You should listen to the World Series on the radio

Playoff baseball is just different. This is a widely accepted fact among hardcore fans, casual fans, and enemies similar. Every at-bat in a pressure-packed postseason series is magnified in stark contrast to the long, grueling 162-game regular season. Come October, the individual releases feel more like dramatic, high art than statistical footnotes. Both clubs from the outer neighborhoods of the Big Apple have experienced many of these moments in recent weeks; You’ve probably already seen countless reruns of one of Francisco Lindor or Pete Alonso’s epic home runs and late-inning heroics by Bronx sluggers, and I tip my hat, of course, to Mr. Freddie Freeman, most recently. But do you hear them?

Ought. I’m here to tell you that, whether you’re riding the Shohei bandwagon, ecstatic about a return to glory in the Bronx, or whether your team was eliminated from the playoffs before any other team in over 50 years (sorry, White Sox fans). , you should listen to playoff baseball on the radio.

There are some practical reasons why you might listen to a game instead of watching it. Maybe you’re traveling for a few hours during a game. Maybe your family’s YouTubeTV account has too many streams running and has blocked you from accessing FS1. Take these circumstances as a sign from the baseball gods to turn on the radio, or if you don’t have an analog radio, plug ESPN Radio into your phone. Now you can sit back and fully immerse yourself in the game, aurally. I started listening to Game 1 of the Mets-Phillies NLDS series because of some of these practical reasons, but I found myself reaching for the radio broadcasts as the series deepened, and I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.

That’s because baseball is the perfect sport for radio. While the shot clock has certainly helped speed up games, the pace and cadence of the game still gives announcers just the right amount of time to set the scene, give precise and concise color commentary, and build drama. The care and attention to detail that ESPN MLB radio host Jon Sciambi puts into describing everything from the colors and stitching of each team’s uniforms to the batter’s reactions to a called third strike paints such a picture. vividness that is, for the most part, understandably taken for granted. in television broadcasts. Sciambi’s partner in the press box, Doug Glanville, dances play-by-play, offering funny commentary and knows exactly when to present Sciambi with the pitcher’s ending narration. It helps that the action of baseball primarily involves just two players (the pitcher and the batter), unlike other more fluid team sports, where there may be 10 or 20 players on the field at once, doing all sorts of things. things alone. and together. It’s no coincidence that the explosion of baseball’s popularity in the 20th century closely followed the advent and explosion of broadcasting, and perhaps why the popularity of both has plummeted more recently.

Once your auditory senses are activated, you begin to pick up some subtleties in the sounds of the game. For example, you learn to differentiate certain stadium cheers and groans: the groan of the home fans when their cleanup hitter strikes out looking at runners in scoring position versus the groan when the visiting team scores on an infield error. The crack of the bat plus an explosive roar probably equals an explosion upstairs, like Jesse Winker’s undoubted home run at Citi Field in Game 3 of the NLDS. A nervous buzz that grows into a punctuated tumult heralds a less certain but game-changing slam, leaving the stadium in suspense following the ball in the air, until they see it descend safely over the fence toward the bullpen. opposing team (see: Freeman, Freddie; Lindor, Francisco).

Sure, it’s still a passive activity, but listening to baseball on the radio requires patience (and provides a catharsis) that eludes us when we seek another hit of dopamine between pitches on the big screen. So, as the Dodgers and Yankees resume one of the most exciting World Series in recent memory tonight in New York, Vin Scully proud: turn on the radio and enjoy a game that way. Sounds good, right?