I have always loved the radio.
When I was little, news radio was always playing in the background. Almost always AM, rarely FM. The crackly, grainy sound of AM waves might seem abrasive to new listeners, but to me, itās nostalgic. Itās comforting. It means youāre listening to something important.
While my mom made lunch, my brother and I would sit and listen to the ātop of the hourā news. We would tune into News Radio 780 at the first sign of a raindrop, wondering if the meteorologists would deliver news of an imminent storm warning. The radio was reliable, a source of knowledge always within reach.
I listened to the news well into my adult life, too. But after college, I branched out in the AM radio world: I tuned into baseball.
When I first started listening to Cubs games on the radio, I liked the fact that I was listening to something that was happening in real life, but I didnāt have to pay full attention to it. I would turn on 670 the Score on my drive home from work (the night shift) to stay awake and feel connected. I became familiar with the announcers and their inside jokes. The sounds of the show became synonymous with summer, and it reminded me of being at my grandparentsā house on summer nights with the Cubs on in the background on the TV.
But this summer, I like the radio-broadcast Cubs games even more than I ever thought I would.
While I have never been one to seek out crowds and large gatherings, the fact that big events arenāt even a possibility this year seems extra stifling. When I heard that Cubs games on the radio would come with their own specially-engineered (read: probably super fake) audience soundtrack in the background, I had low hopes. Would this be cheesy? Would it ruin the crackly AM radio vibes? Would it make 2020 that much sadder and lonelier?
But when you listen, the audience actually seems real. The sounds are convincing. It almost feels like 2019 (almost). The games are a refreshing distraction from everything else 2020 has delivered (while the baseball season hangs by a thread in the balance of a global pandemic).
While 2020 has made it clear that nothing goes exactly according to plan, I will enjoy the broadcasts while they last. Iāll pretend itās 2019 in the safest way possible. The only constant is change ā and the sounds of AM radio.
