GoodBye Old Friend: The Demise Of Baseball On The Radio

If I’d spent as much time listening to my teachers as I did to Dave Van Horne doing Montreal Expos games on radio I might be on the Supreme Court by now. From the team’s arrival in 1969 till the demise of the Expos at the start of this century I’d scan the dial for a station to listen as Van Horne and sidekicks such as Russ Taylor, Duke Snider, Tommy Hutton, Ken Singleton, Jerry Trupiano and others brought you games from spring to fall.

The biggest fear was driving outside the frequency of the station or losing it at night when the sun set and super stations from the U.S. like WABC, WJR or KMOX would dominate the dial. In such cases games became recreations from snippets of Van Horne describing the action as signals faded in and out.

One of my earliest radio appearances was on CFCF radio in 1983 when I got through the switchboard to ask Van Horne if the Expos current cast hadn’t gotten stale. (They had.) Dave was cordial, rebuffing my fandom in polite terms. Later, when I became a sports journalist myself, Van Horne was a frequent (generous) interview subject. 

Players came and went. Partners moved in and out. Managers were hired and fired. But Van Horne WAS the Expos to most fans listening on their car or portable radio. (One such portable flew out the window of a home when the 1983 Spos blew what should have been their triumph.)

This all came to mind with the news that Rogers Media was abandoning its Blue Jays radio format in favour of simulcasting the TV production of games on Sportsnet. This means that, for now, play-by-play man Ben Wagner is out of a job. And the lineage that goes back as far as 1977 with Tom Cheek and the irascible Early Wynn is severed.

Perhaps in time Wagner might’ve gained legend status achieved by Cheek and longtime partner Jerry Howarth. It’s not to be. While the other 29 MLB teams continue doing separate TV and radio casts, Rogers is pulling the plug.

In part, the pandemic reality— with the team playing in Buffalo and broadcast crews calling games from studios in Toronto— has changed the equation. So has the politics of baseball players and TV crews crossing the borders in a time when Canadians are being incarcerated in hotels at their own cost.

Broadcasters battling for their piece of the modern customer’s ears and eyes are guessing that they can save on travel, hotel and production costs associated with having their radio team on the road over a 162-game (154 games this year) schedule. Yes, not having your people in place robs the call of its authenticity. But excellent broadcasters like Dan Shulman can make up for some of that.

Having your own people on the road did allow both broadcasters and writers to have a firsthand look at what’s happening on a team. In dressing rooms and hotel lobbies they could pick up scuttlebutt and personal insights that a crew back home in a studio cannot. 

But as corporate politics restrict more and more of what was permissible for Rogers employees to say— and Rogers controls every link in the chain from owning the team to broadcasting to owning the stations on which the games appeared— candour is not in high demand.

A few more things have changed, too. Rogers is still paying for the crippling NHL national TV package (12 years $5.2 B.) and the expensive frills of previous management teams such as Keith Pelley and Scott Moore are no longer tolerable on Rogers’ frugal bottom line. Something has to give. This time it was Blue Jays radio voices (it won’t be the last).

Finally, the golden era of baseball on the radio was governed by scarcity. For many years fans might get a couple of TV games a week. NBC might give you the Expos or Jays on their national package once every blue moon. Van Horne and Cheek/ Howarth filled the gaps on a Monday evening or Thursday “business man’s special”. Now, every game is televised and pregame shows of 30-60 minutes are de rigeur. 

Wireless portability has meant that the TV broadcasts can now be seen in place that were once the domain of rail. Such as those long summer road trips that lasted just about as long as a ball game. They were the perfect way to pass the time in the car as the miles sped by. But that monopoly has been broken, too. A car is now a portable entertainment centre in which kids can watch a movie in the back seat or play video games. (My four brothers and I used to fight for the best seat.)

No chance to ask Dad or Mom why you should never get thrown out at third with fewer than two outs. No time to say why the heck does a guy from the Dominican Republic have a name like Vladimir? No opportunity to suggest, “Hey, let’s throw the ball when we get to the cottage”. 

The phone salesmen at Rogers will ask “What then hell you complaining about? You get Dan and Buck and Tabby. That’s enough.” So plug-and-play. But of course this simply shows what philistines they are. A baseball game on TV is a hit song. A baseball game in the hands of Vin Scully or Van Horne is a symphony. 

TV crews can (rightfully) let the pictures speak for themselves. Let the images carry the drama. The TV artists like Shulman supplement the game. But there are no images to fill the gaps between pitches on radio. No kids in the stands, no pitchers spitting grossly behind the mound when their chaw gets raunchy. No hitter in the on-deck circle or guy spilling beer on himself in the bleachers. 

The word tapestry in radio is all on the voices. So you had Howarth’s copious stats andVan Horne’s rain-delay theatre. You got byplay between the hosts on how players wore their uniforms. You get out-of-town scores. You get commercials (wait, I thought I liked radio.) It’s an art form. 

So is good penmanship. But it doesn’t mean it has a great future. Neither does waiting another year till the prime minister lets people travel and work and go to school. So Jays fans will likely have to grin and bear it as their TV crew tries to satisfy the unsatisfiable. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx