"THE AVALANCHE HAVE WON THE WEST!"
No one calls it better than our @ConorMcGahey on @AltitudeSR#FindAWay #GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/DaXPzQo6ch
— x – Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) June 7, 2022
There’s nothing like listening to local radio broadcasts of sports events. Here is the latest example.
Forget about the corporatized, monolithic, soulless calls of big games on national television. The only way to get the most from the presentations of baseball and hockey is to listen to the hometown announcers deliver the action. We prefer radio because you can do other things while enjoying the proceedings. We prefer the hometown broadcasters because at least you know whose side they’re on; there’s none of that ‘Joe Buck/Jon Smoltz/Jeff Van Gundy-is-always-against-my-team’ nonsense going on.
For instance, we are listening to the Tampa Bay Lightning games on the radio, and the color commentator sounds like he is going to have a conniption fit every time his team does something poorly. Nae, scratch that; he does not sound like he is; he actually does! When he moans and curses and groans and screams DURING THE PLAY-BY-PLAY itself, and not when it’s his turn to do the talking, it sounds like he is undergoing gastric bypass and cardiac bypass at the same time. He really cannot contain himself. Give it a listen and find yourself entertained by him this evening. That’s the Tampa Bay Lightning radio announcers.
We remember listening to the Washington Nationals radio broadcasters call the deciding Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, too. So much emotion and earnestness; not one bit of cute irony or sarcasm, the sort of which the national telecast always must truck in.
Of course, we are constantly entertained by Mistah Scott Franzke on the Phillies Radio Network, plus whoever is doing the color commentary alongside him.
Basically we enjoy the hometown broadcasters because, again, it’s a bit of local color you don’t get exposed to on Big TV. You get to hear Bob Uecker go on about Leinenkugel, or the Edmonton Oilers guys talk about Portage College and how its graduates go on to work in fulfilling careers.
Back in the day, we’d get a similar excitement when traveling by automobile or jet plane to a faraway city: opening the local newspaper and seeing how the sports section was laid out, especially the racing pages and the prep coverage. One of the best ones was driving to D.C. and reading Andrew Beyer and Clem Florio in the old Washington Post. Or visiting New York City and looking at the crazy-stacked sports section of the Newark Star-Ledger; they covered the Meadowlands trotters like it was bigger than the Mets or Yankees. Sometimes we’d go to the college library and page through the Los Angeles Times and see similarly packed news about Santa Anita or Hollypark from Bill Christine. You could really get a feel for a city by perusing the sports section, especially the racing pages and the prep coverage. Nowadays, those delights are largely missing; too much corporatization, sanitization, homogeneity, cost-cutting, you name it.
So we are all for the local color, the advertisers, sponsors, broadcasters, sports sections, racing pages and prep coverage that come out of the hometown media. We enjoy it while we can. It’s like when you go to a new place, you don’t want to deal with Denny’s or Chick-Fil-A or all the same garbage available everywhere else; you want to savor the homegrown tastes. So it is with coverage of sports events; flip Big TV, flip National Media. Go with the guys who are with the teams every single game.
So far today:
Fort Erie 1
#4 Big Time Louie (.405 Win Prob / 1.47-1 Fair Odds / 1.96-1 Premium Odds), $6.20
Finger 2
#3 Henny Hefner (.357 / 1.80 / 2.36), $13.20; exacta with runner-up #4 Dreams Boy (.175 / 4.71 / 7.00) paid $156-even, for $2; exacta premium price: $37.76, for $2
Finger 8
#4 Production Credit (.184 / 4.43 / 6.61), $31.40; exacta with runner-up #1 Bourbon’s Hope (.275 / 2.64 / 3.36) paid $98-even, for $2; exacta premium price: $57.63, for $2
Indy 1
#5 Copper King (.306 / 2.27 / 2.92), $8.60
Louisiana 3
#3 Expect Ours (.218 / 3.59 / 5.42), $21.20; exacta with runner-up #2 Viva El Capitan (.197 / 4.06 / 6.11) paid $96-even, for $2; exacta premium price: $77.07, for $2
Presque 3
#3 Makes Good Sense (.404 / 1.48 / 1.97), $13.60
Presque 8
#7 Our Dominator (.272 / 2.68 / 3.41), $11.80
Thistle 2
#3 Axis (.309 / 2.24 / 2.88), $10.40
Thistle 5
#4 Blonde by Nature (.383 / 1.61 / 2.13), $7.40
Still in play are these strongshots, so-called:
Assiniboia 2
#2 Anchor Up (.451 / 1.22 / 1.66)
Assiniboia 3
#4 Melisandre (.448 / 1.23 / 1.68)
Two contentious ones from there, including its opener, on The Twitter. Go! Approx. 10 mins. to post!
