The Josh Innes Show - The Soundtrack of Summer

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

I know I spent an entire segment discussing my love of baseball broadcasters, but I have more to add. Bob Uecker dying makes me think of summertime. It makes me think of what people would call the soundtrack of summer. I don't think kids of this current generation will ever fully understand the relationship between young fan and the broadcaster. That makes me sad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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because this is one of my favorite topics, and Bob Euchre died today, so it kind of fits, but I love talking about baseball broadcasters because baseball broadcasters are the best there ever were. Why? Why? Because it's not the hardest game to call, obviously. Football's tougher. Dude, I called hockey games when I was 16, 15, 16 years old.

Legit minor league double A hockey on real radio. It was shit or get off the pot. There was no fucking net. There was no like, hey, we're just kind of dicking around. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. My ass, second period, in the booth, not really a booth. It was a table up in the rafters of the Riverside Centruplex, now called the Raising Cane's River Center.

But I'm 15 years old, and let's shit or get off the pot. It's red light time, baby. You got to figure your shit out. And hockey is a difficult game, arguably the most difficult game to call because it's nonstop action. And I didn't really ever learn the concept of you don't have to call every pass. So I called every single fucking pass and I would study the names of the players at school so I'd sit at school and I had flash cards that I made that had each number and each name from each team

so it'd be like uh number I'm just I don't even remember any of these guys names I remember a couple the the okay these are names that are real and numbers that are real, but they're ones I knew because they played for our team. But I'd look at number 44 and I'd go, it's a number 44 Kingfish. And I'd go, oh, that's the captain, Cam Brown. Okay, flip that over. Who is number 19 for the Kingfish? Oh, that's Brian Richardson. And that's what I would do at school.

So while others were learning about math or some shit, I was secretly reading note cards that had the players for that night's game. It is a tough game to call. So like baseball isn't the most difficult game in terms of action. It is actually the easiest because it is slow and there's a lot of, you know, downtime. Now some would argue the downtime makes it difficult because you have to be interesting and fill the time. And I would agree with that.

That's what made the great broadcasts and the great broadcasters was the ability to fill that time with funny shit. And now these guys can't do it as well. These guys are better trained than most of those old school broadcasters. I'm sure that Robert Ford of the Astros is a better trained broadcaster than Harry Carey was.

I'm sure that any guy doing radio for the Pirates or the Brewers or the Phillies or whomever, like look, and not to, actually I'm not gonna besmirch the Phillies because I think the Phillies broadcast when it is Scott Franski and Larry Anderson is spectacular, but that's usually only home games and playoff games, but it is Scott Franski and Larry Anderson is spectacular, but that's usually only home games and playoff games, but it is a spectacular broadcast. And Larry Anderson is a gem,

gem. He is a throwback to those great old school color analysts that tell great stories, but he's snarky. He's sarcastic. He doesn't sound like he's on the take from the team, even though he literally is because they write the check. But, like, it's great. But those old school guys that had so many stories and they would fill the air. You'd watch, you'd be listening to a game that's 10-2. Those guys would still make you want to listen. Like, you wanted to hear the call from those guys. And those kind of guys are fading away.

Like, in football football you still get guys like if you're in philadelphia you want to hear what scott franski's call of a big moment is like the bryce harper home run a couple years ago bedlam at the bank like you want to hear those calls you want to hear uh you know just go i mean i couldn't even tell you who the basketball broadcaster is in philly i know they do the lady on tv and then there's i don't even i could not even tell you the name of the basketball broadcaster on the radio um but you want to hear merrill reese and mike quick and hear their call of the great eagles moments you want to hear that the guy i can't believe i forgot his name but the guy who does uh radio for the flyers who i think does an amazing job who does radio you know you

want to hear those guys but you're not getting those guys very often anymore. They don't really exist. They're a dying breed, man. And I posted this question on social media, on Twitter. And the question was like, hey, who was your baseball broadcaster growing up? Who is that guy that made you fall in love with baseball? Because we love football, we love it. But baseball, there's something sort of magical, and it might sound hokey, but there's something magical about baseball and the relationship a young dude had with baseball growing up. Every movie, there aren't a ton of great football movies, there aren't a ton of great hockey movies, there aren't a ton of great soccer movies, basketball. There are a ton of great baseball movies. You know what I'm saying? you grew up and here's the sandlot here's

rookie of the year here's eight men out here's a league of their own like just go down the list baseball is still a beautiful game despite the fact that it's woefully boring now and it's played at a lower level than it used to be uh baseball growing up was that game and these are the guys who told the stories these are the guys that taught us the game growing up and that game. And these are the guys who told the stories. These are the guys that taught us the game growing up. And I want to get in a time machine and go back to that. Let me work in a couple of these commercials here and I'll continue. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out pick six from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings pick six

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Like, I remember, this isn't even a baseball broadcaster, but when I was a kid, I was doing those hockey games, the Baton Rouge Kingfish, but I wasn't going on the road with them at the time. Actually, no, this wasn't even when I was doing the games. I take it back. So this is like the year before I started doing the games I believe and a guy named Chris Kenyon was like their media dude and he also did the play-by-play Chris Kenyon the voice of the Baton Rouge Kingfish and I thought this dude was the shit and they're playing a playoff series it was like a best two out of three or something

first round playoff series the Kingfish were playing i think it was a thursday night they were gonna play game three i think they had to win or it was like a game four they had to win to force a game five they were at home it was a thursday night i couldn't go to the game so i'm sitting there listening to it in bed it's like a 10 o'clock 10 30 i forgot what time or where they were playing who they they were playing, the Arkansas River Blades or some shit, the South Carolina Stingrays, whoever it was. And I had this radio, I can still visualize the radio, what it looked like. And I listened to it in my bedroom and I'm on every play. It went to overtime and I knew they had to win so I could go to the game on Friday. It might've been a Wednesday and they had to win to play a game on Friday in Baton Rouge. And I'm listening to that hanging on every fucking word this guy was saying.

And when they scored to win it to force the next game, I yelled and my stepmom walks. She's like, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like, God damn it. We won. But like, it's that relationship you have with those dudes. I waited outside the press box in St. Louis when I was 13 years old to meet Jack Buck. That's how much that meant to me. Like we have that relationship and I don't believe that young people today will ever truly have that. Like how many dudes who are 10 years old

are listening to a game on the radio? You know, not that many. They might see the guys on TV and I think they might build a relationship with them because everybody's watching TV. But radio was different. So when I was growing up, I would visit my grandpa in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. That's Greg Hayes was his name. He died a couple years ago. Actually, now I'm closer to eight years ago. But he was my grandpa through marriage.

They were divorced, but he was still my grandpa. He is the guy that I truly give the credit for, for me really loving baseball. And the passion I had, particularly for the St. Louis Cardinals, came from grandpa. He never threw anything away. He had all the old programs, all the old highlight videos, old baseball mitts, catchers, masks. Like he didn't throw anything. It was a pack rat. He had it all.

He is the reason why I love baseball the way I loved baseball. I don't feel that way about baseball anymore, but every now and then that moment will come back. But anyway, so when I was a kid, I'd visit him, and I'd stay the night at his house and all that, and it was a weird situation. When I was a kid, I didn't realize how fucked up it was, but he was there, and he lived with his mom and his sister, this grown-ass man. He lived with his mom and you know and all that it was a weird situation i was a kid i didn't realize how fucked up it was but he was there and he lived with his mom and his sister this grown-ass man

lived with his mom and his sister and his daughter weird situation but growing up i had no fucking idea how weird this was i'm like 10 11 years old i don't fucking know any better i'm like i guess this is normal i think that happens to a lot of us as we get older like we kind of suppress what our childhood was like then we look back on it and we're like you know given like the way things are now our childhood was kind of weird in some cases fucked up you know like that doesn't seem normal like normal by today's standards you look back like there are times i look back and i go shit were we white trash i think of certain things and i'm like i I mean, previous podcast,

I told you about how my grandpa would dumpster dive and bring home little McNugget toys for us. I'm like, that was just normal. Nothing seemed abnormal about a grandpa that would get up every morning, dig through garbage cans to fill up garbage bags with aluminum cans, and then bring us home knickknacks

he found in the garbage. There was nothing weird about that. Nothing strange. I didn't really start thinking I was maybe white trash growing up, though, until my mom told me about how my grandpa had the cockfights that he would run in the backyard and she would sell hamburgers at the cockfights. That's when I started to think, okay, maybe I come from white trash. But when you're growing up as white trash, especially before the era of social media and everybody telling you that come from white trash. But when you're growing up as white trash, especially before the era of social media and everybody telling you that you're white trash,

you don't know you're white trash. You don't know that it's trashy, that you had a Nike swoosh that was in the back of your head, that was shaved into the back of your head, and that you had a mullet. Like, you didn't know that was trashy. You didn't know that you were white trash who went to a school where you weren't allowed

to wear Kansas City Chiefs gear because it was gang-affiliated and they that you were white trash who went to a school where you weren't allowed to wear Kansas City Chiefs gear because it was gang affiliated and they thought you were intimating that you wanted to kill the Crips. I'm like, I don't know the Crips and the fucking Bloods. I have no fucking clue what any of this is. But I didn't know I was white trash growing up. But there were elements of our life that was certainly white trash. My grandma had four different husbands. There was some trashy

elements about us, but I digress. Go look back at your own life that you've closed off in your memory bank and start to think, you know what? Was I actually white trash? And I bet you many of you will say to yourselves, turns out I kind of was. But anyway, so I would be at my grandpa's house and I can feel it. I know all of you listening can feel it. You know you can put yourself in a time and place and you can feel that moment. I was just watching a highlight of when McGuire hit number 61 to tie Maris and Jack Buck called it on the radio. And I can put myself in that moment in time. I can feel it. You know what I'm saying? Certain things and places to this day, no matter what, 30, 25, 30, 40, it doesn't matter how many years go by, you can still put yourself in a specific time and place and you know what it

feels like and you know what it smells like and you know what it tastes like. And I can do that from my youth when I would go visit my grandpa in Poplar Bluff. I know what it tastes like and I can do that for my youth when I would go visit my grandpa in Poplar Bluff I know what it was like when I visited grandma Edna's house I can feel the window unit like you would go upstairs and it was hot as shit and she'd have a box fan on the floor on the carpet but that box fan was doing nothing but blowing hot fucking air and I would lay on this horrible carpet and she gave me this horrible, just itchy wool blanket while we watched Three's fucking company at night. And she'd just smoke her cigarettes.

And like, I can smell it and I can feel that blanket and I can hear what was on TV. I can put myself in that moment and I can do the same thing for my grandpa's house. I can feel like, here's what it looks like. To me, this is the vision I have of this. And I know all of you can do this and I know you can all feel it. It's about August. It's the Midwest. It's sticky as shit. It's around twilight. So it's probably about seven 30, seven 45. It's not quite dark, but it's dark enough where the fireflies are out. So you're seeing these fireflies out in the yard, and you're kind of screwing around in the yard, maybe having a catch or whatever. Off in the distance, there's a radio sitting out on a

covered porch. That radio is playing the St. Louis Cardinals baseball network, and you're hearing Jack Buck and Mike Shannon. As a kid, it doesn't really register with you. It's just what's on the radio, right? But you have a catch out there. Maybe grandpa's having a catch. You can feel that stickiness. I can feel it on me right now. The stickiness of the air in August in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. I can feel the grass. I can see the neighborhood, the fireflies and everything. Then grandma, who is grandpa's mom, again, fucked up situation is what it is. Long story. But she said, it's time to go eat. We go upstairs.

I can taste the green beans she would make. I can taste the Josh potatoes. She called them Josh potatoes that she would make. I could taste the hamburgers. I can feel the chair I sat on. I could hear the creaks of those chairs. And then we're sitting in the kitchen. You can see into the other room and the Cardinals are on TV, but we're not listening to the sound of the Cardinals or the TV. We're listening to the baseball broadcast. And the baseball broadcast is on the radio and it's

Jack Buck, it's Mike Shannon, it's whoever's on the radio at the time. And it's synced up with the TV. And that broadcast is coming through one of those old school, big silver radios, big stereo systems with the beautiful light up dial on the front. And we'd listen to the game while it was on TV, right? We were like, yo, look at it roll. We can watch Jackie Gleason while we eat. And we would eat dinner. And then grandma would have cookies for me all the time because I was a fat little chubby bunny. And she'd bake fresh cookies for me every day. And the kitchen was always a fucking wreck. And I remember this. Then grandpa would be like, hey, I need to go run out and pick something up.

You want to come with me? I'm like, sure. I can remember the station wagon and the plastic little thing in the middle that you would put in the center console there. They would have the two cup holders and like a lighter holder. And like you would have a bunch of junk in there. And I can hear the game on the radio in that car. And I can remember how the air conditioning felt in that car. And grandpa would run in and get something. And I took a drink of whatever drink he had sitting in the center console. I can see the fucking cup. I know what the cup looked like. It was a plastic Poplar Bluff Mules high school football schedule cup. And I took a drink.

I'm like, what the fuck is this? I'm fairly certain it was alcohol, even though he was supposed to be on the wagon and he was fucking driving. It didn't fucking matter. I can feel it and taste it and hear it. And the most prominent thing that sticks with me is the baseball broadcaster on the fucking radio. And these, and like, I'm not trying to sound like old man yells at cloud, but kids today will never fully understand that relationship. There's too many other places to get your stimuli. There's your tick tocks and your Twitters and

everything else. You will never understand what that is like to have a soundtrack to your night be a baseball broadcast in the summer. It did not matter where you went. That fucking game was on the radio. There was never a place in the house that you could go that you would not have instant access to that game. It did not exist. Every room. You'd go to the bathroom and it would be there. Did not matter.

And I feel bad. Maybe that feeling bad is the wrong way to put it. But I do feel bad for a generation of people who will never know that because that brought me so much joy and it takes me back to such a wonderful time, an innocent time, if you will. It takes me back to just that sound. And I know a lot of you listening to this can relate to that. I know a lot of you who are around my age grew up and there'd be a Milo Hamilton on the radio or there would be a Harry Callas on the

radio or whatever town you're in, that voice would be on the radio for you. And it was just a special thing to me, man. And it takes me back. I can feel every single thing. And I don't know if it's just an amalgamation. I don't know if it's like all kind of been condensed to just one memory, like all the memories come down to one. But that memory that I just described to you sticks with me forever. I don't know if that was one thing that happened or a bunch of things that I have combined into one solid memory of that, but that's what it was like. And imagine you're somebody in Milwaukee today and all you've ever known is Bob Uecker on the

radio. Did it for over 50 years. And you're losing that little piece of something that made you feel that way. That's why when Mike Shannon died, I fucking sobbed when Mike Shannon died because that is the voice of my youth. That's the person who I would listen to. And no matter what room I went into, his voice was on the radio. You never missed anything because the second you got in the car you're like all right we'll go we'll see what the score is bam radio's on and it never stopped and that was fucking remarkable growing up as a kid that fucked now you just pick up your phone and you're like all right let me check the score and that's great and it's it works and there's

nothing wrong with it but there was something special. Now I'm doing like a Wonder Years here. I'm like Kevin on the Wonder Years, thinking about Winnie here. I need like a narration to my life, but that's kind of how it felt, and I know you feel that same way, and that's why when I see guys like Bob Uecker die,

and I know what Bob Uecker was in Milwaukee, and I know what it was like being a Cardinals fan and hearing Mike Shannon and Jack Buck. And I know the Phillies people with Richie Ashburn and Harry Kowals. And I know the Astros people with Milo Hamilton. Like, I get it. And it's just, I can go back to that time and place, man. Anyway, maybe none of you give a shit.

Maybe some of you are like, holy shit, I feel the same way about things. But anyway, I appreciate you.