The Pure Sounds of Baseball

HEY DAY: Glavine pitching for my Braves.

A baseball game on the radio is a wonderful thing. I've been listening to my Atlanta Braves exclusively on the radio this season (of course along with watching highlight clips of big plays on MLB At Bat) and the option has me like a brand new fan, though I've been watching the Braves for thirty-five years.

As I write this, the boys are playing Miami and coming off their second victorious series this season against the reprehensible Washington Nationals. And I'm listening to it all on the radio, the comfort-food smooth voices of broadcasting royalty Chip Caray and Hall of Famer Don Sutton easing me from inning to inning. In the background I can hear the stirring rumble of the fans rising and falling like a lake current hitting the bank and receding. A full second before Chip tells me Matt Adams connects on a monster hit, I hear the crack and already know. All I need Chip to do now is tell me if it's fair, tell me when it leaves SunTrust.

Any fans who haven't tried the Radio Season, as I'm calling it now, really should test the waters and see if next year would be a possibility. It's a return to some kind of pureness, which baseball will always provide you under any circumstance. As the poet Donald Hall said, "Baseball is fathers and sons. Football is brothers beating each other up in the backyard."