Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Radio Days

The other day while at work in Arkansas, I listened to the Minnesota Twins play the Detroit Tigers by tuning into an online feed of the Crookston, Minn., radio station and watching the Gameday feature on MLB.com.

I had instant season stats, albeit early in the baseball year, available and with a click of the mouse, I could see a player’s career totals. The Gameday feature showed where each pitch was located and included the ball’s speed – both at the release and when it crossed the plate. It provided a nice backdrop for a busy day.

I then realized how far it’s come in the realm of following a baseball team. I was in Arkansas, listening to a game played in Detroit. Later, I found an Illinois station and heard part of the Chicago Cubs’ game against Pittsburgh. Had I wanted to, I could have tuned in to games with Atlanta, New York, Boston and Oakland that day, too.

It was a vast difference half a century ago when I was a kid listening to Twins’ games on the static-filled AM radio I kept on a stand by my bed. I had no access to stats then, relying instead on my handy Official Major League Baseball Record Book published by Fawcett for $1.25. I had the 1972 edition that featured statistics for the 1971 season, team rosters for the 1972 season and all-time records. It was my sports Bible, my go-to source for any information.

I remember being the clichéd kid of that era, listening to late night games on that radio and using an earphone with a braided wire snuck under the covers so my parents wouldn’t know I was awake. Often, when Harmon Killebrew hit a long fly ball or when Wayne Granger was about to strike someone out to end the game and earn the save, the signal would fade into static. I’d have to wait, hoping the station would come back and I’d see how the play turned out.

The only updated stats we had were found in the Sunday newspapers, unless we wanted to clip box scores from the daily papers and calculate the batting averages and earned run averages ourselves. And I did that, keeping a three-ring notebook with box scores taped on pages corresponding with the days the games were played. It was tedious keeping up with them all, but the payoff was knowing that Twins’ third baseman Eric Soderholm was batting a woeful .180 during most of the season.

Now, we have instant access to all of that with the internet. I can immediately find out a batter’s average against right-handed and left-handed pitchers and during day and night games. OPS? OMG, it’s right there. The Gameday even shows a picture from the catcher’s point of view complete with the actual stadium, day or night skies, and any buildings and landmarks past the outfield walls. It leaves little for the imagination, eliminating my own thoughts of what stadiums looked like when I listened to Twins’ games on my little radio 50 years ago.

Is it a good thing, the advances in technology? Well, sure, knowledge is good anytime. It allows me to listen to my favorite team, despite sitting in a northeast Arkansas office building some 775 miles from Target Field. I can see how teams are doing any time of the day by checking sports websites and I can get updated immediate standings, rather than waiting for the next day’s paper to arrive with incomplete standings. (Remember the letter ‘n’ next to the west coast games indicating they were played too late to make press time?)

But I’m finding as I get older, I often look back in nostalgic ways. This isn’t some grumpy creed from an old-timer saying “We had it tough in those days, having to wait overnight for scores.” Instead, it’s just a thought of how things differ.

The Twins will play several upcoming day games. I’m sure I’ll find the Crookston radio station at work, click on MLB.com and “watch” the game. But part of me would rather be huddled under my covers as a youngster with the world still ahead of me, my braided earphone cord snaking beneath the sheets and bring the world of sports to me.


Monday, April 5, 2021

The Pepsi Kid

As much as I drink Pepsi while rolling APBA games, I should do an advertisement for the syrupy, caramel, burp-inducing pop.

I’ll generally buy a 1.2-liter bottle of the elixir under the guise of needing to quench the writing muse when I have magazine stories I need to crank out on deadline. But, I find myself drinking the Pepsi quite a bit during the games I play. There are a lot of, shall we say, brief “rain delays” by the seventh inning stretches during games when I’m hitting the bottle hard.

The advertisement would fit well while I’m playing the 1965 APBA baseball season.

VIDEO: APBA card of New York Mets’ outfielder Joe Christopher. A red and white dice lie next to it with a “4” and “1” roll. The corresponding number on Christopher’s card is a “24,” the roll for a double play.

ANNOUNCER: When playing New York Mets games, nothing makes their tasteless season a bit more palatable than a nice, cold Pepsi. When manager Casey Stengel reaches for the bullpen phone to summon a relief pitcher yet again in the sixth inning, I reach for my bottle of the refreshing soft drink

VIDEO: Shot of Washington Senator’s outfield Frank Howard’s card in the background with a glass of Pepsi in the foreground. The two APBA dice show “66,” the universal roll for a home run.

ANNOUNCER: You’ll be rolling 66s every time you open a bottle of Pepsi.

I actually remember the first Pepsi I ever had. My family was traveling from our northern Minnesota home to western Arkansas on a vacation when I was about 10. We stopped in Joplin, Mo., for the day, partly because my father had been stationed there while in the Army and wanted to see the area and partly because he had heard of the mysterious “Joplin lights” legend that had people believing in flying saucers.

We went inside a roadside dinner next to the motel and ordered food. I was craving a pop and asked for a “RC Cola,” the staple of soft drinks in northern Minnesota. The waiter looked at me like I was a Joplin light.

“What about a Canada Dry ginger ale?” I asked.

Again, the look.

He picked up on my northern accent. His name was “Tom,” based on the nametag on his shirt. How I remember that after 50 years, I have no idea. I can’t remember to tie my shoes half the time and there are days when I get in the car to go to work and realize I forgot my keys. Maybe it was because I had a friend named “Tom” who lived next door to me back then.

“Son,” Tom said in a southern drawl. “We’re in the south. We don’t have any of those Yankee drinks. How ‘bout a Pepsi?”

And so it began.

I got a second one and Tom called me the “Pepsi Kid.”

“Pretty good stuff, isn’t it?” he said. And I agreed.

Now, half a century later my kidneys probably look like some decrepit sponge under the kitchen cabinet and my liver may have the consistency of a brick, but I keep chugging Pepsi. Thanks, Tom.

I once quit drinking it for a year in 1997  just to see what would happen. I lost about 30 pounds during that time, but I missed the flavor. I used to travel with my first wife to craft shows before she passed away 15 years ago. She’d sell women’s hair wrap things we made and I’d spend long hours sitting in convention centers or booths or under tents at shows.  (Once I sat in a mule pen at the Nashville, Tenn., fairgrounds where they held a craft show.)

We were in Jackson, Tenn., one hot afternoon and I put my book down, got up from my chair and asked for change. It had been a year since I had a drink and the craving, the addiction, became unbearable. I walked to a pop machine in a near trance, fed the change slot and pushed the button for “Pepsi.” Somewhere, a chorus of angels sang.

It was one of the best Pepsis ever.

I wrote about my addiction to the drink and the Jackson, Tenn., experience in a column I had at a weekly newspaper. I equated to falling off the wagon like an alcoholic and waking up in an alley, covered in syrup and goo, bottle caps strewn around me.

It wasn’t that flattering of a column, but the local Pepsi bottling plant loved it. They sent me coupons for several crates of Pepsi and a nice tee-shirt. Sadly, the shirt was too small for me – probably because I had quaffed so many Pepsis. It was a Medium. I wanted to call the plant and ask them if they had one in a size Circus Tent, but I was a bit embarrassed. Instead, I just drank away my sorrows with more Pepsi.

I’ve now turned my wife, Holly, into a Pepsi fan. She’ll pour some of the drink from my 1.25-liter bottle into a coffee cup and then put a sandwich bag over it to save it. She may take a drink and then place it into the refrigerator, returning to it later. Later? I’d drink a coffee cup-worth of the stuff in one gulp.

There’s a window ledge by the desk where I write my articles and roll the APBA games. I keep the bottles of pop on the ledge within easy grasp. But as I look now, there’s only an empty bottle.

The two saddest things in life are an empty prescription bottle of Tramadol for pain and an empty bottle of Pepsi.

Looks like I’ll have to make a run to the grocery store to get another round of drinks.

It’ll make the 1965 NY Mets games I play a bit more tasteful.