Wikipedia knows all!

[muckefuck]

For much of the last half of the 20th century, the Cards' radio flagship was St. Louis powerhouse KMOX-AM. Over the years such announcers as Baseball Hall of Fame honorees Harry Caray and Jack Buck, the latter's son Joe Buck, and former Cardinal player Mike Shannon broadcast games over KMOX and its affiliate network. In late 2005, however, it was announced that rival station KTRS-AM would become the team's new flagship station beginning with the 2006 season, with Missouri native and longtime Chicago White Sox announcer John Rooney joining Shannon in the booth.

For my entire childhood, KMOX was the voice of the Cardinals in St. Louis. Because it's a clear-channel station, we could listen to it even in the Minnesota resort outside of Fargo that we went to for a week every August. (Nevertheless, we have problems getting it here in Chicago, I don't know why.) So last Friday, when we began to lose reception of the Cards game on the Bloomington-based station that was broadcasting it, we naturally tuned to KMOX--

--and got a blast of hate directed at the "criminality" of the marchers in today's demonstrations for immigration reform. We were confused; there was no chance we could be wrong about the frequency. I can't consistently remember Nuphy's current phone number, but details like this from my childhood (for as long as I live, the natural channel assignments for broadcast television will remain ABC on 2, CBS on 4, and NBC on 5) will stay with me to my grave.

We ended up calling up my brother-in-law to discover that KTRS had snapped up broadcast rights for the current season. It's been so long since we'd listened to a Cardinals game on the radio, we weren't even sure who'd replaced Jack Buck; I never would've guessed we'd poached a White Sox announcer.

(In case anyone else cares, the Redbirds lost that game 3-8, but bounced back to beat the Washington Nationals narrowly the next day and by a decisive seven runs on Sunday. [We listened up until the 8th inning when we lost reception outside still a ways from Joliet.] Then, for entertainment value, we put on the slaughter that was the 0-9 shutout of the Cubs--the commentators are at their best when the team's at its worst.)

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

So, have you found a webcast of the games yet?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Without having to pay through the nose to MLB.com? Nope.

[0595.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia does know all!

I can't imagine that baseball is fun to listen to on the radio though.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, it is. For one thing, the announcing is far better. These days the t.v. screen is so loaded with little digital displays to help the viewer keep track of the score, the pitches, the runners, etc. that there's not really that much to do as far as calling the game, so the announcers spend a lot of time shilling and shooting the shit in the middle of gameplay. If monshu's tuner wasn't on the blink, I'd put the radio on even while watching the game on t.v.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

If [info]monshu's tuner wasn't on the blink, I'd put the radio on even while watching the game on t.v.

-e will sometimes do this when watching Cubs games, but the TiVo adds enough of a delay to confuse things.