When I was 11 years old, I used to stay up each night in the summer until 10:53 to watch the 6-minute long SportsWrap segment on KTVU Channel 2. I stayed up because I wanted to know what happened in the world of sports, and there was no other way to find out that night other than watching it on TV. There was no internet. We did not have ESPN or any other cable channels for that matter. And most A’s games were not on local TV. So I waited semi-patiently through the first 53 minutes of local news (again, no cable), flipping over every so often to UHF channels trying to catch a random episode of Jerry Springer or Baywatch or something else with girls in bikinis (I was 11). Just so I could get sports scores that night from the only source I could figure: the KTVU newsdesk. Featuring Mark Ibanez. Larry Beil. Fred Ingles. All the greats.
The real thrill came on Sunday or Saturday night: a 2-segment sportswrap that started at 10:45. Or maybe a weekday segment that went past the top of the hour to about 11:03. An extra 3 minutes of sports highlights? With a punchbowl full of Lucky Charms (a story for another day)? I’m livin’ the life! says 11-year-old me. Of course, the other option was calling a friend who may have watched the game. Hanni, Larry, my brother Eddie. Maybe Anthony. I liked finding out before 10:53 sometimes. But I would stay up anyway to get a feel for the win or loss.
Now, when I want to know if the A’s won, I can open my phone and find out in about 15 seconds. I use ESPN.com to find the exact score and a game recap. It’s easier but a little less thrilling. And it’s not a taste, either: it’s a buffet of information. The greatest thing about baseball is the amount of information recorded. It’s also the most pointless thing to consume if you don’t need to.
Recently, I’ve been trying to recapture a little bit of that thrill of not knowing everything. No, I won’t wait until 10:53 to find out what happened, but I’ll flip open twitter on my phone and start with the most recent updates. I’ll scroll down and inevitably get to a tweet by a A’s beat writer referring to something that happened in the game. It doesn’t always include the score, and I like that. For example:
This post doesn’t tell me exactly what happened, but I can glean that the A’s lost (again). After that, I won’t read anything more about the A’s until later that night or the next morning. It’s kind of like calling my buddy before 10:53 to find out what happened in the game; it’s just a little taste of the action–no score–and that’s all I should need until the kids are in bed and I have some time by myself. Makes me feel like a kid again, just a little bit, and I think that’s something we’re all trying to capture from time to time. I like the idea of not immediately knowing everything I want to know, or could possibly know, especially for something of low consequence. It’s a mental exercise for my patience muscle.
Checking scores on ESPN.com is not a bad thing by any means, especially when you’re trying to closely follow a game that’s currently on. But if I’m just checking scores after the fact in a 162-game season, I can stand to wait a few hours or even overnight. Sometimes I just want a taste.