Last Call: The Out-of-Town Fan
Eastland, Terry
LAST CALL by Terry Eastland The Out-of-Town Fan M ONTHS AGO, WHEN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL scheduled the Atlanta Braves in Yankee Stadium for a two-game series, I decided to arrange my own schedule...
...Amazingly, in some places you can even get hitting and pitching charts for those doing the hitting and pitching...
...As I watched Maddux warm up, I didn't know he was in such pain from neck stiffness that he almost had pulled himself from the game...
...Though over the years I had trekked to assorted stadia to observe the other strong arms of the Atlanta rotation —Glavine, Smoltz, Neagle, Avery (now of the Boston Red Sox), I had never seen Maddux pitch...
...And it's not just the Braves—practically every other team also does this now...
...IN THE JOY OF SPORTS, WRITTEN TWO DECADES AGO, Michael Novak elaborated on the passions that consume fans...
...Which is why the out-of-town fan keeps at hand the schedule, hoping at some point to match it up with his own...
...Unfortunately, as I learned in the late Seventies when working for the San Diego Union, that reach does not extend to the West Coast...
...and you can call up statistics, current with the last pitch, on a player or team...
...But the problem of access to games in progress—a major issue for us fans, as Novak understood—has been largely solved...
...I had guessed wrong three weeks earlier, missing Maddux by a day in Milwaukee and finding myself instead having to settle for Dennis Martinez, whose 12-hit shutout of the Brewers was no mean feat, especially at his age, 43...
...Admittedly, there are portability problems with computers...
...Yet because Ted Turner had bought the Braves in 1976 and was now putting the games on cable, I could still follow the team...
...In late May I matched the rotation to the Braves' schedule to figure out whether he might be a starter in New York...
...Fifty thousand-watt WSB was the team's flagship station, and its broadcasts were picked up by stations throughout the Southeast...
...Maddux was indeed a marvel to watch, though he proved merely mortal against the Yanks, yielding three runs before leaving in the seventh inning with a one-run lead that the Braves' weak bullpen quickly lost...
...you can view the box score as the game unfolds...
...LAST CALL by Terry Eastland The Out-of-Town Fan M ONTHS AGO, WHEN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL scheduled the Atlanta Braves in Yankee Stadium for a two-game series, I decided to arrange my own schedule in order to see one of those games, preferably one that Greg Maddux might pitch...
...there may be difficulty connecting with an internet service provider...
...Not only is radio limited to the later innings of night games, but TBS has never offered all 162 games...
...and there may be some RealAudio congestion...
...And this year it has happened...
...MADDUX, OF COURSE, IS THE BEST PITCHER IN baseball, having already won four Cy Young awards...
...But only almost...
...I became a Braves fan during the 1957 World Series when the Braves, then in Milwaukee, were underdogs to the mighty Yankees yet wound up winning, 4 games to 3. Growing up in Dallas, I thus began my long-distance attachment to a team I would rarely see in person—a passion that would go unrewarded with another Series win until 1995...
...I read accounts of Braves games in the sports pages and, for games in progress, tuned in a local radio station (WRR) that provided scores on the half hour (including pitching changes and homers hit, sign of a truly excellent radio scoreboard...
...While living in Los Angeles, he recalled, he would leave social events and repair to his car, where he would tune in Vince Scully on the radio, narrating the late innings of a Dodgers game...
...While in college in Nashville, and then in my first newspaper job in North Carolina, I could usually tune in the Braves...
...IF YOU DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO A GAME ON THE net, you can find scoreboards in many places (try cbs.sportsline.com and majorleaguebaseball.com...
...SOON AFTER THE BRAVES MOVED FROM MILWAUKEE to Atlanta in 1966, I discovered it was possible to do far better on the games-in-progress front...
...Every game can be heard by anyone anywhere in the world (this is the world wide web, after all) with a computer, a modem, a web browser, and RealAudio...
...Soon, was the reply...
...WSB has a very far reach—as far as Boston and Chicago, once the sun goes down...
...Which means that baseball fans like me who follow an out-of-town team can sit in pretty high clover...
...THE CHOICE I HAVE HAD OVER THE YEARS IN following the Braves—the choice between radio and cable television—has always been a qualified one...
...Fortunately he didn't...
...And to my delight, I guessed right...
...Baseball on-line is almost as good as baseball in the park...
...June 22, the series opener, seemed a strong possibility...
...Ai 82 August 1998 • The American Spectator...
...Last year I e-mailed the team to ask when it would put games on the net...
...The super-station has offered fewer and fewer games in recent years, and is down to 92 this season...
...The best scoreboards offer updates not just by the half inning or even by the out, but by the pitch, as in: "Ramirez strikes out swinging...
Vol. 31 • August 1998 • No. 8
