Earlier this year, the lone Major League Baseball club outside of our borders, i.e. the Toronto Blue Jays, announced they were going to streamline their announcing arrangement by combining the television and radio audio into one. Our friends up north were generally not amused, especially Rush (the band) bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Geddy Lee. His own penchant for preferring multi-tasking notwithstanding, Lee quickly made his opinion known:

Some of my most memorable baseball memories were not from sitting in the stands or watching the game on the tube, but listening to the radio. Driving home from the cottage, I heard Dave Stieb’s heartbreaking first one-hitter.

There are nuances and descriptors that radio broadcasters share with their audiences that are simply not the same as a cabal of TV announcers, no matter how good they are. It’s a time-honoured craft that requires a special ability to bring to life what we at home simply cannot see. This is a bad and regrettable decision.