Long Day Done

 

This gentleman figures in our tale this evening.
A certain Scully, Vincent E.
(George Rose/Getty Images)

"I'm home."

That's the text I fired off at the conclusion of a long day.

There was a script to read and a radio show to host and a class to teach and driving to do.

It was a full day.

All are done.

Finally.

It's a grind. That's what the day-to-day is. We all deal with it. Everyone has their daily grind.

Mine changes daily.

Today started with a pre-conference script read for Hunt Scanlon's conference next week. It's good to be face-to-face with the team and go over the pronunciations that are bound to trip me up. But so long as I say the namesakes of the company correctly I should have that going for me, right?

Oh, wait. Yeah, I once screwed that up.

And I will never -- no, literally, never -- live that down.

Today's read overall went without incident and included some good laughs to keep things light.

We'll be ready next week.

Eventually, I had to trudge to Stratford for class. I also hosted "Doubleheader" from the classroom.

Then. I rambled about the affairs of sports radio for 3.5 hours to the students.

At first, it had the feeling of being a night of sports talk. The students were very willing to act like this was a talk show and debated topics from the basics (Lebron/Jordan) to other silly sports arguments.

Eventually, I got us back on track and we spent our time reviewing what goes into good sports radio. As is my thing, that includes spending a few minutes on my favorite topic: play-by-play.

And, of course, our dearly departed Vin Scully.

My tradition is that every class of mine gets to hear the eight minutes that encapsulate the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game. It remains the very peak of my "Mount Rushmore" of play-by-play calls because of the pure poetry contained within. The level of detail is unmatched along with classic Scully lines like my personal favorite: "And there's 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies."

Poetry. 

It's rare when someone listens to it and isn't impressed but we also dabbled into the Hank Aaron 715th home run and the Kirk Gibson World Series home run. When we got to the Mookie Wilson/Bill Buckner play, I chose to let Jack Buck have that moment fearing I had buried them in all things Vin.

Given I don't know that much about Scully as an "east coaster."

It was important to impress upon them that they need to learn how to describe things and that's why I think everyone should start with radio. The skill of describing is an important one.

And that the broadcast isn't about them. Or me. As such, I used Scully and others to foster my belief in silence in big play-by-play moments. Call it and get out of the way. Let crowd noise be your friend.

So there was also Al Michaels being miraculous and an earthquake to discuss and other topics of the evening.

I worry every time. I fear I'm not reaching the students. I worry that they're bored or they're not getting what they want out of the class.

But I must have done something right because one of the students -- non-sports fan, mind you -- said he really enjoyed it, learned a lot, and found me entertaining.

Huh. Who knew?

The drive home was just that: the drive home. Get on 95 at Exit 32 and hope the construction didn't slow things down. In fact, I was home in roughly a half-hour.

A black cat looked out at me as I ambled along on the sidewalk toward the front door.

He was happy I was home. 

So was Sean.

More chaos awaits tomorrow.