World Series: Time for the Radio

Like many people, I wanted to tune into the World Series last night to see all the action. The trick was, I’m a cord cutter, and no amount of online acrobatics was getting me any closer to actually viewing the game. I have a fair bit of experience making that happen, so it was frustrating to not be able to do it.

The solution was simple: tune into the radio. The trick was reminding myself that could be done. (Duh.) So once I had that ironed out, I was able to lie there in bed, experiencing the game the same way people have been doing it for years.

I’ve listened to sports radio quite a bit over my life, actually. There have been plenty of BYU games that I could only listen to that way, and back when I was reading gas meters in college, I’d listen to some baseball to pass the time. Baseball translates really well to radio, which is probably one reason the sport was so popular for so long. It’s easy to understand and follow from description alone.

Confession time: my most memorable radio sports experience happened in my first city on my mission: Schwarzenberg, Germany. Missionaries aren’t supposed to watch sports or television, and I’d been out in the country for five months or so. But at the time I was a big Utah Jazz fan, and they’d finally made the finals, and I discovered if I sat in the kitchen of my apartment and angled the radio just right, I could pick up the broadcast of the games from a military station miles away . . .

So yeah. I broke down and broke the rules. It’s probably my fault the Jazz lost. But it’s not like I was doing that instead of missionary work. I set my alarm and got up in the middle of the night to listen. I still remember being huddled next to the radio, listening to it quietly. (Didn’t want my companion to wake up.)

Listening to the Cubs win last night gave me flashbacks to that experience. (I was in bed, listening on my iPhone as quiet as it would go. Didn’t want to wake up Denisa.)

Some things change. Some things stay the same.

Though I wasn’t breaking any rules last night, at least.

Go Cubs!