MLB’s saving grace: Radio

I don’t know about you but watching MLB on TV is f****** depressing.

No fans, no energy, and a stark reminder that this country cannot handle its pandemic problem.

On the radio however, I get to listen to Bob Uecker and suspend disbelief for two hours! Well make that more like 4-5 hours, if I invest in a full game, but you get my point.

Baseball always was a radio sport. Meaning its rhythm was seemingly custom fit for the radio format. Legends like Harry Carey, Vin Scully and, of course, Uecker, have shown that the radio is the more appropriate platform for baseball.

It’s an older format, which fits perfectly with the older game that baseball is.

By the way, “older” is what we say when we don’t want to say old!

The first MLB game I watched on TV this season — you know, the ones that aren’t postponed due to a massive COVID-19 outbreak — I’ve been flatly bored.

There’s just no punch to the players. You can tell, they’re bored, too, in many cases.

When you’re sitting in the outfield and you’re only job is to shag fly balls, remember baseball is all home runs, strike outs and pop ups now. It actually might pump you up a bit to hear a heckling fan in the stands talk about your bad breath or something like that.

If you’re at home and you’re down by two runs in the bottom of the eighth, and the crowd starts chanting your name, or says, ‘Go Brewers, go Brewers!’ players might get a little pick up.

When they don’t have any of that, they’re relying upon Ben Gammel to hit a sweet double and pump his fist hoping that lifts the team.

I want Major League Baseball back as much as every sports fan, I really do. But I want my baseball to be on the radio, and the radio only.

That way I can sit back on my lawn chair, possibly in my hammock, or even in my garden, and pretend that as a country, and as a sport, things aren’t actually that bad. And that’s a good enough lie to tell myself for at least a day.

Thank God baseball’s back, and thank God for radio!