announcers would bring the game to life.
It takes me back to my childhood.
I love hearing the commentators and their points the make during their play by play overview. It makes it exceptional especially if I get a rare chance to see an actual ballgame and hear it on the radio at the same time. This pocket radio would work great for me.
John Miller is butter for the ears. Baseball on the radio is summer in America. Go Giants!
Its more exciting when you can use your imagination as to how the ply went down
It’s fun! Enough said. Let’s go Astro’s
I grew up listening to Jack Buck and Harry Carey broadcast St Louis Cardinal games. They were the best. Baseball on the radio is still magical to me.
I remember like it was yesterday on his farm route (wholesale egg buyer) when it was time to turn on the radio for the Cubs and Jack Brickhouse!
I love to listen to the sports announcers and the play by play.
Congratulations Chris! You’re this years winner of the CC Pocket radio! Please give me a call at 800-522-8863 and ask for Seth to claim your CC Pocket radio. Thank you for participating.
Seth D.
Twins opening day today
It’s old timey ! I remember going to Indians games and many gentlemen there would have a radio, todays newspaper, smoking a cigar. Great classic memory for me.
Thursday: 03/28/2019:
From Lindsey Nelson to Bob Murphy to Howie Rose to Gary Cohen to Kevin Burkhardt back to Howie Rose it’s always a welcoming voice hearing about the
New York Mets. So, as I lay my head down to sleep, the Lord, I ask to let me not weep should the Mets lose, listening to the baseball game with a small transistor radio under my pillow. It’s only a game but one that I love! and I enjoy listening to the game in this manner for decades. this year for the first time, I will be listening on my CCC.
Thank you for the time and courtesy, reading my story.
LET’S GO METS!
They won today. Opening Day!
In 1955 my father gave me (age 10) and my brother Philco transistor radio kits, which cost $50 each. It easily took me more than 20 hours to assemble; doing it gave me an understanding of the parts that result in the magic of words traveling through space.. Ever since I have listened to baseball on the radio and marvel at how technology continues to improve reception and ease of tuning.
I really can’t remember not listening to baseball on the radio. I’ve done it practically all of my life – and still love it. Before the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, if you lived in the South like me, radio was really the best way to follow major league baseball. The sports page accounts in newspapers could be several days old, and the only games on TV were on Saturday afternoon. I remember the original Atlanta Braves broadcast team of Milo Hamilton and Larry Munson – and later Ernie Johnson, Sr. All great announcers. It was early May in ’66 and I remember listening to the Mets – Braves game on a Friday night on the Braves radio network. Eddie Matthews was still playing for the Braves then and Hank Aaron was in his prime.The next day my father took us to Atlanta (Greenville, S.C. to Atlanta) for my first major league baseball game. What great memories! Thank you C.Crane radio for letting me continue to enjoy major league baseball in its purest form – listening to a game on radio.
It’s a humid, sticky night in July,1956, I’m 5-years-old. The big oaks surrounding our screened in back porch, are still as the Buckingham Palace sentries guarding the Queens living quarters.
The old Philco radio dial glows orange and the melodious sounds of St.Louis Cardinals baseball fills the darkened porch. Harry Carey, Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola describe the super human feats of the Redbirds as they battle their opponents. My Dad and Grandfather swig their beers, as I enjoy a soda. I’m already looking forward to Dad coming home from his construction job and playing catch with him tomorrow.
I still carry a radio around as I listen to my beloved Cards pummel their opposition en route to recapturing the Central Division championship. Yelich and the Brewers will be a handful along with the youthful Cubs. Radio and baseball — inseparable!
I go up in the woods (Northern MN) not as often as I like, but when I can the radio is the entertainment. Any chores that have to be done away from camp are timed around when the Twins are on. I always make a point to be back for the game – that’s when it’s time to get the campfire started and dinner prepped. When the sun goes down my brother (the initial radio enthusiast of the family) and I get into dx-ing – picking up far-off games around the country. Chicago, St. Louis and mostly Denver (later start times) are the teams we typically get, although Cleveland is an option sometimes as well. Nothing is worse than a flagship station moving to FM, preventing us from picking up games from hundreds of miles away. And it’s not always baseball – I remember picking up Shreveport during hurricane Katrina. Strange to be so far away from disaster but getting the first-hand accounts.
Even at home it’s just the radio for a ballgame – heck, you can get something done during the game and not just be beached on the couch. Radio is healthier!