Day 1. Song of the Day. The Sounds of a Baseball Game.

 Day 1. Song of the Day. The Sounds of a Baseball Game.

Every year when April rolls around, Michelle and I gleefully head out to the opening game for the Nashville Sounds. Last year, we made it to about 20 games for the season. This year, we've already been to 10 games. I suppose, we might be preparing for my eventual departure from a town where minor league baseball is played. 

At each game, I sit back and take in the scenery. I've likely said it before on this blog, but to me, my love of baseball has always been about the aesthetics-- the sights, sounds, and smells. Well, not always the smells, last Thirsty Thursday, we abstained from drinking and the smells were not all that great. 

While I'll always miss the sights and smells, I realize what I'll miss the most are the sounds. The sounds of a ballpark are like a fingerprint, specific to that one place. No other place in the world will ever sound like those few years of countless days and evenings watching our boys play. And in some ways, these sounds will cease to exist as the acoustics inevitably change next year with a new stadium. 

And so here's to the people who make the sounds of the game so very memorable to me. Cheers to Charles (the cold beeeyah guy), the angry funnel cake lady, Silent Bob's unenthusiastic pleas to sell you peanuts, and all the vendors whose voices fill the space of those memories. Cheers to the announcers and Doogie. Cheers to the fans. Cheers to those mysterious woo-girls. Cheers to the umpires. Cheers to the Nashville Sounds and all the visiting teams. It is this cacophony of noises that I will miss dearly. It is the end of an era, for sure. 

For an article in the New York Times about the sounds of a baseball game,  A Summer Symphony.

Song of the Day: May 03-07, 2013, Days 03-07

Day 03 of the Song-of-the-Day/May yesterday turned out to be a nightmare…yes, I had to spend one night without the internet. Now, don’t get me wrong, every so often, I like to go without access to the interwebs. You know, to go off the grid, to take a break from the numerous feeds of information I track multiple times throughout the day. This is, of course, by choice. Therefore, yesterday, after a 9 hour day of ethical research training, the only thing I wanted to do when I arrived home was to catch up on my Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr feeds, then put on name-of-my-latest-guilty-pleasure-television-show, pop some popcorn and bliss out. But then, and only then, the nightmare began…

Unplug. Restart. Unplug. Restart. Phone the cable company. Finally, the verdict was that I needed a new modem. What?!? A technician can’t get out until Tuesday? How dare you expect me to go from Friday to Tuesday without the interwebs? Who does that? Luckily, a fiend offered to drive me over to the service center this morning to swap out the modem (however, this has not fixed the problem, thus far).

I found myself flipping through the limited basic cable on my television. I hadn’t watched television in I can’t remember how long…and I can report, commercials still annoy me. After several rounds of flipping, I watched a replay from a Braves baseball game. Or at least I thought it was simply a replay on a sports news channel. Then I realized, this mystery channel was airing the entire game and I caught it at the 8^th inning. Wait, this was Fox Sports South channel. How as I accessing only one premium channel out of all the channels? I don’t even have TBS! What cable gods decided to reward me for my lack of internet access? This random gift from the universe made my night last night…and incidentally, my day today, since the modem does not appear to be working either.

And thus, for May 3rd to May 7th, there is no song of the day, but rather, the imagined sound of a baseball game.