Giamatti knew radio was best for baseball

Bart Giamatti from "Green Fields of the Mind:"

• "The real activity was done with the radio-not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television-and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come."

Which is why I prefer baseball on radio. XM interviewers and MLB publicity usually fail to identify baseball's "radio" broadcasters as such, only calling them "broadcasters." Too bad. Since the Yankee season is over in my opinion, I can focus on more important things like this. Mr. Giamatti's piece opens thusly:

• "It breaks your heart. It was designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone."

From "The Green Fields of the Mind," by A. Bartlett Giamatti (a Red Sox fan).

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