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My New Way to Watch Baseball
I love baseball. I really do. I love each fundamental battle between the pitcher and the batter, the race to throw a runner out on the bases, and, of course, the nine-inning struggle to outscore the opposition. What I don’t love about baseball is watching three or four hours on TV night after night after night. Thus, my baseball viewing habits have changed over the years.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, long before cable TV was available in upstate New York, we had too little baseball on TV. We were lucky if we saw one or two Yankee games per week, usually on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Keep in mind, too, this was before the Mets came into existence in 1962. The scarcity of those weekend games, of course, made them extra special, but that’s pretty much all the baseball we saw until October. Fortunately, the Yankees usually made it to the World Series each year, so our added bonus was those afternoon-only editions of the Fall Classic — but only if we could hustle home after school in time to catch the last few innings of each game.
I didn’t experience cable TV and the regular availability of all the games until I was out of college and before I secured my first teaching position. So while I worked a mindless job during the day, I thoroughly enjoyed watching a full nine innings every night while sitting in my recliner munching on popcorn. Seriously, I thought I…
