Every year on the opening day of baseball season, Carl Grapentine, the morning radio personality on WFMT classical music in Chicago dedicates his entire drive time to the sport. He does similarly themed shows for other events throughout the year (I always enjoy the communist work songs on Labor Day), but the baseball show is particularly stellar. In addition to various renditions of �Take me out to the ballgame,� including one by, as Grapentine described him on this morning�s broadcast, �the late baritone Harry Caray,� are inserted assorted radio dramas and comedy routines. A musical version of Casey at the Bat narrated by James Earl Jones. Abbot and Costello�s �Who�s on First� routine. Excerpts from the broadcast of the legendary 1951 playoff game with �The shot heard round the world,� (The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!). My favorite, though, is a sketch by Canadian comedy duo Wayne & Shuster entitled �The Shakespearean Baseball Game� which approximates the conversation during a game by stringing together assorted Shakespearean references, such as:

Manager: A hit, a hit a very palpable hit!

Umpire 1: Foul ball!

Manager: Foul Ball? He called that foul?
A plague upon him. That ball was fair!

Rocky: Fair it was indeed.
You, sirrah, that ball was fair!

Umpire: That ball was foul!

Rocky: So fair a foul I have not seen!
Ancient knave with heart as black
As coat you wear upon your back,
Get thee a pair of glasses, get thee
To an optometrist!

[This excerpt is taken from a complete downloadable script available at the above link].

Geeky humor, I know, but I am entertained nonetheless. It�s not that I�m such a huge baseball fan, but I�ve been swept up in the mythology of the game by my husband�s enthusiasm. For him, the game is about his childhood playing baseball in the park across the street from his house, trying to keep up with his brothers who are a decade older than he. It�s also about his relationship with his father, who died when he was in college, and the time they spent listening to the White Sox games on AM radio on summer evenings and trying to catch foul balls at the old Comiskey Park. Now it is also about indoctrinating our son into this ritual of boyhood. AJ can already imitate to perfection the vocal tics of the game announcers: �You can putitontheboaaaarrrrd�..YES!� AJ�s sporting one of his many Sox T-shirts today, all gifts from his uncle. If you ask him why he�s wearing that shirt, he will look at you like you�ve asked him the stupidest question imaginable and say, �Because it�s opening day. Go Sox!�

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