You can’t count on anything these days
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- November 4, 2023
- 435
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina — “Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered under my breath when I saw the web headline that read, “Game 1 least-watched World Series game in recorded history.”
I didn’t bother to click on the story, knowing full well what it would offer — just another mishmash of fact and fiction, blaming a Friday night time slot, two underwhelming teams and further evidence that baseball, in this modern world, is all but forgotten.
Football first is the new mantra, though it wasn’t always that way.
Sure, I was aware of it growing up. Mom was a Columbus girl, and Dad grew up in South Bend, so it’s easy to connect the college dots; but my first sports hero was Y.A. Tittle, the quarterback of the New York Giants, whose picture I had tacked to the bedroom wall.
And I remember how devastated I was when they lost the NFL championship game against the Chicago Bears on a sub-freezing day in Soldier Field when players donned sneakers to get better footing. That was in the winter of 1963, a month after JFK.
Before that, however, there was the World Series, and as a Yankee fan, I was crushed when they lost four straight to the Dodgers. This was back when the post-season was played in the afternoon sunshine, with the first night game still eight years down the road.
By then baseball could see clearly that what had begun as a curiosity, a trifle, a middling distraction, was well on its way to becoming a behemoth and that it was time to change strategy.
But, in reality, it was probably already too late. The AFL-NFL merger, Joe Namath, Monday Night Football and a host of other ingredients had been blended into the perfect ‘70s television product, a once-a-week sensory circus that promised thrills and chills, not to mention slo-mo instant replay and sexy cheerleaders.
Baseball countered with expansion teams, the designated hitter, umpires wearing ties and managers, dressed in uniforms that made them look like lumpy potatoes, waddling around, spitting tobacco juice and behaving like children, kicking dirt and throwing caps.
And then there was the matter of the long season, six months and 162 games, a metaphoric death march that challenged even the most dedicated follower of what had once been the national pastime to maintain serious focus from April through September.
But then it was October and time for the World Series, a week’s worth of drama that continued a tradition that dated to the earliest days of the 20th century and, once more, all was right once again.
This was my frame of mind when I suggested to my wife — then my fiancée — that we schedule an annual vacation to coincide with World Series, an idea that’s become a reality since the fall of 1995.
We’ve been to Bar Harbor in Maine, spent a week on Nantucket off the Massachusetts coast and in a cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains, all in the name of making World Series memories.
This year, with things growing more and more complicated on the home front and our future seeming ever less certain, I suggested we spend not one week, but two, in what has become our favorite October escape, the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
And never once did it occur to me to inquire as to whether or not the Word Series would be available on the TV in our oceanfront cottage. Sure, I planned a few meals and we selected a few restaurants we wanted to hit for lunches, but not in my most paranoid delusions about the hostility of the universe did I think to make 100% certain that when I settled down in front of the humongous flat-screen “smart” set that I would be denied my fix.
May I offer this passage from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a novel which (speaking of paranoid delusions) has always been among the most deeply disturbing in American literature.
McMurphy has just found out Nurse Ratched won’t allow the patients in the psych ward to watch the Fall Classic on television:
“Who the hell says so? Jesus. I haven’t missed a World Series in years. Even when I was in the cooler, they let us bring in a TV and watch the Series; they’d have had a riot on their hands if they hadn’t. I might just have to kick that damned door down and walk to some bar downtown to see the game.”
Fans of the movie will remember Jack Nicholson’s improvised play-by-play description of the action as he imagines what’s transpiring on a screen as inert and silent as an unplugged toaster.
“Koufax kicks, he delivers … it’s up the middle, it’s a base hit! Richardson’s rounding first … he’s in there! Safe! It’s a double! Now it’s Tresh … Koufax’s curve is snapping like a firecracker! There’s a long drive to left-center … it’s … it’s … it’s GONE!”
The joy on the faces of his fellow patients is something to behold and always makes me smile because I believe every word of it too.
Now I’m not smiling and won’t for the rest of the week. Owing to an unholy alliance of streaming services and the homeowner’s decision not to make Fox available on this cottage’s set, I will be unable to watch the World Series for the first time, well, ever.
There are hundreds of channels offered … just not the one I need.
Well, at least I remembered to pack my transistor radio. Even in this era of high-tech nothingness, I remain studiously old school.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to find him on his Facebook page, where everything old is new once more.