Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

MLB

Newer doesn’t always mean better in baseball

We can’t help ourselves. We prefer things as they used to be. And it doesn’t much matter how you define “used to be,” either, although this is usually a good guide: If it didn’t exist when we were 15 years old, then it isn’t essential to life.

Maybe that explains why our grandparents didn’t feel like they absolutely needed a color TV, since radio kept them plenty amused when they were kids. Maybe it explains why our parents didn’t feel compelled to buy in to cable right away, because what law says channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 aren’t plenty for anybody?

Recently I’ve grown obsessive about a new toy: the Billy Joel Channel on Sirius. Judging from various and sundry posts on Facebook and Twitter, and other missives into my email inbox, I am hardly alone. Already I’ve heard from people who took the long way home to hear all seven minutes of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” others who just stayed in the car to hear “All For Leyna” and someone else (OK, guilty) who pondered avoiding entering the Lincoln Tunnel in the middle of “Rosalinda’s Eyes.”

And this is the funny part: The other day a younger press box colleague asked me a simple question: “You’re obviously a big fan. Do you have most of his albums?”

“All of them,” I said. “Even a few obscure ones.”

“So … what’s the difference between this and just driving around with a stack of CDs in your car?”

And I could feel my hair getting grayer, and my back getting stoopier, and my bones getting creakier, could see the rapid-age decay taking hold in my young friend’s eyes as I explained the unexplainable.

“Because,” I said, “it’s always better when a song comes on the radio instead of your CD player or tape deck (as if he even knew what a tape deck is).”

“That’s crazy,” he said, drawing on all the wisdom of life in the 20s. “You know that’s crazy, right?”

“It’s not crazy! There’s nothing better than hearing a song you like on the radio, the randomness of it, the immediacy of it,” and I don’t know that I even got that far into the retort before realizing that, yes, it is a little crazy.

But it’s that craziness, or perceived craziness, that inhabits much of our soul as sports fans, right? It’s why in a time when we can watch every inning of every game during a baseball season, there are still people, many people, who prefer baseball on the radio, who would rather conjure the images in their own mind than ones carefully crafted by a TV director and high-definition reception.

It’s why there still are plenty of sports fans I know — that we all know — who can afford better seats who instead choose to watch games from the upper deck, or from the old blue seats, and not just because they’re parsimonious: It’s because going to a game, when you were young, meant craning your neck, squinting your eyes, always exploring the possibility of bettering your location when the ushers weren’t looking.

It’s why there are some people — and I must confess, I’m not among them, much as I like the way things used to be — who despite the availability of pitch-by-pitch updates on their phone actually wait until the next morning to find out a score from the night before. I am, of course, especially grateful for these folks since one of the places they look is a newspaper. Not long ago, I asked a friend of mine who behaves this way why he behaves this way.

“I like the way my heart quickens when I open the paper not knowing whether the Yankees won or lost,” he said. “If I can’t actually watch or listen to the game, it’s a better feeling than knowing at all times what the status of the game is. It can wait.”

My first instinct was to tell him he’s crazy. But then I realized something. I know better.

Whack Back at Vac

Mike Giganto: All this fuss over a dollop of pine tar? Didn’t George Brett prove 30 years ago that pine tar couldn’t possibly affect the outcome of a game?

Vac: I would’ve liked to see Michael Pineda’s reaction if the umps tried to take that win from him.

John Siciliano: Wouldn’t it be nice if the Yankees put a plaque in Monument Park acknowledging Jerry Coleman’s military service in two wars?
At the least, couldn’t they
wear black armbands in his honor?

Vac: He was also the very essence of the selfless team player, helping to break in Billy Martin so he could take Coleman’s job. I’m in.

@dArefin: I don’t think I’d be able to get out of a coffin just because it doesn’t have the last, final nail in it.

@MikeVacc: So you don’t like the Knicks’ chances?

Richard Siegelman: When Yangervis Solarte wins Rookie of the Year, the Yankees should make him legally change his name to “Yankeervis.”

Vac: Where have you gone, Charley Finley?

Vac’s Whacks

So John Calipari has a book coming out with some thoughts on how to save the NCAA? Hey, FDR once put Joe Kennedy in charge of the (other) SEC, right?

He is a fine baseball man, but there really are times I think Terry Collins is managing with eight-track strategy in a Blu-ray world.

If there’s a character on network TV who jumps off the screen more than Jason Beghe’s Sgt. Hank Voight on “Chicago P.D.,” I’m all ears.

Honestly, if the Indiana Pacers had the kind of season they’ve had in Indianapolis in New York City instead, it would make the Panic of 1907 seem like a minor disturbance.