Play Ball!
- Ray DeGraw
- Jun 9
- 3 min read
June 9, 2025
The year was 1988, the Yankees were playing an afternoon game. I rushed home from school to catch the first pitch. A quick stop in the kitchen for an afternoon snack and some lemonade, and I had made it! I hit the power button on the television, I tuned into channel 11, and viola! The game was on. Oh how I miss the days when watching a sporting event on television wasn't such a baffling ordeal!
Fast forward to the year 2025...it's the future! Here we are! The first obstacle we face is the remote control. Where the hell is the guide button? The old remote said guide. Now it has a series of what seem like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Am I supposed to know what these pictograms mean? Did I miss the instructional class on modern remote symbology?
I have no frigging clue what channel the game is on today. One day it's Yes, another day it's Fox...perhaps ESPN has the game today? No, it's on frigging Apple TV. Do we have that? Are you fucking kidding me?! Okay, let me see if I can get a free trial...nope, you need to sign up for three months, and good luck trying to figure out how to cancel that when the day comes. I guess we have Apple TV now.
Okay, it took 45 minutes to figure this out and I've missed the first two innings, but now it's time to settle in and enjoy the game. Wait, what's going on with the screen? Why does the picture seem weird? My eyes hurt, what the hell is going on? A quick bout of research on the old Google machine and it tells me that the refresh rate on my television can't keep up with the fast moving world of sports. I have to adjust the Jutter. Jutter? What in God's name is that? Okay, some further research on the Google machine and it tells me I have to switch my TV to sports mode. Wait, my TV doesn't have sports mode! For fuck's sake!
After an hour of tinkering and finding menus I didn't know my TV had, and accidentally accessing secret government files in the process, I have made the picture a little bit better. But now the screen is so dark I can't even see the game. Jesus Christ! It's now the sixth inning. I don't even know what the score is! Okay, settle down, I can deal with this. I think there's some vodka left from Saturday night, maybe enough for one stiff martini. This is going to be nice, there are still three innings left.
One sip in, and the screen freezes. What's going on here? Why the hell did the game freeze? Why will the universe not let me watch this game? Why, why, why!? With my shoe now sticking out of what used to be my "high definition smart TV screen" I retire to the garage. I find an old beer in the mini fridge that was left over from last week's BBQ and I tune into the radio to blissfully listen to the last inning of play. Unfortunately, the post game show is on. I have missed the game.
Maybe one of these mysterious buttons on the remote will bring me back to 1988! A bowl of popcorn in my lap, an iced cold lemonade precariously perched on a coaster, and dad sitting in his chair. And get this, the Yankee game on TV. God, how I miss those days. Go Yanks! And what the hell did I do with that martini?
LOL!! OKAY two additional thoughts...
Your damn phone notifications or your friend who's texting you but your TV is 10-30 seconds behind them so you keep getting a notification BEFORE something big happens. Usually you don't think about this because it's not a problem until it's bottom of the 9th down or up by 1 and then (usually a MIL) texts "WOW can you believe it's going to extra innings?"
The sound is all of the sudden not synced. So do we want to restart the app and the tv and the sound bar and miss some of the game or have the announcers speaking way behind about previous plays? Or do we just mute it altogether...