Category: Berkeley

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Play by Play

Pete called me this afternoon to say he’d heard something on the news he found sad and shocking: Bill King, who did play-by-play for the Oakland A’s for the past 25 seasons, had died suddenly after undergoing surgery. Strange to say, I was actually shaken.

A couple weeks ago, I was listening to him broadcast on the next-to-last day of the season. It was a nothing game from Seattle, and I can’t say I remember anything about it. But I do remember hearing Bill mention Pat Piper, the legendary and long-gone field announcer at Wrigley Field, and thinking how the one thing I’d really miss about the season would be not hearing him again until springtime.

(I just discovered, though, that if you’re willing to pay $7.95 to MLB.com, you can get the full online archive of A’s radio games (and every other team’s, too) for 2005. Not sure how long the access will last, but I paid.)

I wrote a little something about King a couple months ago, about how he’d casually, and humorously, tossed off a reference to Trotsky while communicating his distaste of interleague play. His obituaries mention something I remember hearing a long time ago but had forgotten — that King was fascinated with Russian history and read avidly on the subject. So Trotsky was right in his ballpark.

King was an institution here not just for his A’s work, but for his phenomenal overlapping tenure with the Golden State Warriors (from ’62-’83) and Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders (’66-’92). Perhaps it was just that I enjoyed his style so much — his panache with language, his knowledge, his energy, his humor, his nearly unfailing sense of dramatic shifts in the contest he was describing — but I really believe he called a different kind of game than most of us are accustomed to hearing.

The mean streak Harry Caray showed in his best years and the mawkish sloppiness that marked his work later (nearly his entire Cubs tenure, from what I can tell, when he became first icon, then caricature) was absent in King. He didn’t indulge in the raw homer-ism and smug know-it-all-ism that makes Giants games so hard to listen to (Krukow and Kuiper, worst offenders; Jon Miller ain’t half bad, though). You would know who he was pulling for, but you never got the sense that he believed his team deserved to win.

A King broadcast was like listening to one of your smartest, most entertaining friends unwinding an elaborate yarn. He was someone you could imagine having over to dinner, maybe, and know you’d be in for an evening you’d never forget. Kate and I actually talked about inviting him, knowing that kind of thing never happens.

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Redwood Retro

Redwood

Nearly home from the law school, the sun ready to set and John Hart’s redwood, just down the street from us, with the fog coming in behind.

My little digital camera has a setting called "retro" which creates a sepia-toned image. The picture above is "retro" — the first time I used the setting in the two and a half years I’ve had the camera. It turned out better, though (not wonderful, as you can see, but better) than the color shots I tried.

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The Lint Giver

Kate, upon inspecting some nice black slacks of hers that I had helpfully jammed into the washing machine with a bunch of other stuff, exclaimed, “What’s this?” She was referring to the profusion of white lint on the black slacks. It was clear that I had committed a laundry misdemeanor (laundry felonies almost always involve bleach or melting things in the dryer; or pens), and she set out to solve it. She sorted through the damp clothes until she came to her white fleece pullover.

“Here — this is what did it,” she said. “This is a lint giver. You can’t put lint givers and lint takers in the same load.”

Say again? This is someone I’ve known for more than 20 years. Thousands of baskets of dirty laundry have churned, spun, and tumbled through their cycles since we first commingled loads. We’ve used inscrutable top-loaders and mesmerizing front-loaders, both. Liquid and powder. Cold, warm and hot. Normal and delicate. A lot has come out in the wash. But this is the first I’ve heard of a guideline, rule, ordinance, statute or proposed physical law concerning “lint givers” and “lint takers.”

“Look it up online. I’m sure you’ll find something about it,” Kate said as she deployed a lint roller to defuzz the damp slacks. (She’s living right. It worked.)

Sure enough: A site called “How to Clean Stuff” features a graduate-level discourse on various lint topics, including lint givers and lint takers.

Updated July 2018.

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Omedeto, Ea-chan

Tomorrow’s the 26th anniversary of the day I became a dad. Let me tell you, I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’, and there are many moments when I wonder how far, except in years, I’ve come since then.

Another way of looking at October 10 is that it’s Eamon’s birthday — the climax of the events that transformed me from non-dad to dad. So hey, Eamon: Happy birthday! (O tanjobi omedeto gozaimasu!).

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Empty Nest Report

Kate and I have just finished Week One of our Empty Nest era. Kate said today that sometimes when she hears the front door open and close here, she finds herself thinking it might be Thom. The other day, when it got to be 4 o’clock, she had the impulse to call home from school and check in with him.

Me, every once in a while — just looking at Thom’s car or his room or sometimes out of nowhere at all — I’ll have a sudden "he’s not here" moment that fits right in with other times I’ve really missed people; it’s like a blow to the solar plexus that comes with no real weight behind it; I can feel my breath catch for an instant, just enough to get my attention and register the sensation. Then it’s back to picking up my underwear or taking out the coffee grounds to the compost.

So. That’s our first week. We talked to Thom tonight. What was his take?

Beyond details like classes (there’s a heavy emphasis on grammar, of all things, in his Journalism 101 class), how he managed his meal-plan points for the first week (he bought a pack of Nutter Butters at one point because "every once in a while, you just need to have some peanut buttery goodness"), and the fact the floor he’s living on is fairly tolerant of a wide selection of musical tastes and volumes, he offered this summary:  "I’m making a bomb-ass transition to college." (For the uninitiated, that is a good thing.)

So: a little perspective on our parental drama. (And, I can’t help thinking: Man, am I glad I’m keeping track of what my kid’s doing in Oregon, as opposed, say, to al Anbar Province).

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Special Punch

Goldenbridge_1

There was an abandoned-looking, falling-down motel on this site at Milvia Street and Bancroft Way, just across the street from Berkeley High School. Sometime in the last few months, it was torn down. Not sure what’s planned for the lot now, but the demolition exposed this old soft-drink sign for the first time in (probably) decades:

Try Golden Bridge Special Punch. Real — fruit punch. A nickel for a 12-ounce bottle. And get your tennis needs taken care of, too.

Goldenbridge2

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Road Blog: Oregon

We’re camped out in a Best Western in Springfield, Oregon. How unwoodsy.

Tom — Tom is spending the first night at his dorm on the University of Oregon campus a few miles away, and in a couple days we’re driving south and just leaving him here. He told us as we got close to Eugene on the drive up from Berkeley (we left home just before 6 this morning and were up here early in the afternoon) that he was nervous about the experience: living away from home for the first time, taking on all the university stuff, having an unknown roommate in a tiny room. You know: everything.

When we got here, I looked at the rush of activity, the new kids moving into the dorms en masse, all strangers to each other, and I thought — hey, this would be intimidating. While we hauled his stuff up to his room from the van, I was struck by how similar this was to first steps toward separation with Tom and Eamon both: first time leaving them with a babysitter; first time leaving them at childcare; first day of school; first trip away from home without us. At the same moment you want nothing more than to help your kids grow into this world, you think, do I really need to let go? So here we are: First day of college.

How did things play out when we had our feet on the ground? Tom just took charge, setting up his room, talking to his roommate and other guys on his floor. Kate and I went off to run an errand. When we got back, Tom was pretty much settled in. He had plans for the evening — a meeting at the dorm, then who knows. He went his way, and Kate and I went and had pizza and a beer.

More reflection on this later. I got an hour’s sleep before we left home this morning. Time for bed.

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Last (Astronomical) Night of Summer

Explanations and observations about the above:

Yes, I’m showing my boreal and Western Hemisphere chauvinism with the above headline.

The official time for the start of autumn 2005 in these parts is 3:23 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

That’s 5:23 p.m. in Chicago and 6:23 p.m. in New York City, proud capitals of the Infospigot media empire. And 10:23 p.m. in London, a city unvisited by your correspondent.

For Tokyo, an outpost of the Greater Infospigot Co-Prosperity Sphere, that’s 7:23 a.m. Friday, the 23rd (the Autumnal Equinox is a national holiday there). That means the last sundown of summer falls on the 22nd, about three hours from now (5:38 p.m., Japan Standard Time; since Japan declines to spring forward or fall back, its already experiencing early sunset blues.)

And since everything is upside down and backwards on the other side of the Equator — my first big thrill visiting Australia was the realization that the reason Orion looked different was he was standing on his head — spring begins at 7:23 p.m. tomorrow in Buenos Aires, 12:23 a.m. (the 23rd) in Cape Town, and 8:23 a.m. (the 23rd) in Sydney.

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Newscast Gone Bad

Ktvunews

8/10/22 update: KTVU announced today that Leslie Griffith has died at her home in Mexico from the affects of Lyme disease.

11/17/06 update: It’s official–Leslie Griffith is gone for good from KTVU.

10/8/06 update: The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross weighed in on Leslie Griffith’s absence. KTVU’s general manager said she’s on leave at least until October 27; a week or so earlier, he was saying he expected her back on October 9.

9/29/06 update: The Case of the Missing Anchor

Original post, Sept. 20, 2005:  I grew up in the Chicago area with the now-shocking notion that local TV news could be more than a weak, ill-informed entertainment. But not to rely too much on my memory of how solid those newscasts were or weren’t — of course, everything was better in the ’60s — there’s not much debate that most TV news has devolved into puffs of insubstantiality dressed up to look like they mean something. If these shows — both the locals and much of the stuff you see on network and cable — had to make their living on the actual knowledge they convey, they’d be out of business. But pictures are compelling. We need our weather, sports and advertising and the personalities who present it all. So the shows chug on. 

Here in the Bay Area, the last bastion of news for news’ sake was KTVU, Channel 2. Going back to their unaffiliated, pre-Fox days, the station had a 60-minute newscast it put on at 10 p.m., an hour ahead of its competitors and their 30-minute happy-talk shows. Channel 2 managed to use the 60 minutes well. Stories ran longer and there were more of them. “The 10 O’Clock News” developed a cast of reporters and anchors that actually seemed, well, “reliable” and “trustworthy.” It developed a reputation of seriousness and substance.

But nothing’s forever. Under cost pressure, Channel 2 long ago started cutting back. It started emphasizing easy, cheap stories like traffic accidents, fires, and the latest shootings. Much of the old cast is still there, though many members look tired. One significant change was the departure in 1998 of the longtime co-anchor Elaine Corral, who quit at the end of the broadcast one night without letting anyone know what she was doing. We were watching that night; it was TV to remember. It was also a loss to the show’s chemistry — she and the other anchor, Dennis Richmond, always looked like a good fit — but it also could have been an example of someone getting out at the right time.

Leslie Griffith, a reporter and weekend anchor best known for her wild mane of blonde hair and somewhat goofy on-air manner, replaced Corral. She seemed like a lightweight next to Richmond, who conveys something you might even think of as gravitas if you forget he’s presenting the local news. And no warmth has ever developed between Richmond and Griffith. Richmond is slow but precise; Griffith is someone who once looked like she was having fun on camera but decided or was told she needed to look serious when she became the show’s co-star.

The problem is, she can’t pull it off, and sometimes her performance is ridiculous: She stumbles on the scripts, she smiles when there’s no reason to smile, she hmmms portentously. Last night — we watched right after wallowing in an hour of “Prison Break” — she was nearly helpless from the very top of the show when she and Richmond were alternating reading the live teasers:

“As floodwaters recede in New Orleans … residents are first to return to home … and … but they’re told … not just yet.”

In the first part of the show, she had another couple muffs that sounded much worse than they read:

“Here in the Bay Area paramedics … the death toll from Katrina has reached 973 across the entire Gulf Coast region. It stands at 636 [on-screen graphic read 736] in Louisiana.”

And:

“Police are looking for the reason … or the reasons responsible … the persons responsible … for a brazen daylight shooting.”

Her style when she starts to get lost is to grind on mechanically, like a garbage disposal taking on an avocado pit. Richmond’s typical reaction, displayed last night, is visible annoyance or disgust.

Everyone in the news-reading business has bad days. There’s a mistake in the script or the production rundown, the TelePrompTer has a problem, or they just get lost. But Leslie does so badly so often that she seems permanently lost. It’s hard to understand from the outside why she’s permitted to keep going.