TAKE ME OUT TO THE RADIO
What’s the narrative of a baseball season?
How does the story of a game play out?
You can’t know until after it's over. It is the great paradox of sport. We spend the bulk of our time speculating about what will happen and a pittance reflecting, either in celebration or mourning, what did occur. The financial and emotional sports economy is built atop a lava dome of hopes about what might be. But a season’s indelible identity is the known result; a celebratory peak for only one team and a caldera of disappointment for all the others, including some beneath deep, cold waters.
It is the difference between what is possible against stark reality.
The well-worn sentiment of every Opening Day captures it: Hope. It may not spring eternal, but it is never greater than right before there is any contrary evidence available.
What does the season hold? Baseball is the OG reality show, all bases-loaded drama and triumph or else caught-looking third strike ennui and sadness, sometimes all in the same game. But it’s not scripted. There is no thumb on the scale in the editing room as there is on reality TV.
We have an idea of the arc of the 2026 baseball season. Gauging the likelihood of events, projecting how things are going to go. It is how we get through life.
Here is the the view from this moment the day before spring training games, and radio broadcasts of them, begin. The Los Angeles Dodgers are favorites to win the World Series for a third straight year, the first three-peat since the Oakland A’s did it in my childhood. Speaking of the A’s, they will compete for the worst record in baseball as they spend another year in the wilderness of Sacramento’s minor league stadium after abandoning Oakland and before they are presumably at home in Las Vegas. There is a strong correlation between payroll and victories and those two are on extremes of the continuum, rich and poor.
I have my ear on three teams and an amplified interest in the narrative arc of their seasons. A handful of others with specific players or circumstances pique my interest as well.
There is a familial bias here.
The St. Louis Cardinals, my ancestral team, are in a state I have never before experienced. They are in a complete, burn-down-to-the-foundation rebuild. The radio of Cardinals games on KMOX was a huge part of the first third of my life. Last year I listened to Cardinals games by tuning in to the opposing team’s broadcast.
The realistic outlook is to gain useful insights into young players and hope to avoid a hundred losses. Good lord, that’s depressing. Truth is, the attraction of the 2026 Cardinals is most the same pull we all have at a car crash. We don’t want to look, but we can’t help ourselves.
The Boston Red Sox last year were my favorite listen, not least because of Will Flemming. He’s my nephew and is the play-by-play guy on WEEI. The team was fun to follow and made it into the postseason for a brief look around before visit. There are young guys with great promise. The broadcast has fun. I can’t get enough of Lou Merloni. Will Middlebrooks makes you feel at home while he drops casual truth bombs. The two Wills complement one another.
The AL East division race could be spicy. It is possible the Red Sox, with a solid rotation of pitching, could contend. For sure, the radio calls will be fackin’ awesome.
The San Francisco Giants send me off to sleep about 60 times a year, with Dave Flemming, another nephew, and Jon Miller – the most polished and rewarding radio call in the Big Leagues. Because they play so many of their games on Pacific time, first pitch is often at 10 p.m. Eastern. While I am tucking in, other games are over and the Giants offer a beautiful conversation into slumber.
Tony Vitello is the sharp focus of the Giants’ season for me. Vitello came to the Giants to be manager from the college ranks where he was very successful with the Tennessee Volunteers, including a national championship in 2024. But he’s never been a Big League manager. He never played in the majors. (He is a St. Louis native, went to DeSmet and, after a circuitous route, lettered for three years at Mizzou.)
Buster Posey is the Giants president of baseball operations. I watched him play at Florida State and followed his stellar career with San Francisco. His choice of Vitello is a real revolution and an early referendum on Posey’s leadership. There have been reports in recent days Vitello is considering calling pitches from the dugout. I can picture very well how Buster would turn to look in to Mike Martin in the FSU dugout at Dick Howser stadium before every pitch.