Old reliables still strike the right chord for baseball
I don’t knock the knockers because I too have held that cynicism about the Yanks, their booming voices, their lack of self-awareness or knowledge about where Ukraine might be located.
Baseball knows itself. It has always stood to attention and admired itself, no matter how high the stockings go, how low the cap sits or how sterile a season might be for so many of the teams.
America knows she can be crass and a little overbearing. I think the rest of us miss that sometimes. Baseball knows that taking up five hours of its citizens’ summer evenings for a largely scoreless set of innings is a big ask.
The kitsch advertising, the horrible food, the watery beer, this is all part of an age old schtick that keeps them coming back for more. Maybe not like the numbers as of yore, but something more than enough to keep the game’s profits sufficiently bulging.
Part of the mesmerising nonsense of the whole thing is the mythology of the radio broadcaster, each one of whom is employed by the respective clubs to diffuse seven months and 162 games (or more) of action or non-action away out into the summer night.
The sounds of baseball are beyond cliche, of course, but that doesn’t mean I am too above-it-all to enjoy it.
There’s John Sterling, for example. Simply by living in the New York Yankees region, my exposure to this reviled man is unavoidable. But I have yet to find a way of loathing him and, as it turns out, he’s become the subject of an even more unfortunate underclass of public opinion: he’s big with hipsters.
Sterling is, by all accounts, a man so consumed with himself and his almost three-decade stint as ‘Voice of the Yankees’ that there is simply no budging him from the self-regard he holds dear.
And I love that about him. He is particularly famous (or infamous) for the shameless catchphrases that greet every home run, a bespoke quasi-haiku that will invariably take the name of the batter and mould it into something that should have a mile of bunting wrapped around it. For example, Hideki Matsui, a World Series MVP in 2009, happened to be a big-hitting Japanese player with a quiet demeanour. So of course it had to be: “It’s a thrilla, by Godzilla! The Sayonara Kid does it again!” Terrible, isn’t it? When talented second-baseman Robinson Cano signed with the Seattle Mariners over the off-season, my text to my Yankee fan girlfriend commiserated not for the loss of a man who could provide 25 home runs a season but rather for the demise of that drawn out Sterling line: “It’s a home run from Robbie Cano! Don’t ya know!” Centre fielder Curtis Granderson also left the club and went across town to the Mets, where Howie Rose — equally golden of voice but less demonstrably so — will have to fill the void left hanging in the aftermath of a Granderson home run: “Oh, Curtis, you’re something sort of grandish! The Grandy Man can, oh, The Grandy Man can!” (It should be pointed out that that last bit is sung. Badly.) And it gets worse (or better): “Bernie goes boom! Bern, baby, Bern!” when Bernie Williams would light things up in the 1990s. “The Melk Man delivers! And that’s just the Melky Way!” was Melky Cabrera’s moment in the sun. “Mark sends a Tex message to centre field! You’re on the Mark, Teixeira!” Yep... Mark Teixeira.
I’m a child of the open car door at the beach with crackling Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh. I know it’s not healthy to be subsumed by the bigger, bolder sporting voice. But I am at peace with my curiosity as to what Sterling will come out with for a much changed Yankees line-up this season.
The real stuff starts Sunday night with the San Diego Padres and the LA Dodgers, the Dodgers having already semi-kickstarted their season, Tour de France-style in Australia.
The Dodgers and their fellow tourists the Arizona Diamondbacks were dismayed by the chore of flying so far for a bit of Major League promotion but the pictures from the Sydney Cricket Ground looked pretty stunning.
A unique start to the season brought the Dodgers and Diamondbacks to the SCG for a game that happened in the middle of the night like a tree falling in a forest. But no promotional stone was left unturned and no picture of a player with a kangaroo was deemed unnecessary. Thus it always has been. I for one hope always will be.
Contact: johnwriordan@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
