Last week, we had another of Mike Chamernik’s “Question of the Week” series, the response was great, and Mike is back again with his next question.
by Mike Chamernik
I wanted to watch the Packers-Eagles game on Friday night, but it was one of the handful of streaming service-exclusive games the NFL has scheduled this year. I don’t have Peacock (and I didn’t want to spend $8 on it for one night), so I listened to the game on the radio instead.
Do you listen to sports on the radio? What are some other ways you follow a game if you can’t watch it? Whether because you’re multitasking, or not near a TV, or the game is blacked out, or for whatever other reason.
What are some of your favorite memories of listening to sports on the radio? And what lengths have you gone to in following a game if you can’t watch live? Years ago we had sports phone and the score ticker; nowadays we have game tracker apps.
I refuse (I know, I know) to have any streaming services, so I couldn’t watch the game either. Fortunately, there were lots of other games to keep me entertained, but I did find myself using ESPN’s GameCast to track the progress of the game. It wasn’t ideal, but like I said, there were other things (baseball, U.S. Open tennis) to keep me entertained. I do listen to a fair amount of sports on the radio — baseball being far and away my favorite — and I’ll even occasionally listen to the radio broadcast with a live game on the TV (unfortunately, synching isn’t always ideal). And I will definitely listen to a game I can’t get on TV on occasion.
Can’t wait to hear the readers’ responses! OK guys…fire away!
Born in 1995 to a soccer family in Toronto. We listened to baseball games and the occasional hockey game in the car, but I’ve definitely never listened to a broadcast at home.
To this day, my brother generally prefers listening to sports talk radio over music while driving, even for sports he doesn’t follow (like the NFL), which I find absolutely baffling.
i consider myself a big music fan but also prefer sports talk over music in the car
I get your brother. Radio stations of all genres play the same 40-ish songs all day. Especially the “classic” stations.
Sorry, I didn’t mean music on the radio. He NEVER listens to that. I meant playing music from his phone vs. listening to sports radio.
I see. Well, I get sick of my own playlists as well haha
When the Browns finally ended The Jinx (Cleveland lost the first 14 or so times they played at Three Rivers Stadium), my dad had muted the TV and put on the radio because he had a feeling we were going to win and he wanted to hear the radio voice of the Browns, Nev Chandler, call the victory.
Also, my dad told me that when he was 17 years old he worked at an A&P. He said the only time he ever showed up late for work was when he was listening to the Tribe game on his drive in and heard Rocky Colavito hit his third home run. He got to the A&P and sat in his car, waiting to hear if Colavito could hit his fourth home run (he did).
I listen to all Browns games on the radio and synch it up with the TV. Even the big prime-time games.
Unfortunately, long-time Browns radio play-by-play guy Jim Donovan had to retire earlier this month because of illness, and he was positively great! I listened to the new guy — Andrew Siciliano — last Sunday and he was pretty good, so I’ll keep doing that.
(This may sound like total b.s., but it’s true. When the Browns wore those abominable uniforms — “forward-looking” in the words of former GM Joe Banner — from 2015 through 2019, I couldn’t stand to look at them. So I listened to all games on the radio while I putzed around the house and pretended the new unis never happened. My wife loved the fact that I was doing something useful on Sunday afternoons!)
I also enjoy listening to Guardians day games on radio while I’m doing yardwork. Tom Hamilton is also great.
In fact, Cleveland has had a long history of absolutely terrific radio play-by-play guys — Gib Shanley and Nev Chandler (Browns), Jimmy Dudley and Hamilton (Indians/Guardos), and Joe Tait (Cavs.)
To be 100% honest, I didn’t even know that games were still on the radio.
I live in Michigan, and rarely get my beloved Bills 1pm games on local tv. So there are times where I might “hypothetically” find it streaming on a sketchy site online, and run an HDMI cable to my tv. Purely hypothetical of course.
But I have cherished memories of spending the night at my grandparents in California as a kid in the late 80s/early 90s and listening to the last few innings on the Angels games on the radio in my room after it was Bed Time
In Chicago (where I am), all the local college and pro teams have their games on the radio. I was surprised to see that a national NFL game was on the radio.
I live near Denver and besides the local college and NFL games, the national NFL night games are always on radio here.
I grew up in Cleveland suburbs in 80’s/90’s.
Listened to a lot of radio games then.
At that time MISL (later known as MSL indoor soccer) was huge in Cleveland and only showed approximately 1 out of 4 games on TV. Most games I would turn on the clock radio and listen. I even took a trip outside of Detroit to visit family friends and worked hard on our friend’s clock radio to hear the game on the Cleveland station. Lots of fuzziness but got enough clear spots that I had a nice evening.
In 1997 I made sure to listen to Herb Score’s final call which was Game 7 of the World Series. I left a small bit early from a friend’s wedding reception to make sure I got home to listen to his last call. (Too bad Jose Mesa gave up that hit in the 9th otherwise it would have been the greatest party the next day.)
Moved to Philadelphia as an adult
In 2008 World Series Game 5 (part 2) again came home early from an even to make sure to listen to Harry Kalas Phillies winning call as it was just the perfect moment.
Last 2 events watched TV with no sound. I wish the National Broadcast had the ability to change the sound to the local radio embedded into all games. Man it would be so much better to listen to Merril Reese rather than the National announcers.
For baseball and hockey, I prefer radio broadcasts. Before the digital era, with its seemingly random multi-second broadcast delays, my favorite way to watch baseball was to have the game on TV on mute and the radio supplying the audio. That’s how I experienced both Game Seven World Series victories of the Twins in 1987 and ‘91. The latter is my favorite radio moment: The Twins scored their 10th inning walkoff and play-by-play man Herb Carneal called the play and then quickly stopped talking and let the thunderous noise of the cheering crowd wash over the broadcast. I’d been to a game earlier in the series and that moment felt like being at the Metrodome in person. Just magical.
A very good soccer play-by-play broadcaster can make that a great radio sport, but the average broadcaster makes for a terrible game. The standards for hockey broadcasters seem much higher; I can usually feel like I know exactly where the puck is, who has it, and who’s moving and how around the rink. With an average soccer broadcast, I often can’t be sure which team has the ball and on what half of the field, much less which players have it and how formations are shifting. Maybe that’s an artifact of the modern game, which increasingly emphasizes quick passing, so I can see it being harder for broadcasters to keep up and stay a step ahead of the game in the way that is easy in baseball and that hockey broadcasters seem to have figured out.
Ron Weber, the original Capitals announced, was fantastic on radio. It seemed effortless, he was always on top of it.
Current Caps radio voice John Walton is good if you can get past the classic rock dj voice
is there an app that you are able to listen to soccer games on?
Sirius/XM is where I’ve tied to listen to soccer on radio. Honestly the TV audio does a better job most of the time with keeping player-on-the-ball names updated.
thank you.
I like listening to sports while driving, particularly the Red Sox and the Patriots. I don’t have any TV service, and just Netflix and Prime for streaming, so I don’t watch anything at my own home. But I don’t miss it. I like reading about the games.
When I was a kid back in the 70s and 80s I would listen to the Sox on the radio when I went to bed. Back in ’75 in Maine we didn’t get a lot of games over the air and we didn’t have cable, and I recall following pretty much that entire season on the radio. Freddy Lynn’s 10-RBI game vs. Detroit. Rick Wise losing a no-no on a George Scott tater in the 9th. What a year!
I don’t go out of my way to listen to a game on radio but I spend such little time in my car (daily work drive is 7-10 minutes) that I listen to one of the local sports stations. Whatever is on there is what I have in the background.
I only listen to games on the radio when I am in my car. My memory is when studying for 1st term law school exams in early January 1982. I was listening to the Bucs-Cowboys game on the radio; it was a rout. When it ended I said to myself “I need a total break from studying. I’m going to watch the next game on TV.”
I’m still glad I did; the next game was “The Epic in Miami”.
Epic in Miami, one of the greatest games ever link
Wild that San Diego went from extremely hot and humid one week, to the Freezer Bowl the next
Used to listen to the Big Red Machine games with my half-brother’s grandma while she kicked my ass at cribbage back in the day. Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall did the play-by-play and color commentating. Good memories.
Before that I used to listen to Dayton Gems and Cincinnati Swords hockey games on radio in the winter.
Now, if I’m driving and can pick up the broadcast while Cleveland is playing, I’ll listen to baseball, otherwise I just listen to music on radio.
Cribbage is the best
I’ve been arguing in Nebraska (during our run of dark football times) that people should turn to the radio to find ways to enjoy the game again. I used a couple of free trials to watch the first two games of the season, but have already decided I will go radio for the next two (Northern Iowa and Illinois). Both games would likely have been radio-only in my youth (pre-CFA) and I like the idea of experiencing the season that way again.
Living in Wisconsin, if I’m driving around during a Brewers game, I’ll occasionally turn on the Brewers broadcast just to hear Bob Uecker. I feel kinda lucky that I still get to listen to him calling games — and calling them *well* — after all these decades with him at age 90.
Otherwise, I’ll listen to the Vikings/Twins/Packers/Badgers if a game is happening while running errands/etc. (western Wisconsin has local affiliates for all those teams).
Most of my radio broadcast listening comes from games on ESPN because I largely can’t stand their commentators and so I usually listen to the radio broadcast (usually Virginia, sometimes Iowa) watching the TV broadcast. I actually don’t quite sync it and like it to be two or three seconds ahead.
I also use radio to multitask (often when one of the above and the Capitals are involved), watching one and listening to another.
Favorite show that I have no stake in is Germany’s Bundesligakonferenz (link), which puts a reporter at all the men’s Bundesliga games that start at 3:30 local and has them shout over each other. It’s a fun time.
My brother is a Schalke fan and, to follow a German team outside of the men’s Bundesliga, you largely have to speak German because radio broadcasts are usually your only choice. ESPN+ only streams two men’s 2. Bundesliga games per week and nothing below that.
I also sometimes like to put on Twitter notifications for an account that is livetweeting something that I can’t watch, although that’s mostly for motorsports.
Single greatest memory is the 2019 Tottenham/Ajax men’s UEFA Champions League semifinal second leg (link), where I was on a train and the stream I was listening to went out about a minute before the winning goal. Farthest-flung station is 6PR in Perth for the Australian Football League (only when the start is at the right time).
I sometimes do the radio/TV combo and I like the radio feed to be a few seconds ahead, too. Especially if I’m working. If I hear something exciting happening, I can look to my TV and see what’s up.
I regularly listen to the Yankees on the radio. Growing up in the Philly area, to me summer sounds like John Sterling on a very shaky AM radio signal. Part of the reason I still listen to the Yankees but not the Giants or Rangers is that baseball definitely lends itself to radio, as well as the size of the season. I can make time 17 days a year to watch the Giants, and make time to probably watch half of the Rangers games. But making time to watch 162 games is just impossible.
I always thought Sterling and Kay sounded great on AM. I wonder if they wrecbetter broadcasters then or I was just younger and less discerning.
John Sterling is a national treasure. Sad he retired this year (although I believe he’ll be back for another series or two and any Yankees playoff games).
Kay is just a blowhard and not a very good broadcaster. Can’t believe ESPN let him anywhere near their booth.
He might be a treasure now, but back when he was the radio voice of the Islanders it was grating to listen to the “ISLANDER GOAL! ISLANDER GOAL! ISLANDER GOAL!” call – I’d rather listen to Stan Fischler on the TV broadcasts (and that ain’t saying much) ;-)
I mostly listen to the Nats on radio – better broadcasters than MASN.
I have a very fond memory of listening to a no-hit bid during the 2019 NLCS at a cookout – great communal experience
If a game’s on while I’m in the car, I’ll definitely have it on. And I’ve occasionally had Tigers day games on the radio at work. At home I’m less likely to put the radio on, but I’ll pull up Audacy or iHeart to listen to out-of-market games of interest that I don’t have on TV (particularly Penguins games, though the broadcasts aren’t the same since Mike Lange retired).
As a kid I listened to a *lot* of Tigers and Red Wings games on the radio. Of course, we had play-by-play legends in Detroit with Ernie Harwell for the Tigers and Bruce Martyn for the Red Wings.
Being a Dolphins fan in Ohio, I will listen to their radio broadcasts on occasion. It really depends on what is going on that day. I’ve tried to listen while watching whatever is on locally, but I cannot focus doing that. I so like to listen to baseball broadcasts. When I go out to mow the yard I like to do it later in the day and then listen to the Gaurdians game while I mow.
My best radio broadcast memory is from 2007. My wife and attended an early season Indians game and decided to check in on the Cavs playoff game against Detroit on our hour drive home. We then got to listen to the late, great Joe Tait call the game as LeBron scored 25 straight points to help the Cavs get the W. Joe Taits way of describing what was going on, while calling the game by himself made it feel like you were watching the game with him in your living room. It was amazing.
Born in 1978. I listened to Orioles games in the car with my father and on my radio under my pillow in the bed all through my childhood! When I’m out and about, and not watching the game on my phone, I will listen to the radio broadcast. My son (9 years old) asked me how I know what’s going on, and I told him to just listen and picture it. He enjoys football and said he can kinda see it, but he would of course rather watch it on TV. His childhood is ruined LOL
Whenever I have football (soccer) commentary on in the car, my 12 year old son talks right over it and then keeps asking what happened.
Either no patience or no concept of what it means to listen to a game, or both!
is there a phone app that has free soccer game commentary, like a radio?
I live in the UK, so radio stations for soccer are BBC 5 Live or Talksport. I haven’t tried any Apps, but most radio stations do have apps, so that’s probably best place to start.
Another great Question of the Week.
I remember listening to the first Ali-Frazier fight on the radio. I think the only way to see it was to go to a movie theater, where it was seen via closed circuit.
I really enjoy Baseball, Football and Hockey on the radio. Doing yard work or out for a drive. I remember being young and hearing during a hockey game “That shot hit traffic out front” and thinking that “Traffic” was the name of a player on the other team who blocked a lot of shots.
This is a terrific question. 5 years ago I got so sick of trying to navigate app subscriptions and streaming viruses that all I do now is listen to live games on turner. It is very peaceful as I will sit on the back porch watching a sunset or doing dishes painting a picture of the game in my head. I am from Michigan so Dan Dickerson is hall of fame quality (student of Ernie Harwell). I also recommend listening to college football on the radio, the crowd noise is way better then tv and makes a midwest autumn come alive!
Whenever I have football (soccer) commentary on in the car, my 12 year old son talks right over it and then keeps asking what happened.
Either no patience or no concept of what it means to listen to a game, or both!
Don’t recommend writing a comment on a phone… too easy to reply to a different comment than the one it was meant for!
Sitting outside and listening to a game is wonderful. And listening while doing chores is pretty great as well
My dad always listened to games on the radio, so when I was working out in the yard with him or when Kansas games weren’t available on our TV we would listen to them. My favorite sports on the radio moment was the #1 Kansas vs. #2 Oklahoma triple overtime game in 2016. It was an absolutely wild game called by a Jayhawk radio legend, Bob Davis. It was one of the last days I was home before returning back to college over Christmas break, and was a crazy experience to not be able to see it but to hear everything.
My most vivid memory of a radio broadcast was Dave Righetti’s July 4th no-hitter of the Red Sox. I was in New Hampshire (Hampton Beach) and was listening to the Boston announcers. I can’t say I’ve listened to more than a handful of broadcasts, but I always liked the way Jim Carvellas (?) described the Knicks as “moving from left to right on your radio dial”.
Good stories, everyone!
My baseball team (Brewers) and my local teams (Cubs and White Sox) all have excellent radio booths. I’m not a Cubs fan but I love listening to Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer. They have such great chemistry. Sometimes it’s like, this baseball game is getting in the way of Pat and Ron’s banter.
MLB has a new 3D Gameday thing which is kinda trippy. Still more “gee whiz!” than it is practical.
link
I listen to maybe 80% of my football (soccer) team’s matches on the radio. Here in the UK all 3 p.m. kickoffs are blacked out and the vast majority of the rest of the matches are broadcast on subscription services (which I refuse to pay for) so radio’s the only option. In a lot of ways I prefer it to watching, there’s something comfortingly old-school about it that I like.
In college I worked at a terrible Mid-western riverboat casino and my favorite thing was trying to tune in to distant radio stations rebroadcasting baseball games. (I was supposed to watch people count money, but that is incredibly boring so I usually ignored my job duties and did homework and listened to the radio instead.)The best was when I could find a Dodgers affiliate so I could listen to Vin Scully tell stories. This eventually morphed into trying to find the craziest overnight talk radio show, not a difficult thing to do. It’s amazing what bounces off the ionosphere late nights.
I love catching a distant AM signal.
I once was able to listen to a Cleveland game broadcast in suburban Chicago… and it wasn’t even late at night or anything. The signal just came through that night.
I have the MLB TV season pass and watch almost every available Phillies games. However about a dozen times during the season I switch the audio feed to the local Philly radio broadcast. I do this escape having to listen to the insufferable Ruben Amaro Jr. when he teamed up with Tom McCarthy.
Ruin Tomorrow Jr, my favorite derisive nickname
Growing up in the 80’s I listened to a lot of Vin Scully Dodgers games. Those memories all run together. But the radio story that sticks out is September 8, 2011. The night of the 2011 Southwest blackout when much of California and Arizona went dark for the entire night. It was also opening night of the NFL. So I took my Sirius radio battery operated boombox onto the porch and listened to the Packers beat the Saints 42-34. It was a memorable way to spend the blackout and then my first kid came along in 2012 so my life has been very different since then.
My power went out during the Seahawks-Packers game in 2003/04 (the “We want the ball and we’re gonna score” game). I listened to WTMJ to follow along.
I’m old enough, 66, that I listened to the Dodgers World Series games in 1965 & 66 at school on a transistor radio with a single ear piece. Amazing that they played day games during the week when people were at work or school. It was a huge plus living in Southern California and having the best baseball and basketball announcers with Vin Scully and Chick Hearn. Vin was so good that he would be on the air without a color commentator. The way he would paint a picture of the game was a thing of beauty and a real art form.
Now, the only time I listen to a sporting event on the radio is if I’m in the car.
I’m pretty old, so I grew up in a time when there was little TV coverage of my local baseball team. So it was radio virtually every day/night! I’d fall asleep in summer listening to whatever game I could pull in, if my local team wasn’t playing.
Nowadays I don’t listen to many games on radio. Mostly while driving I’ll listen to the local teams, but sometimes if I’m doing something away from the TV (e.g. washing dishes) I’ll tune in the local baseball team. I also have the MLB Extra Innings package so again if I’m away from the TV, doing yardwork or household chores, I have the option of listening to any team’s radio broadcast through my phone.
Very few can match Merrell Reese call an Eagles game – YMMV.
Prefer to listen to a NASCAR Cup race on radio/app these days…out-of-doors as background noise mostly.
When I was younger and we’d make the trip up to Pocono, our designated driver insisted on leaving with 25 to go so we could get home at a decent hour. Would tune in the race on the ride back. I remember one time losing the broadcast in the Lehigh Tunnel and had to wait til we exited to hear who’d won.
Have fond memories as I kid listening to Harry and Whitey (and to a lesser extent Gene Hart) call west coast games as I listened on my phony Sony Walkman and I drifted off to sleep.
Neglected to mention that Merrill always makes it a point to describe both the Eagles and their opponent’s uniforms!
As to lengths I’ve gone for a game I can’t watch live, that’s rarely a problem these days thanks to mobile apps and social media. But back in the day, 2003-05, I lived in the Netherlands. Most evening baseball games happened 1-4 am Continental time, and even for Twins playoff games, I wasn’t going to get up for that. Back then, there was no centralized, league-controlled and -monetized audio service. Streaming video was still a future technology, but most radio stations were putting raw broadcast feeds on the web for free. So I would find a radio station carrying a game – WCCO at the time for Twins games – and then start playing the station’s audio on my computer and set up an audio recorder to start at first pitch time and run for usually 4 hours. Then in the morning I’d drag the audio file to my Jukebox MP3 player and listen to the game at my leisure. This was pre-iPod, just barely. That’s how I experienced the Red Sox’s stunning ALCS comeback and their World Series win in ’04. For Game Seven of the ALCS, I was listening in a sushi bar the next evening and when some other expats discovered what I was doing, we hooked my player into the restaurant sound system and listened to the last few innings of the game together.
I don’t listen to games on the radio very often. I have the Sirius Radio sports addon package and used to enjoy tuning in to Dodger games late in the evening to hear Vin Scully. I also listened to NY Ranger radio broadcasts but I can watch those now on ESPN+ which is much cheaper than NHLTV was.
My favorite memories of listening to sports on the radio are:
1) Putting the kitchen radio in the window of our home on the Jersey Shore and pulling in Orioles broadcasts with the great Chuck Thompson at the mike.
2) Listen to NY Giants football home games with my Dad in the late 50s and early 60s when they were blacked out in the NY area.
3) Listening to Stan Lomax on WOR doing his 15-minute sports report every evening during dinner time. His distinctive voice and delivery is etched in my brain and I can still ‘hear’ him giving recaps of the afternoon’s ballgames and giving a rundown of the evening games including each team’s starting pitcher. He’d been a sportswriter who had entered the world of radio very early doing all manner of play-by-play and had one of the longest-running daily shows in broadcasting history by the time he retired
I listened to the CU Buffaloes – NDSU Bison football game a week ago on my Amazon Alexa speaker and at every hour and half hour there was an 8-minute block of ads. It was the same thing when I listened through the radio website on my phone (AM 850 KOA). It really ruined the game.
I’ve listened to many Dodger games at home on the radio to hear the smooth sounds of the one and only Vin Scully. I miss those days tremendously.
One way to circumvent needless streaming subscriptions is to hop on TikTok and search the live feeds for the game. That’s how I watched the game in Brazil.
One of my greatest joys in life is sitting outside with a bag of peanuts and a beer or two listening to a Detroit Tigers game on the radio. At my workplace we have a Tigers opening day celebration with a catered lunch (hot dogs of course) and the game on the projector screen TV in the lunchroom. The game is also played over the building sound system instead of the soft rock music that’s piped in. One specific radio memory I have is listening to the end of Super Bowl XXV in my car. I was working that day and on my break I went to my car to listen to the game.