Trumbull Wins ... I Lose

 

See the blue poncho? That was today's "booth."

We try.

Oh, we try hard every time.

And I go through the safety checks.

Is this plugged into that? Is the whatchamacallit connected to the doohickey?

In truth, is the mixer making the connection with the computer? Does the computer have enough battery strength? Are the microphones loud enough? Are we on the air?

Most of the time, it is. And it all works.

But a little bad weather can impact everything.

On the plus side of this tale, Trumbull is now 3-0 in the Little League 10U East Regional. They roared past Colchester, VT today 10-0. I was happy to be back on the call in Cranston, RI.

OK, first things first. I missed breakfast at the hotel and, well, I wound up at McDonald's. I'm not proud of that fact, to be clear. I'll try to do better tomorrow, but Sean and I texted each other about this. He's in the land of Waffle House and I'm not.

There's an IHOP near our hotel. So there's that.

But, breakfast procured, I took a walk around the Warwick Mall to stretch my legs and get a little exercise.

Then, it was onto the field.

We're going to battle rain all week, and the game that was supposed to be played at 11 this morning was moved to 1 p.m. due to heavy rain last night.

The crew at the park was still mowing and preparing the field as I walked over.

Soon, I was set up, using the Apache hard-sided case to keep the equipment dry.

Bob Gerbert was a surprise at the field and was able to join me for the broadcast. Only minutes earlier, I thought I'd be "Scullying" the call (aka working solo).

All seemed set. I passed our audio to Chris Anderson for the Gamechanger broadcast feed.

Yes, all was well. The internet signal was good and Mixlr had our audio.

A steady rain fell so I had to close the case to keep things dry. We went live as I played the opening music and aired the live feed of the lineup introductions.

Following the national anthem, I adjusted the volume, began talking, and closed the Apache case.

And, in the process, I must have closed the computer, thus taking us off the air on Robcasting.

I had no idea.

Of course, Gamechanger had the audience and I gather we could be heard loud and clear. But it took me reopening the case to check on things to make the discovery and get back on Robcasting.

The audio -- now archived -- has some of our audio but then there's a short gap before it picks up again later on.

I'll own the mistake and live and learn from it. I don't have an engineer to monitor the feed.

The weather and the setup of the fields don't make using the pod possible. It would block the view of someone and people don't take too kindly to that.

There is simply no opportunity to be in the "press" (ha ha ha) box.

So we'll adjust. We'll live and learn.

If you want to hear the full broadcast from today, you'll need to go to Gamechanger. 

If you want what we were able to record, it's in the Robcasting archive.

Tomorrow is another day.