The Major League Baseball season opens Sunday, when the Chicago Cubs host the St. Louis Cardinals in a battle of National League Central Division teams.
I imagine I’ll watch the game, because that’s what baseball fans do. But I believe the professional game has lost some of the glamour it had when I was a kid.
Maybe it’s because, back in my day, it was a treat to watch the Game of the Week.
My earliest memories of televised games are from the mid-1960s. Curt Gowdy did the play-by-play, and former New York Yankee infielder Tony Kubek was the commentator on NBC’s weekly broadcast.
I watched the games on an old General Electric black and white television. The picture quality was less than desirable by today’s standards, but there was something about those weekly games that were a treat for any young baseball fan.
When I wasn’t watching games, I was trying to pick up a game on an old AM radio.
When my family visited my dad’s parents in his hometown of Memphis, Tenn., I could hear the crackle of the old Philco radio in my grandfather’s room as he listened to Cardinal games. If I close my eyes, I can almost drift back 50 years and feel the warm, humid nights and the sounds and smells of that old house.
I spent much of my boyhood reading about the greats of the game of baseball. I was always looking for a book about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig or Mickey Mantle. My school day mornings in the spring were spent fighting Dad for the sports page so I could get my baseball fix.
Summers were endless, talking baseball with my friend, John Jarvis, and matching wits about the game and who the best players were. John was a Braves fan and I settled on the Los Angeles Dodgers thanks in no small part to Don Sutton, who played high school ball at Tate.
Baseball remained a big part of my life through high school. Even though I wasn’t good enough to make my high school team, I still loved the game and supported my schoolmates. And I still very much enjoyed the games on TV that I watched on the family’s color TV.
It was while I was in high school that football started to gain equal footing with baseball.
If you ask me today what’s my favorite sport, I’ll say baseball and football are equal.
The Major League games that were once my attraction have been replaced by local high school games. Sometimes, the games aren’t pretty, but there is something magical for me about watching the young men at Baker, Crestview and Laurel Hill play the game.
Perhaps the high school games take me back to that time of black and white TV, when life was simple and the game seemed to be all that mattered.
Email randyd@crestviewbulletin.com, tweet @cnb_sports or call 682-6524 to contact Randy Dickson.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: SIDELINE OBSERVATIONS: The magic of baseball