"Charlie" - Mike paused - "what the hell is going on?"
Mike looked puzzled. It was Saturday afternoon, and I was sitting in the hallway of the third floor of Perkins, with my feet up on my coffee table, drinking a High Life, making grilled cheese with my Sandwich Express and listening to WBRO-AM on my clock radio, which was blaring the Red Sox-Yankees game.
If you didn't catch that, I was in the hallway, and I had brought my coffee table. And I was making grilled cheese. And I was drinking. I might have had my baseball glove on. There's also a good chance I was talking to myself, screaming or pretending I was Manny Ramirez. But this doesn't really answer the question: What the hell was going on?
At Brown, I have had to face a dilemma: I can't watch the Red Sox on TV. You see, I need to watch the Sox. It is at the top of my priority list. At 7:05 p.m., I stop what I'm doing, tune in to NESN, and watch the game.
Last year, at New York University, I dodged this bullet by way of MLB.tv - a program that lets you watch nearly every game from around the league on your computer. It was a godsend. When I arrived at Brown, I assumed that MLB.tv would work again, and, accordingly, I would have an excuse not to get any work done. Everything would be fine. Of course, it wasn't.
MLB.tv has a policy that blacks out local teams' games, as the program cannot compete with the local market TV broadcast. This means that everywhere in New England, Sox games are not aired. I don't need to tell you where Providence is, but I will: it's in New England, and it's in the Red Sox market.
I called the MLB.tv hotline and fumed as it played sound bites of past World Series games. There was no video in sight. Finally, someone picked up. I told him my problems and, surprisingly, he understood.
"I know; it sucks, man," he said.
"I just want to watch the Sox. That's all I want in life," I confided. He was now my best friend. Then I had a thought: "How the hell do they know where I am?"
"It's just your billing address."
There was a silence as we both considered this.
"So if I have an out of region credit card, I can watch the Sox games?"
"I would give it a try," he said.
With new hope, I obtained a credit card with a Texas billing address and gave it another go, sure that this loophole would work You can write the next sentence.
I called the hotline again, but this time it wasn't my friend.
"My billing information is in Texas, but I can't watch the Sox games," I said.
"Where are you?"
"...Providence."
"Well that explains it."
"But I thought my billing information determined the blackout rules."
"They check your IP address."
They knew where I was. There was no escaping it. My friend had been wrong: There was no loophole. On the phone with this person, who clearly was not my friend, I felt a growing terror. I was going to have to listen to the radio.
Thus began a new life - one marked by the nasal play-by-play of Joe Castiglione and the syrupy commentary of Jerry Trupiano. Sure, I respect these guys; they have been with the Sox for 22 years combined. But it's hard to watch the Sox and not see anything. Grammatically, it's a nightmare. Where were the overlaid stats? Where was Tom Caron roaming the stands and talking to fans? Where were the losers who wave at the camera while talking on their cell-phones? Damn it, where were the players?
Here's the thing about radio baseball: You rely completely on the announcers; their inflection changes each play. If they get excited, you get excited. If they express dismay, you break something.
But the snag is that they are watching the game from a booth.
Let's return to Saturday afternoon. The game is tied, 2-2, in the top of the 12th. It's as exciting as April baseball gets. Manny is at the plate. And the pitch...
"This is a ball..." - Joe's voice intensifies - "deep to center" - I'm now on my feet - "...off the wall!"
Off the wall? What? That was a home run, Joe. That ball left the Bronx!
Another hurdle has been my Sound Design clock-radio. This thing was futuristic in the 1950s, modern in the 1970s and now, it's a piece of crap from the 1980s. This artifact has zero signal, and I have to move it about my room to hear the game above the constant crackle. I imagine it's like being a radioman in Vietnam.
And yet, reluctantly, I've warmed up to Red Sox radio.
You can hear the faint murmur of the crowd, fly-overs and the crack of the bat. And, strangely, it almost sounds like the announcers are behind second base, and that the game is unfolding around them. Unlike TV, in which constant cuts, zooms, and flashbacks remind you that you are watching the game, radio puts you right there.
It's like you're in the stadium, but blind, and your two friends have to explain the action. Of course, your friends have statisticians and access to player-interviews. You rely on Joe and Jerry, but at least they have press credentials.
Even if I did adapt to the radio, you might wonder how I ended up in the hallway. Competing with a Croatian phone call, I decided to leave my room. I moved into the hallway, plugged in and sat on the floor.
This was, of course, very awkward. (You might not know Perkins, but it has the charm of a men's locker-room). When people passed by, I tried to explain what I was doing. This backfired. I ended up muttering inaudibly and looking like the creep I was. But I had a solution: I would go all-out.
I brought my chair and coffee table out and, like Kramer, annexed the hallway. All I needed was a screen door. This way I looked crazy, but not uncomfortable. Between my second and third grilled cheese, I felt that maybe I was on to something.
Before I knew it, I was holding a beer can like the grip of a bat, and waiting for the pitch as Varitek did. I wasn't even drunk. I was that into it. It's hard to explain, but there was something nice about not watching the game. Instead, I could put myself in it. Sure, I looked insane; I was. But the suspense of Joe and Jerry's every word justified it.
Then it dawned on me: a summer breeze came in from the window; the Perkins doors were the color of the Green Monster; the smell was that of urine and beer; the door behind me had a sign that read: SPRINKLER VALVE. Good lord, I was at Fenway. But more than that - I was the crazy man who listens to the game when he's at it.
With an injury report: Trot Nixon will be out another week.
Herald staff writer Charlie Vallely '06 did not hurt anyone while listening to the Sox game in the hallway this past weekend.
