Thursday, June 12, 2008
Hit by pitch with the bases loaded: the most exciting play in baseball
And it's even more exciting when it happens in the bottom of the 11th inning, thus becoming a walk-off hit by pitch, as it did in today's Braves-Cubs game.
I watched this game because Levi e-mailed me this morning to tell me that WGN was doing a "retro" telecast to commemorate their 60th anniversary of broadcasting Cubs games, in time for me to use DirecTV's web site to schedule my DVR to record it.
As it turned out, it was much less elaborate than when Fox gave the "retro" treatment to a Cubs-Dodgers game circa 2000. For the first two innings, WGN presented the game in black and white, with only a couple of camera angles; they also had their character generator on the simplest possible setting (white text only, but with a modern-day drop shadow), which continued through the entire game. And they used a cool "WGN 9 TV" logo that I hadn't seen before -- at least, I didn't recognize it from any of the old Chicago TV Guides I have in my collection.
Also, this was the AT&T poll (which should have been the "Bell System" poll, but I know it can be hard getting sponsors to go along with such things):
"Bikini" won in a landslide.
I watched this game because Levi e-mailed me this morning to tell me that WGN was doing a "retro" telecast to commemorate their 60th anniversary of broadcasting Cubs games, in time for me to use DirecTV's web site to schedule my DVR to record it.
As it turned out, it was much less elaborate than when Fox gave the "retro" treatment to a Cubs-Dodgers game circa 2000. For the first two innings, WGN presented the game in black and white, with only a couple of camera angles; they also had their character generator on the simplest possible setting (white text only, but with a modern-day drop shadow), which continued through the entire game. And they used a cool "WGN 9 TV" logo that I hadn't seen before -- at least, I didn't recognize it from any of the old Chicago TV Guides I have in my collection.
Also, this was the AT&T poll (which should have been the "Bell System" poll, but I know it can be hard getting sponsors to go along with such things):
Which of these new things are you enjoying the most?
A. Velcro
B. Vinyl 33-1/3 LP
C. Bikini
D. Scrabble
E. NASCAR
"Bikini" won in a landslide.
Labels: braves, cubs, directv, tv
