Mastersball

As a kid who loved baseball and lived in Los Angeles in the late 50's and early 60's my brother and I were big Dodger Fans. When school was out for the summer it was commonplace for us to go to sleep with the radio on with the voice of Vin Scully accompanying us to snoozeland.

We had one of those clock radios between the beds in our room that you could set so the radio would play for a set period of time before turning off automatically. Some nights we didn’t notice when the radio went off, already dreaming of our own hits in upcoming or future games; while on some nights I had to turn the radio back on if the game hadn’t finished and I was still awake.

Tuesday evening after a painful procedure earlier in the day I had to take some pain pills and hit the pillow early. So I turned on the MLB Network thinking I would hear a few scores and highlights before I turned the television off.

But an old friend greeted me – the network having switched to live coverage of the Giants at Dodger stadium and the dulcet tones of Vin caught me up on the game. Ryan Vogelsong, a pitcher on my XFL team was leaving the game in the eighth inning leading 2-1 but with the bases loaded. In came Javier Lopez to face the left hand hitting Andre Ethier. Scully not only described the Dodger’s Diamond Vision scoreboard showing Ethier hitting a grand slam home run from some earlier time but of course also noted that Lopez was the toughest pitcher in the National league facing LH hitters, holding them to just a .146 batting average over the past two years.

But Scully also weaves in a lot of personal information about certain players so last night his audience also learned that Lopez had a degree from Virginia University and that his wife had a doctorate counseling and psychology from the University of Tennessee.

More importantly I listened to Lopez retire Ethier and Juan Rivera and then after a quick top of the ninth inning by the Dodgers Javy Guerra (pronounced Geera) went back out to retire the left hand hitting Tony Gwynn Jr. and James Loney before giving way to Santiago Casilla to face Juan Uribe to attempt to win the game – Vin forgot to add that doing so would seal the win for Vogelsong as well as get me a save for my several Casilla teams.

But all the fantasies came together quickly as it took Casilla only two pitches to record those wins and saves as narrated by the legendary Dodgers’ announcer. A sound I enjoyed once again.

And then I had to reach over and turn off the television and try and find some different fantasies.