Batter Up! Baseball, soundtrack of summer, is back - sort of

Herb Vincent closes his eyes and drifts back a half-century, to his boyhood bedroom in North Little Rock, Arkansas. He’s 9, trying to stay awake deep into the night, the transistor radio tuned to distant KMOX in St. Louis, listening to Cardinals baseball.

Bob Gibson’s shutouts, Lou Brock’s stolen bases and Joe Torre's slugging made for sweet dreams. What he heard in-between pitches sounded even better.

“The muffled murmur of the crowd,” said Vincent, the associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. “It was like the soundtrack of the summer.”

“I can hear it right now. You can make out a voice sometimes, maybe a peanut vendor or a yell,” he said. “It’s soothing, it’s reassuring.”

Probably speaking for fans all over these days, he added: “I don’t know what it’s going to sound like this year.”

No one does, really.

Major League Baseball begins its most bizarre season ever Thursday night, a 60-game sprint rather than the traditional 162-game marathon, a skewed schedule cut and carved around a coronavirus pandemic that threatened to silence the bats and balls all year.

A different model than the NBA and NHL, too. Rather than keeping players and club personnel sealed in a bubble environment, baseball teams will fly around the country, raising more health concerns.

With COVID-19 cases trending higher in every state with an MLB team except Arizona, a most fitting person is set to throw out the ceremonial first ball before the World Series champion Washington Nationals host the New York Yankees in this year's virus-delayed opener: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert.

“I used to play baseball as a young boy,” the 79-year-old Fauci told CNN. “I hope I don’t bounce it too much.”

Not that anyone would...

source https://www.chron.com/news/article/Batter-Up-Baseball-soundtrack-of-summer-is-15429098.php