Awful Announcing: failed Marlins executive, David Samson believes baseball is not needed on the radio anymore

My knee-jerk reaction to this take when I heard it was: man, what a dogshit take that is.  Baseball on the radio is incredible when a game gets exciting.

However, I try not to be one of those people who just operates in knee-jerk reactions, without reading any of the context behind hot takes like this, so I went ahead and read more about what former Marlins executive, David Samson had to say about radio.

I felt he was almost on to something when he elaborated about how the medium still exists, solely because how it’s kind of symbolic of what baseball means to the listeners, because there’s a part of me that does feels that statement, but I can’t speak for everyone, and there have been many times in my life where I’ve absolutely enjoyed just listening to the game instead of watching it.

For many years, I have lots of memories of spending countless hours in my hot garage in the middle of Georgia summers, toiling away at some random oversized prop, in preparation for Dragon-con.  The portable A/C unit wasn’t sufficient in the heart of the day at overcoming the heat, and even though the projects didn’t always go as smoothly as I hoped, I have lots of fond memories of simply being out there in the garage, working with my hands, getting dusty and dirty from all the sanding dust, mixed chemicals and plastic shrapnel that came from a lot of the things I was crafting, with Braves games on the radio, helping combat the silence or being the sounds of peace after a the noise of power tool came to a stop.

Broadcasters like Pete Van Wieren, Joe Simpson, Don Sutton and Jim Powell’s voices called the action, and I always felt a little bit disappointed when the games ended, the post-game show ended, and it went back to whatever shitty music that Atlanta radio was good at putting out.  I remember the best was when the Braves were out on west coast games, and they broadcasts wouldn’t start until like 10:30pm, and I knew that I would have at least 3 hours of company while I worked well into the night.

You look at a guy like David Samson, and his stance opposing baseball on the radio, and you can see as clear as day, a person who has never spent any time in his garage beyond parking his luxury vehicles and/or shuffling his children into the house while he did his hired help a service of keeping the door open while they hauled in whatever groceries or luxury goods into the home.

Or, he’s a man who has never sat in traffic, and had baseball on the radio being the one thing keeping him remotely sane.  Or, never actually been fan enough of any team to where the thought of missing a game outright was unacceptable, but life sometimes gets in the way, and if we couldn’t watch the game on the television, listening to it on the radio was the next best thing, while we were traveling to go do whatever thing that was interfering with game time.

Frankly, baseball on the radio isn’t quite on the tier of being essential services, but it’s right on the tier right beneath it.  It’s cheap and easy to produce, and accessible to anyone who has even the simplest of technology.  Baseball doesn’t need to be visual and reserved for those with the most competent of data-connected devices, it’s like the game itself, not very complicated, but everyone loves to make it harder than it needs to be.

Guys like David Samson and those who are with him in thinking baseball doesn’t have to be on the radio can go sniff farts in their glass towers.  Because in a world where pure things are becoming fewer and further between, baseball on the radio is one that is miraculously still allowed to exist.