So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

LizzieMaine · Apr 17, 2019

And speaking of the appropriately-named Sick's Stadium, here is the only known surviving broadcast videotape from that venue, about ten minutes of clips from a Red Sox-Pilots game from 7/27/1969 that went twenty innings. I remember watching this game, but I fell asleep before it was over.

Dig those groovy Pilots uniforms.

Artifex · Apr 17, 2019

Being on the right-hand-side of the Atlantic, I'm curious to know: Were the organs installed in sports stadia generally wind-in-pipes, tonewheel, or solid-state electronic?

I don't think the practice was ever common in the UK.

LizzieMaine · Apr 17, 2019

They were usually Hammond electric tonewheel organs -- these became very common in radio studios in the late thirties, and soon found their way into ballparks. The first professional sports venue to have an organ installed was Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1942, and the idea gradually caught on elsewhere. It wasn't until well into the sixties that all parks had some kind of internal music system.

Here's Ebbets Field's one and only organist, Gladys Goodding, playing and singing the National Anthem before game 7 of the 1952 World Series.

Note there is no military flyover, no chest-beating, no fire-breathing, no ridiculously huge flag that covers an entire wall, and no overcooked pop star embellishing the proceedings. In and out in a minute and twenty two. John Kiley in Boston was even brisker -- his rendition usually clocked off at sixty seconds flat.

GHT · Apr 17, 2019

LizzieMaine said:
They were usually Hammond electric tonewheel organs -- these became very common in radio studios in the late thirties, and soon found their way into ballparks. The first professional sports venue to have an organ installed was Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1942, and the idea gradually caught on elsewhere. It wasn't until well into the sixties that all parks had some kind of internal music system.

One of the best, and probably most famous, organ playing that I have heard is that of the Delta Queen's Calliope.

Following the calamitous fire at Notre Dame, I waiting to see the extent of the damage to the cathedral's magnificent organ.

Artifex · Apr 17, 2019

GHT said:
One of the best, and probably most famous, organ playing that I have heard...

Then, I venture to assert, there is a whole world of delightfully obsolete and unfashionable music waiting for you to explore!

The present-day theater & cinema organ scene (on both sides of the pond) counts a number of exceptional musicians among it's population. Including:

Richard Hills (Selections from The Dancing Years) (Downright showing-off)
Walt Strony (Selections from The Phantom of the Opera, part 1 and part 2)

I've been lucky enough to hear each of them at the Troxy in London - and yer ain't 'erd nuffin, until you've heard, in person, 1,728 perfectly voiced pipes speaking from opposite sides of a grand auditorium. (Somewhere Over the Rainbow & I Got Rhythm).

As for fame, there are entire generations of Britons, many still living, who would instantly recognise Reg Dixon playing I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool.

I rest my case!

tonyb · Apr 17, 2019

LizzieMaine said:
And speaking of the appropriately-named Sick's Stadium, here is the only known surviving broadcast videotape from that venue, about ten minutes of clips from a Red Sox-Pilots game from 7/27/1969 that went twenty innings. I remember watching this game, but I fell asleep before it was over.

Dig those groovy Pilots uniforms.

Sick’s Stadium never was a suitable home to a major league team. It was built to house the Seattle entry in the PCL in 1938, and had served well as a minor league park for three decades when it got quickly requisitioned as the home to a major league team that wasn’t expected to exist until two seasons later. I was all part of the A’s move from KC to Oakland and the AL promising new teams there (what became the Royals) and in Seattle. But politicians in greater KC pressured the powers in baseball to expedite that schedule, so on opening day in 1969 the Pilots played in a facility that had only 17,000 seats. The additional bleachers still under construction pushed the total up to something around 25,000, as I recall, a number still considerably shy of major league standards,

It was a great site, though, what with Mount Rainier seemingly rising just beyond the bleachers in center field. (On the days it wasn’t totally obscured by clouds, such days being practically the norm in Seattle, hence the push for a dome, which was built to host the expansion Mariners of the AL and Seahawks of the NFL. I was a Kingdome detractor from the beginning. It took the politicians a couple decades to get around to acknowledging that their predecessors’ visions for a multi-purpose domed stadium were irredeemably flawed. The dome got imploded and now there are two stadiums adjacent to each other — one open stadium for football and soccer and the other, with a retractable cover, for baseball. The retractable cover is just that, a cover. It leaves the stadium open on two sides, so it’s more akin to being in a carport than a garage. You stay dry, but bring a sweater.)

LizzieMaine · Apr 17, 2019

One of the things I remember about that lone Pilots' season is how the Red Sox broadcasters would complain about not being able to see the entire field -- the visiting broadcast booth was positioned in such a way that the only way to see certain sections was to look at a mirror the management had helpfully suspended outside the booth. PCL broadcasters didn't travel on road trips, so there was no need for a visiting booth until the Pilots came along, and nobody seemed to think this would be a problem until the last minute.

I must not have seen the news coverage of the Pilots' move to Milwaukee, because I remember being confused and puzzled by the sudden appearance of the "Milwaukee Brewers" in 1970.

Zombie_61 · Apr 18, 2019

tonyb said:
As to trivial annoyances vis-a-vis The Game ... What keeps me away is all the hoopla — the team mascots and the flashing scoreboards and the blaring “music” and, and, and...

I'm sure I'm not telling you something you don't already know, but "organized/professional" sports here in the U.S. have become increasingly more about "show business" (with emphasis on the "business") than "competition" over the last 50 or so years, and these days the spectacle seems to far outweigh the games themselves. I know a lot of people who couldn't care less about American football, but they'll tune in to the Super Bowl to see the new commercials and the half-time show.

I blame the Internet and cell phones--they've fed into the instant-gratification/lack-of-patience generations, and sitting in a stadium for hours watching a bunch of people trying to figure out how to achieve a higher score than the other team before the game ends just doesn't cut the mustard any more.

LizzieMaine · Apr 18, 2019

ANd that reminds me of another thing that ticks me off -- the mustard. A couple of years ago, they stopped serving the one true ballpark mustard, Gulden's, at Fenway Park in favor of some bourgeois impostor mustard. It might be brown and it might have specks in it, but it doesn't fool me or my highly-trained palate for one second.

tonyb · Apr 18, 2019

Spectator sports have always been a form of entertainment, differing from the others primarily in that the ending is unknown at the beginning of the show. But, like the others, we expect to witness humans performing at levels most of us will never attain.

Professional musicians listen to music in ways I don’t; professional actors view movies, plays, TV shows, etc. in ways I don’t; professional comedians watch standup comics in ways I don’t; and professional athletes see things on the playing field that I don’t. Where sports differ is when the broadcast audience is so fortunate as to have a color commentator who not only knows his stuff, but knows how to convey that knowledge to the audience in ways it understands. Among the best at that was the late Dave Henderson. He and his partners in the booth — Dave Niehaus (RIP), Rick Rizzs, Ken Levine, et al — got us through losing Mariners season after losing Mariners season without us giving up on the cause altogether.

Oh, and Harold Reynolds is real good at it, too.

LizzieMaine · Apr 18, 2019

The late Mr. Henderson is still revered here in Red Sox Nation for his astonishing heroics in 1986. I was very sad to hear he'd passed on.

I grew up listening to the late and great Ned Martin, who taught me to love baseball, radio, and the English language all at the same time. No other broadcaster in the history of the Game could get away with ad-libbing a quote from "the poet Thackeray" in the middle of a White Owl cigar commercial. When I listen to the soggy mess that is the current Sox radio melange, I feel a deep and profound sense of loss. Something I loved is gone and will never come back.

GHT · Apr 18, 2019

Artifex said:
As for fame, there are entire generations of Britons, many still living, who would instantly recognise Reg Dixon playing I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool.
I rest my case!

For what it's worth, I have danced to the music of The Tower Ballroom organ, but whether Reg Dixon was playing I know not. Many years ago my wife and I were amateur ballroom dancers, we had aspirations of turning professional, but we just didn't have the same talent as those in the top flight.

Hat and Rehat · Apr 18, 2019

EngProf said:
And those of us who don't care very much about baseball can just let it go as other persons' interest.
No harm to me for not getting it...

I took Artifex' comment as jest.
Should we start up using LOL?

Hat and Rehat · Apr 18, 2019

Harp said:
An excellent suggestion. To add some context, Q had an impressive outing last nite. Good stuff but I cannot
stop forgetting his cost to the team: Dylan Cease. Cease is now in triple A, doing a fantastic job, and the Sox
scored in the Q trade. Getting back to Darvish, he has the best arsenal in the pen but seems reluctant to throw
strikes, nibbling the plate corners and walking far too many batters.

I'll have to follow Harp to keep me updated on the Cubs. I'm from Chicago, but haven't followed their inside baseball. After 40 years in Denver, following 20 around Chicago, I don't follow Rockies inside baseball either. A couple of individuals give me an update here or there though.

Hat and Rehat · Apr 18, 2019

Concert style Hoopty-doo seems to be on the menu from now on at sporting events. They have laser lights at Avalanche hockey games here, and bass beats that would rattle the windows of your lowrider. It's our pop culture becoming a pervasive, and boringly consistent, meme (some new words work at times) saturating everything. Instead of each sport having it's own character, our emotions are assaulted with a message that the mood and excitement is always the same.

I don't really mind the twenty 18 year old girls that skate out with brooms and matching dresses to sweep the ice nearly as much as the other stuff. Go figure.

LizzieMaine · Apr 18, 2019

Ah, our old friends the Boys From Marketing, who turn everything they touch into dross.

tonyb · Apr 18, 2019

LizzieMaine said:
The late Mr. Henderson is still revered here in Red Sox Nation for his astonishing heroics in 1986. I was very sad to hear he'd passed on.

I grew up listening to the late and great Ned Martin, who taught me to love baseball, radio, and the English language all at the same time. No other broadcaster in the history of the Game could get away with ad-libbing a quote from "the poet Thackeray" in the middle of a White Owl cigar commercial. When I listen to the soggy mess that is the current

“Smilin’ Dave” is what my co-suffering Kingdome denizens in Section 217 and I called Henderson during his years with the Mariners. His face naturally fell into a smile. We witnessed it frequently as he ran in from his centerfield station to catch a ball that didn’t quite fall in for a hit.

I, too, was quite saddened by the news of his passing. He was only 58.

GHT · Apr 18, 2019

LizzieMaine said:
Ah, our old friends the Boys From Marketing, who turn everything they touch into dross.

But when they use Louis Prima's: Sing, Sing, Sing and they choose Benny Goodman's 1937 version, it actually makes an advert worth watching. One minute of pure bliss.

tonyb · Apr 18, 2019

The imagery in that TV ad seems anything but British. At the end the Toyota is being driven on the correct side of the road, fer cryin’ out loud! And the driver’s seat is where God wants it to be, too.

We — the dewy-eyed bride and I — are big Prima fans; fans of his music and onstage persona if not his personal conduct. The liner notes in a two-CD set we have around here make a strong case that in his later career, in the 1950s when he played the smaller rooms in Vegas while Sinatra and the like played the larger halls, Prima (and Keely Smith and Sam Butera) taught the squares, the vacationers from Dubuque, etc., how to rock and roll without them knowing they had been converted.

I recently scored this original movie poster. I understand that the film itself is almost impossible for anyone but the truest of true Prima fans to sit through, but I love the image. It’s 1962 distilled in 27 by 41 inches.

LizzieMaine · Apr 18, 2019

Yeah, but the best Goodman version (Victor 36205, recorded 7/6/37) runs a little over eight and a half minutes. How can they leave out the payoff? A solid send.

So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

LizzieMaine

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Hat and Rehat

Call Me a Cab

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GHT

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