Enjoy those golden voices, you won’t hear them again
But the passing of James Alexander Gordon on Monday was a poignant reminder of when we were less cynical, less weighed down by the snark (and convenience) of social media.
The BBC radio reader of full-time scores from the football leagues in England and Scotland made so many of us — even in Ireland — hang around by the speakers in a semi-trance, the crackling medium wave an inconsistent babbling river of voices and interference, chaotic but generally going in the right direction.
And we hung on longer than was necessary, long after the scorelines meant anything, long after realising that we were being told about results that only mattered in Greenock and Dumbarton or in Darlington and Rotherham, goals we’d never see or ever remember existing in the first place.
But it was just nice to listen to. Particularly if you had your own Saturday afternoon game and if your muscles were stiff. Particularly if you could imagine (because I was never that lucky) supporters hopping into their cars or their buses just in time for the Sports Report’s theme tune. It was called Out of the Blue — I never knew that until I read one of Gordon’s obituaries in the English papers.
I had to read about him because all that he ever was to us was a voice, the sole task of which was providing the “full check of today’s classified football results”.
He was there a couple of decades before many of us who think we know it all these days. And sometimes when you’re part of the furniture, we don’t think you’ll ever get taken away.
I don’t listen to Saturday afternoon football on the BBC anymore but I’m not sure anyone can do around the grounds better. I count my blessings that I never have to come in contact with any of the Irish radio knock-offs of Premier League coverage in general, and the classified results rundown in particular.
Now many of us depend on a murky Twitter stream of reaction and one-upmanship that I can never quite find a way of purging. So yeah, I hold my hands up: I preferred it when I had to angle the aerial of my old radio-cassette player towards the window, clean the Saturday afternoon mud off my boots and feign solidarity with so many clubs across the water.
But just when you think it doesn’t get much more maudlin than that, the perseverance of another ancient voice of sport offers more than enough consolation.
It’s a lot more brash and showy in Los Angeles than it ever could be in Broadcasting House but that sprawling metropolis probably doesn’t get enough credit for how attached it can be to the dreaded “days of yore”.
I’ve written before about how the Dodgers long ago managed to convince baseball traditionalists that by setting up new roots far from Brooklyn, on a ravine near Chinatown, they had enough in them to become part of the establishment anew.
A big part of what has pushed that along is Vin Scully — the voice of the Dodgers since before the move to Southern California who will continue to commentate for his 66th season in 2015.
By way of comparison, Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh started his career at around the same time. So when it was announced late last month that Scully would be staying on for another year — at a time when the Dodgers are hugely relevant again — the reaction was one of pure delight, across the board.
It’s already accepted that he will never be bettered. He has been a direct witness to an unbelievable amount of iconic baseball moments, right from the early 1950s when the Dodgers enjoyed an intense rivalry with the New York Giants, right through arguably the biggest moments of many of the decades since.
When Yankees pitcher Don Larsen threw a perfect game (no hitter reaching the bases, basically) in 1955 and Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax threw one 10 years later; when Atlanta Braves legend Hank Aaron hit a record-breaking home run (his 715th) in 1974; when the Mets beat the Red Sox in 1986 due to a slapstick blunder by Bill Buckner and when the Dodgers themselves last won the World Series in 1988, thanks primarily to the Game One-winning home run from Kirk Gibson, who did the unthinkable on top of two obliterated knees — all these moments are knotted together forever with how Vin Scully viewed them.
It’s okay to yearn for all those voices. James Alexander Gordon, Vin Scully and Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh make that worn-out phrase palatable: “We won’t see their likes again.”
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Twitter: JohnWRiordan
