danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

The generation that first witnessed men fly heavier-than-air machines, then sixty years later reach the Moon and return safely to Earth, is no more.  The technological “giant leap” that endeavor required is still awesome to contemplate.  But the goal, however ambitious, was clear to many, even from aviation’s infancy.

I am not sure the same can be said of television.  Certainly, the generation that first developed the technology still lives.  But, unlike the pioneers of aviation who predicted space flight, I doubt many involved in the development of TV could have anticipated what the technology would look like today.  With the obvious exception of color broadcasts, my early TV experiences were probably not so different from those of kids growing up a generation before me.  Our set was fairly small, required an antenna, had no remote control, and received maybe four or five channels.  Today, though, TV is unlike anything I could have ever imagined.

While I was growing up, a 27″ television was considered very large.  A TV over 30″ was enormous.  Anything bigger than that–a projection TV, for example–was something you’d only see at a sports bar.  When I moved back to Gainesville in 2000, I bought a 27″ TV at Best Buy on Archer Road.  It was too big to fit in the back of my car, so Jeff and I took it out of its box, flattened that, and put the TV itself in the back seat.  I felt like a king with such a big screen.  For the first month I lived at 1600 4th Avenue North, I got free cable.  That is common in Gainesville, since everyone moves in August, and Cox often needs a month to connect new customers, and disconnect former customers.  Alas, they had cut me off just before the Sydney Olympics. Today I watch a TV larger than I ever thought I’d own.  And it looks better than I suspect anyone fifty years ago thought television could ever look.

On this enormous TV, I can choose from among a couple dozen high-definition channels.  Generally, I’ll choose PBS, or one of a handful of network shows that I enjoy.  We get a few movie channels in HD, too, which is nice.  In fact, I essentially avoid watching anything in low-def now.  I don’t mean to sound snooty about it, but once you have seen 1080p, 420i is unacceptable.  SDTV is the visual equivalent of hearing the latest digitally-mastered stereophonic recording played on an Edison wax cylinder.

One of the high-def channels we get is MLB, the Major League Baseball channel, and my interest in it came about in a strange way.

Repeats and syndication are probably as old as TV programming.  When I was very little, I remember watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and several other shows.  Later, when Nick at Night debuted, I loved The Patty Duke Show, The Donna Reed Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Lassie, Mr. Ed, and several others.  I spent whole summers watching these black and white sitcoms with my grandparents.  I noticed that any television show that enjoyed a decent run would eventually be syndicated.  I never thought, however, that repeats of sporting events would be broadcast.  “Why”, I wondered, “would anyone want to watch a game for which they already know the outcome?”

Then, a month or so ago, I was flipping through the guide on the DVR, and I saw a listing on the MLB channel advertising a repeat of a June 17, 1978 game between the Yankees and Angels in which Ron Guidry struck out eighteen batters.  Now, even though I knew exactly what to expect by watching the game, I watched it anyway.  And it was great.  So, last weekend, when MLB was showing a 1998 Cubs vs. Astros game in which Kerry Wood struck out twenty batters, I couldn’t resist.  This is curious, because feats of great pitching don’t become apparent to the live audience until late in a game.  Nevertheless, I wanted to watch a game for which I knew the distinctive feature, and for which I knew the outcome.  It makes no sense.  Last night, I watched game seven of the 1965 World Series, and followed it with a Bob Costas interview of three former Major League umpires.  It was fascinating.

But, most significantly, an MLB channel repeat of an episode from the 1994 Ken Burns documentary, Baseball, so enraptured me, that I straightaway went to the Smathers Library and checked out the entire series on DVD.  I loved all nineteen hours of it.  The history of baseball really is the history of our country, and while the business of professional baseball is ugly, the game of baseball remains one of man’s few perfect inventions.

Filed under: Nostalgia, Sports, Television on June 23rd, 2009