Academic, My Dear Watson!
Oct. 10th, 2011 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSurprisingly, this post has nothing to do with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Can't imagine writing anything about HIM....
I did make an unexpected decision to write something else, though- of a kind I've never written before.
Remember Teh Book? Not MSN3K, but the tribute book to fellow Mets blogger Dana Brand which a group of committed fans (and a probably-should-be-committed for how overloaded she is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
firynze) wrote, designed, edited and published barely six weeks after Dana's untimely death to pass out at his Mets memorial in mid-July.
One of the oft-mentioned tidbits in that collection was the fact that Dana, a professor at Long Island's Hofstra University, had been organizing a full-blown academic conference for next April, to recognize the Mets' 50th anniversary as a team and a cultural institution. One of the pieces we used even quoted the formal proposal for the event:
April 2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the New York Mets, one of the most popular and culturally significant baseball franchises.
On Thursday through Sunday, April 26-28, 2012, Hofstra University will host a conference to consider all aspects of the history and culture of the team. This will be the first multidisciplinary conference to consider every aspect of a Major League Baseball franchise.
Expected participants at the conference will include current and former members of the Mets’ organization; baseball executives, journalists, broadcasters, and analysts; baseball scholars, historians, and cultural critics; and writers, artists, filmmakers, cartoonists, bloggers, collectors, and fans.
Presentations will be accepted on the basis of 300-500 word abstracts submitted by December 1, 2011.
Possible topics include: The Origins of the Mets; The Roots, Myths and Evolution of Mets Fandom; Defining Individuals in Mets History; Mets Icons, Symbols and Mascots; The 1969 Mets Season: How It Happened, What It Meant to People, and How It Survives as a Cultural Metaphor; The Mets in Subsequent Eras; The Mets and Queens; The Mets and Long Island; The Mets and New York Baseball; The Mets in Film; The Mets in Literature; The Mets and the Culture and Politics of New York City; Mets Broadcasting; Mets Journalism; Famous Fans; The Mets and New York’s Ethnic and Cultural Communities; Defining Moments in the History of the Mets; Mets Controversies; Shea Stadium; The Mets Blogosphere; The Pleasures and Perils of Professional Baseball in New York; and Covering a Baseball Team in the Unique Media Environment of New York.
I met one of Dana's fellow faculty members at the Mets game following the memorial, and he assured me that the con was on- with the backing of the University's president, no less, who'd announced that it would be dedicated to Dana's memory. Since that moment (indeed, even before we lost Dana when I first heard him speaking of it), I've wanted to contribute to the record of the conference, but didn't have my niche yet.
Today, though? I do. It's a little obscure, but hey, there are gonna be graduate students there. Can't get too obscure, canya?
Um....
I didn't get to meet Howie, the Mets' radio play-by-play guy, when I attended the memorial. (I did get to meet Gary Cohen, his television counterpart. He's generous, modest and yet conveys the presence you'd expect of the voice most responsible for the world knowing who those 25 guys in orange and blue on the field are and what they're doing.) I still seek out Howie's call of the games, on the loud and sometimes clear-channel radio signal based in New York, when I'm in my car late at night to see how the Mets are doing. Yet every broadcast, close to 20 times a game, he and the other Mets radio broadcasters lie to us. They end each half inning, and other station breaks, by telling us we're listening to "the WFAN Mets Radio Network."
Best as I can tell, there is no such thing. Websites which track baseball radio broadcasts reveal only two stations carrying Mets games: WFAN itself, and a Spanish-language station, also Nueva York based, with different announcers. This represents a major change over the 50-year life of this ballclub. In at least one scorecard I still have from the early 1970s, the network really WAS a network: 23 different radio stations, 14 in New York State alone, bringing the sounds of the game from Syracuse to Stroudsberg and as far south as St. Petersburg, Florida. I remember listening to those games at my sister's in Binghamton, and, in the glory years of the 80s, on an FM station near Rochester.
Clearly, sports media has changed since then. In the mid-80s, cable coverage of sports was still in its early days, ESPN barely a toddler at the time, and team-owned networks such as YES and the Mets' eventual SNY were mere glimmers of cash in George Steinbrenner's eye. Even by the time of the Mets' most recent resurgence in the late 1990s, you couldn't find a radio station outside New York that would carry this as programming. If it's inevitable, it's still sad: many is the tale of future baseball broadcasters lovingly listening to late-night games on Pittsburgh's KDKA or St. Louis's KMOX. Baseball on the radio is a unique and generation-bridging experience which is now almost a thing of the past for Mets fans, and which will likely become even more so should their 50,000 watt "flagship" (of a one-boat armada) switch over to the Yankees as many people suspect they will do.
This paper will examine the rise and fall of a radio network, researching the records and speaking with people familiar with the stations of days gone by, to examine what these broadcasts meant to fans, and to the communities they served- and whether these broadcasts ever will, or should, rise again.
Wow. That's 459 words right there. And so, I ask you, and you, and especially you, who have knowledge of such things- and anyone else who does- two things:
(1) Does it sound interesting enough to make the cut for this kind of academia?
and
(2) Is there a more formal format I should plan on submitting it in? In other words, is this bloggy-styly summary the kind of thing up with which academics will not put?
I've got a little under two months, so don't wait too long. Met fans, especially, should be eager to comment, since there isn't any more baseball worth watching;)
I did make an unexpected decision to write something else, though- of a kind I've never written before.
Remember Teh Book? Not MSN3K, but the tribute book to fellow Mets blogger Dana Brand which a group of committed fans (and a probably-should-be-committed for how overloaded she is
firynze) wrote, designed, edited and published barely six weeks after Dana's untimely death to pass out at his Mets memorial in mid-July.One of the oft-mentioned tidbits in that collection was the fact that Dana, a professor at Long Island's Hofstra University, had been organizing a full-blown academic conference for next April, to recognize the Mets' 50th anniversary as a team and a cultural institution. One of the pieces we used even quoted the formal proposal for the event:
April 2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the New York Mets, one of the most popular and culturally significant baseball franchises.
On Thursday through Sunday, April 26-28, 2012, Hofstra University will host a conference to consider all aspects of the history and culture of the team. This will be the first multidisciplinary conference to consider every aspect of a Major League Baseball franchise.
Expected participants at the conference will include current and former members of the Mets’ organization; baseball executives, journalists, broadcasters, and analysts; baseball scholars, historians, and cultural critics; and writers, artists, filmmakers, cartoonists, bloggers, collectors, and fans.
Presentations will be accepted on the basis of 300-500 word abstracts submitted by December 1, 2011.
Possible topics include: The Origins of the Mets; The Roots, Myths and Evolution of Mets Fandom; Defining Individuals in Mets History; Mets Icons, Symbols and Mascots; The 1969 Mets Season: How It Happened, What It Meant to People, and How It Survives as a Cultural Metaphor; The Mets in Subsequent Eras; The Mets and Queens; The Mets and Long Island; The Mets and New York Baseball; The Mets in Film; The Mets in Literature; The Mets and the Culture and Politics of New York City; Mets Broadcasting; Mets Journalism; Famous Fans; The Mets and New York’s Ethnic and Cultural Communities; Defining Moments in the History of the Mets; Mets Controversies; Shea Stadium; The Mets Blogosphere; The Pleasures and Perils of Professional Baseball in New York; and Covering a Baseball Team in the Unique Media Environment of New York.
I met one of Dana's fellow faculty members at the Mets game following the memorial, and he assured me that the con was on- with the backing of the University's president, no less, who'd announced that it would be dedicated to Dana's memory. Since that moment (indeed, even before we lost Dana when I first heard him speaking of it), I've wanted to contribute to the record of the conference, but didn't have my niche yet.
Today, though? I do. It's a little obscure, but hey, there are gonna be graduate students there. Can't get too obscure, canya?
Um....
I didn't get to meet Howie, the Mets' radio play-by-play guy, when I attended the memorial. (I did get to meet Gary Cohen, his television counterpart. He's generous, modest and yet conveys the presence you'd expect of the voice most responsible for the world knowing who those 25 guys in orange and blue on the field are and what they're doing.) I still seek out Howie's call of the games, on the loud and sometimes clear-channel radio signal based in New York, when I'm in my car late at night to see how the Mets are doing. Yet every broadcast, close to 20 times a game, he and the other Mets radio broadcasters lie to us. They end each half inning, and other station breaks, by telling us we're listening to "the WFAN Mets Radio Network."
Best as I can tell, there is no such thing. Websites which track baseball radio broadcasts reveal only two stations carrying Mets games: WFAN itself, and a Spanish-language station, also Nueva York based, with different announcers. This represents a major change over the 50-year life of this ballclub. In at least one scorecard I still have from the early 1970s, the network really WAS a network: 23 different radio stations, 14 in New York State alone, bringing the sounds of the game from Syracuse to Stroudsberg and as far south as St. Petersburg, Florida. I remember listening to those games at my sister's in Binghamton, and, in the glory years of the 80s, on an FM station near Rochester.
Clearly, sports media has changed since then. In the mid-80s, cable coverage of sports was still in its early days, ESPN barely a toddler at the time, and team-owned networks such as YES and the Mets' eventual SNY were mere glimmers of cash in George Steinbrenner's eye. Even by the time of the Mets' most recent resurgence in the late 1990s, you couldn't find a radio station outside New York that would carry this as programming. If it's inevitable, it's still sad: many is the tale of future baseball broadcasters lovingly listening to late-night games on Pittsburgh's KDKA or St. Louis's KMOX. Baseball on the radio is a unique and generation-bridging experience which is now almost a thing of the past for Mets fans, and which will likely become even more so should their 50,000 watt "flagship" (of a one-boat armada) switch over to the Yankees as many people suspect they will do.
This paper will examine the rise and fall of a radio network, researching the records and speaking with people familiar with the stations of days gone by, to examine what these broadcasts meant to fans, and to the communities they served- and whether these broadcasts ever will, or should, rise again.
Wow. That's 459 words right there. And so, I ask you, and you, and especially you, who have knowledge of such things- and anyone else who does- two things:
(1) Does it sound interesting enough to make the cut for this kind of academia?
and
(2) Is there a more formal format I should plan on submitting it in? In other words, is this bloggy-styly summary the kind of thing up with which academics will not put?
I've got a little under two months, so don't wait too long. Met fans, especially, should be eager to comment, since there isn't any more baseball worth watching;)