Wow I just suffered through 45 minutes of the Reds radiocast. It was the most boring baseball announcing I have ever heard. Absolutely no excitement. I was so bored I cut the dog’s walk short.
Jocko
You’ve probably never heard of Jocko, but here’s a great article.
He was the first African-American sportscaster — ever. On WHOM in Jersey City, on WAAT in Newark on WNJR in Newark, starting in the 1930s, Jocko’s voice was a “dinner guest” at African-American homes all over North Jersey.
He doubled as a sportswriter with publications like the Newark Afro-Americans. He was the public address announcer for Eagles games at old Ruppert Stadium in Newark. He was the Eagles’ unofficial “Lord High Chancellor of Communication” with the world beyond the foul lines. He did much the same for all of Negro League Baseball at a time when, if you couldn’t get to the game and you wanted to know if the Eagles won, Jocko’s familiar voice told you.
Which is more than the Newark newspapers did most of the time in that era.
I Think I OD’d on Baseball This Weekend
I’m still recovering from last night – left the Stadium at 2 am and got home at 3:30. But a quick snapshot of the last several days.
From Saturday through Tuesday, the tally for me is:
- 2 stadiums (Yankee & Shea)
- 4 games
- 40.875 innings (two 8 1/2 inning games, one 9 inning, and one 14 5/6)
- I don’t know how many players, pitches, etc.
- 6 hours waiting in lines for autographs at FanFest
- 4 HOF autographs (Earl Weaver, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, & Gary Carter)
- 3 children of HOFers met (Mantle’s sons and Jackie Robinson’s daughter)
- Several Team USA autographs
- I think a dozen hot dogs and eight beers
- Almost 1,000 pictures taken (which will be reduced to probably 150 once I go through them)
- One new David Wright jersey (home, blue pinstripe, with Shea patch, size 44)
- An undisclosed amount spent on souveneirs
- About 28 hours total of baseball activities
(And last night’s 15 inning adventure was my SECOND 15 inning game this month. I saw one at SafeCo a few weeks ago too.)
I think I need a few days for everything to sink in but man, did I enjoy this weekend.
Thanks Joe Buck
Nice touch mentioning Bob Sheppard last night.
With all this talk of putting George in the hall…how about Bob!
All Star Game (Where was Seaver?)
A little late this morning, stayed up late and have this whole job thing etc…
As always I loved the All Star Game.
I hear some chirping on WFAN about A-Rod leaving early. As a fan of leaving work early and days off, I am not going to begrudge the man for leaving – assuming he even did leave. Maybe he just wants to spend today and tomorrow, full days, with his kids.
WHERE WAS SEAVER? In the interest of fairness maybe he had a family emergency or something.
Wright would have pitched next? Cool! I would have loved to see that, and a pitcher playing a position.
I suspect that’s the last we will see of George Steinbrenner.
Poor Yogi is getting up there too. He’ll soon need to stay out of the spotlight the way Scooter did.
Kinda cool that FOX didn’t bombard us with “and look who is in the second row, the stars of Fringe!” nonsense. Unless they did it at midnight when maybe I nodded off for a pitch or two.
I was surprised there were/are only four living Yankee Hall of Famers.
Quiet day. See ya tomorrow.
