Downstream

Some kids grow independent all at once, others a little at a time.  Me, I’d get on my bike and peddle a little further one summer week to the next.  Unfamiliar street signs marked my way in what I thought was a grown-up world.  Naturally, I brought along my transistor radio.

The White Sox went where I went, Al Weis and Floyd Robinson performing feats of hit-and-run magic that filtered up to me through an earpiece.  It was me, Bob Elson shilling White Owl cigars and the Sox together off on an adventure to the far ends of the earth, or until my legs started to grow tired.  Now, when I bike, I go bud-free the better to hear any approaching danger.  God took pity on a young fool once, and I’m not young anymore.

So, let me go from that gauzy memory to this nightmare prediction—at some point, oh, five to fifteen years down the line, baseball will make sure that kids won’t be able to do what I did, at least for free.  The moment a numbers’ cruncher figures out how teams can make more money taking games off the radio and stream them, MLB will move to act, and then everything new will get old again.

I got to listen to games on the radio only because owners overcame their fear of losing control of the product; thank heavens commercials put money in their pockets.  It was the same with TV; owners were petrified nobody would go to a game if they could watch at home.  Well, that never happened, and now owners have wrestled games off of free TV.

Mark my words, radio is next, and then it will be 1919 or 1915 or 1895 all over again.  Next will be open season on knot holes in the wall.  Just kidding.  Those have already been taken care of.