On Sunday morning, all across the state, the voices started small: “Knock it off, you guys. Enough.”
But as the minutes dragged on with no end in sight, the cries got louder: “Stop talking! Focus on what’s happening! Watch the game!”
The broadcast started at 8:30 a.m. Hawaii time, and by 9 a.m. it was as though the individual protests had coalesced into one big frustrated scream: “JUST SHADDUP ALREADY!!!”
The boys from Hawaii were playing their second game at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., and the ESPN announcers, abetted by their parade of guests, were talking about just about everything except the game being played.
On the upside, the yackety-yak was a reprieve from the frequent mangling of players’ names like Ka‘olu Holt and Mana Lau Kong, or place names like Ewa Beach. But all the chatter was a distraction from the main reason, no the ONLY reason, people would tune in on a Sunday morning to watch a Little League baseball game: to watch the game.
| TUNE IN
>> What: Little League World Series, Staten Island (N.Y.) vs. Honolulu
>> When: 1:30 p.m. today
>> Channel: ESPN (Spectrum: 222; Hawaiian Telcom: 70)
|
And it wasn’t a boring game at all.
But those ESPN guys had so much to talk about, especially when Major League Baseball player Todd Frazier of the Mets showed up to relive when he played in the Little League World Series way back in 1998.
While the boys duked it out on the field, the on-air coverage took a long, circuitous trip down memory lane.
“So, what’s it like being back?” Frazier was asked.
It’s great. Really great.
“Does it look different?”
Oh yeah. There’s a new field where there used to be a parking lot.
“How much of that ’98 experience do you talk about with your buddies and bring into the clubhouse?”
Oh, all the time.
“When you look at the Little League players today and you remember who you played against in ’98, are they better now?”
They’re better. So much better.
“Wanna show us that old menu from your hometown restaurant with your picture on it from when you were 12?”
Yes, he did want to show the menu.
It went on and on.
When Frazier started singing the Jackson Five’s “ABC,” the song he had listed as his favorite back when he was a kid, it was like the section of social media devoted to all baseball moms in general (not specific to moms of boys on this team, just every mom who knows what it’s like to make trays of musubi, sit in the hot sun with visor-hair and cheer on tiny athletes for endless hours) just exploded. MAKE THESE PEOPLE STOP TALKING!
“Just turn off the sound,” one mom suggested on Facebook.
“No, but what if they say something about one of the Hawaii boys?” was the response.
True dat. Dang it. Gotta suffer through.
The thing is, all of the nostalgic banter with a hotshot major league player and the schmoozing with VIPs from the league wasn’t boring or banal in and of itself. It would have been charming, interesting stuff if used to fill the time when the game wasn’t actively being played.
But the game was being played.
Today at 1:30 p.m. Hawaii time, the Hawaii team plays against a team from New York. Hopefully the team from ESPN will have brushed up on the pronunciation of players’ names, and the voices of the fans who just want to focus on the game will have reached the producers’ ears. Let them fill airtime with interviews of dignitaries when there’s a lull in the action. Let the game coverage be about the actual game.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
