Before spring training games start tomorrow I decided to look back to "The Good Old Days".
It has recently come to my attention that I’m the second-oldest member of the Batter’s Box roster. It has been quite a shock to my system to think of myself in those terms. At age 47, I do not consider myself old. My father is old; I am not.
I haven’t yet gone “middle age crazy.” I’m sure many of our younger readers don’t even remember Bruce Dern in the movie with that title, but I remember it well. Ah, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. At what age does the “dirty old man” label kick in?
But if I am to be one of the senior members of the group, I have to remember my responsibilities. Those consist chiefly of reminding my younger companions of the good old days and how easy they have it now. No, I did not walk to school barefoot, uphill in both directions. The snow was not always six feet deep in winter, and I did grow up with indoor plumbing. I was thinking more in baseball terms ¯ not on the field, but off. So here you go: remembrances of the past, about 20 years ago.
In the good old days …. the newspaper, or The Sporting News, was the only source of boxscores. But the newspaper went to print around midnight, so it’d be two days before you could get the boxscores from the west coast games: Monday night’s boxscore would be printed in Wednesday’s paper. There was no other source to get it more quickly.
The boxscore was the principal way of finding out what had happened in the game. I would pore over the boxscores to see if I could figure out who did what in which inning. Sometimes you could figure it out; other times, you were out of luck. If you just wanted the score, well, there was no all-sports radio and no all-sports TV stations. You got your scores from the sports update at the end of the news. If the reporter decided not to give the west coast scores, you were out of luck.
Moreover, the boxscores were the minimalist type that you still see today in some newspapers, such as the National Post. The bare minimum of information was all you got. Sometimes the boxscore was the old spring-training type, showing the linescore, the pitchers and catchers, the home runs ¯ and nothing more.
In the good old days …. The few sports highlights you did see were taken from the one camera behind home plate and captured for highlight purposes only. The games weren’t on live TV, so there was no need for multiple cameras. The cameraman had to follow the action wherever it went: if the batter hit the ball to left field with a runner on second, the cameraman would get the pitch, then swivel to left to see the hit, then back to home for the play at the plate. You could get whiplash from the highlights. You were lucky to see a couple of hits and that was it.
The Saturday game of the week was big back then. That was your only chance to see other teams and players. If you lived in Nova Scotia, and the Maine TV station that provided our cable feed decided to show some movie from the ‘50s, you were out of luck. They would show the Red Sox if they were playing in the Game of the Week, but a Baltimore-Detroit game would often be pre-empted. And those were the days when a Baltimore-Detroit game meant something ¯ plus you had the unpredictable Earl Weaver for entertainment.
There were no VCRs at the start of the decade, so no time shifting. You caught it live, or you missed it. If you wanted to watch the game, you had to schedule your social activities to be finished before game time. If you had an understanding spouse, you were OK. If not, it was another source of domestic friction. See if any of these comments sound familiar. "Why do we have to be home by 1:00?" "Why do you care about those teams?" "I never heard you say you liked that team/player before." "You spend enough time on baseball with your books/magazines/games; what does it matter if you miss this one?"
Radio broadcasts were huge back then. Many fans still prefer radio, but in the ‘80s, most games were radio only. The Tom Cheeks, Jerry Howarths, and Dave Van Hornes were most fans’ their primary connection to their team. How they described the players and the plays was the image the fans had of the team. If Tom Cheek said that George Bell was dogging it, you had to believe him not that Tom would ever say anything bad about a Blue Jay ¯ "Bell was a little bit late getting to first" would be as close as he would get). Today, radio has a much smaller impact. I know my kids will watch the game on TV, rather than automatically reach for the radio. And I don't see them turning down the TV sound to listen to the radio, either. Back then, CBC carried some TV games, but I think a 20-game package was as good as it got. My first team was the Montreal Expos. In Nova Scotia they were the team; Blue Jay games weren’t carried on the radio there. Especially in the early ‘80s, the Jays were still an expansion club. The Expos were the better team.
There were no cell phones or PDAs with automatic updates, either. There were no play-by-play Websites until a couple of years ago. You had to rely on the local team’s broadcast to update the out-of-town scores. If your local team wasn’t playing, you would listen to the hourly news for the latest scores.
In the good old days …. there was no Internet. Baseball news came from the newspapers or The Sporting News or Sports Illustrated, or other magazines that came and went. Remember Sport or Inside Sports? The SI season preview was a highlight. I remember Frank Deford leaving SI to start a new newspaper that died within a year. There were no fantasy or rotisserie sports: I was in a Replay Baseball boardgame league where you had to mail in your results; you filled out a scoresheet as you played the game. I remember having to pass a scoring test before I was allowed into the league. And because you had to score the game, mail in the scoresheet and wait for a reply, it was three long weeks before I knew if I had passed or not. After a series ended, I had to add all the game statistics together to fill out the stat sheets. The commissioner would mail me the results of my road series. You could draft by a written list or by telephone.
Spousal relations were different back then. If I sit in front of the computer today playing my league games on computer, my wife pays me no attention; I could be doing real work for all she knows. HGTV is on and all is well in her world. In the good old days, she would hear the dice running across the table and wonder what kind of man she had married. It’s funny how the use of dice by a grown man does not fit into many women’s mental image of married life.
In the good old days …. newspaper columnists were very influential. Today, we sometimes wonder about the capabilities of our local baseball columnists. In the old days, most of their readers didn’t see the game and had no source of alternative views of the game. If Bob Elliott rendered an opinion about a player or a game, we had to believe him. If you think about that, you can see how the columnist’s life has changed. In the ‘80s, he published his piece and most readers believed him. Now when he wakes up, his column is on the Internet and he can often read (if he’s so inclined) comments agreeing or disagreeing with him. Feedback is immediate. Columnists have gone from being experts in the eyes of the fans to being critiqued on everything they write. I’m sure they would love to return to the good old days.
In the early ‘80s, Bill James was still a night watchman. Craig Wright and Pete Palmer may have been writing, but their books were hard to find at your local corner (non-chain) bookstore. The Sporting News was not rushing to print stories about alternate views of baseball. When you hear of people's joy at finding the Bill James abstracts, it’s because the alternative was the usual puff pieces about the players. There was very little analysis available in newspaper or magazines. These days, if someone develops some analysis, they can immediately post it on the Internet.
Back then, the Bill James Abstract came out once a year. If you had something to say, you could write to Bill, and he might reference it the next year. There was no e-mail or Instant Messenger either. There was no Amazon.com to let you know when the book was shipping. I had to visit the bookstore daily from mid-February until mid-March when the book would appear. Eventually, in the early ‘80s there was a columnist for the Globe and Mail ¯Brian Johnston, I think¯ who contributed some work to Bill James and occasionally wrote about baseball analysis in the Globe. Then he left and that was the end of it.
The 2004 issue of Baseball Prospectus has just been published. These days, I have to think, "Should I buy it?" Instead, I could read BP's website, either free or for pay. I can read sites like Baseball Primer and Batter’s Box, looking in several places for in-depth analysis. When Bill James was publishing, his Abstract was all there was. Think of getting all of your baseball news from the Toronto Star, The Sporting News and Sports Illustrated. Sound depressing? Bill James was a beacon of light in a wasteland of pap. That’s why he is so revered. It might be hard to understand his impact today.
So as I said at the start, we have it good these days. I can read newspaper stories, Internet opinions and baseball analysis from anywhere in the world. I can watch a thousand live games each year, if I have no life. I can follow games as they happen on the Net. It's all good, my young friends. Now you know how good you have it. Be happy.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20040304090030999