Thursday, July 25, 2013

Birdwatching

I love living in a place where there are two baseball teams to watch. I have the Orioles game on, since the Reds play tonight and the Nats played today.

I was thinking about how I used to go to Orioles games during 2003 and 2004 before there was a team in DC. Prior to that I had no interest in the Orioles. I'm having a vague recollection of the foreign feeling I had when I'd open packs of baseball cards and got players on the Orioles and other American League teams. People who grew up with team cable packages and interleague play wouldn't get it - you never saw the American League in Southwest Ohio. Even when I was in sixth grade and wearing a mesh A's baseball cap for the Bash Brothers, I never really got to see them play. Once my grandparents took us to see them play the Indians in Cleveland at the old stadium. It was the time when they made Major League and the Indians were the joke of baseball and there was no one in the stadium. So I can say I saw Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire play when they were clean and everyone loved them and there was no Twitter for one of them to show his crazy.

The Orioles were the second team I rooted for when I lived somewhere other than Ohio. The first was the Giants when I lived in Monterey and could drive up to San Francisco on the weekends. That was when I had the good fortune to watch Barry Bonds become the best hitter who ever lived with or without PEDs. This was before MLB.TV so I watched Giants games on television since I couldn't see the Reds and if you saw him play day in and day out you'd forget about the PEDs and the fact that he was a jerk because when he came to bat it was magic. I saw Game 5 of the 2002 World Series at Pac Bell Park and they won and we all thought they'd win the World Series but then the magic ran out and they lost and I moved to Washington for the next baseball season.

The Orioles were awful during those two years before the Nationals came but the ballpark was so wonderful that I didn't mind the losing. The team sort of grew on me and I became something of a fan, though not like in San Francisco because there just wasn't that much to root for. But I've kept an eye on the team ever since and was really rooting for them last year despite Peter Angelos whose name should be Devilos. In Washington you get both Nationals and Orioles broadcasts so if the Nats aren't playing I can watch them on TV. They have wonderful announcers, not like those clowns in DC who are near the bottom of the pack when it comes to rating baseball broadcasters.

In 2003 they invented MLB.TV and in 2004 I got a subscription and have had one ever since except in 2008 when I lived in Ohio and didn't need it. It's strange to think about living in another place where I can't go to Reds games and not getting to watch them every day. We live in a strange time.

1 comment:

Pat said...

When I lived in St. Louis in the late 80's I would have to sit in my car and listen to WLW on the radio with lots of static. Then we got our first computer and I could follow the game on the Prodigy network. It was like a very early version of gameday but 2-3 minutes behind the action. Gameday seemed wonderful, but now with a subscription to MLB.tv, I can watch all the games from Arizona. I can even watch the games on my Ipad sitting in McDonalds. Amazing times.