Knox The Hatter
08-06-2004, 10:19 PM
Bob Murphy died Tuesday.
Bob Murphy, one of the voices of the New York Mets going back to the very beginning, was literally the voice of hot, humid Summer days, the voice heard coming from small, black and white TV sets and radios, while charcoal smoldered on barbecues and while children ran to and fro in bathing suits, describing in his inimitable way Jerry Koosman outfinessing Jerry Reuss. He and Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner, providing the soundtrack to Summer all the way from Nyack to Point Pleasant, from Long Island City to Riverhead. It was a unique show...and a wonderful one.
Today, the Mets have the most incredibly boring radio broadcast in the Western Hemisphere...you have anonymous clowns in the booth just talking back and forth, and you'd never even know there was a game going on. With Murph in the booth, there was not only a game going on, but you could envision the game in your mind. The current Mets announcers, on cable and radio, all seem to be in a contest to see who can discuss baseball theory in the most long winded manner possible. Thing is, very few people give a shit about baseball theory. We lost not only a Hall of Famer, but a way of life as well.
For me, he and the other two still provide the background to the most incredible summer of baseball in my life, when Woodstock and Vietnam and the paranoid schizoid in the White House were chased off the front pages by an orange and blue machine that waved a magic wand, in the same way as Luke Skywalker, and when I lived in Jamaica, ten minutes from Shea.
"Pitching, three and two..."
Rest easy, Murph.
Bob Murphy, one of the voices of the New York Mets going back to the very beginning, was literally the voice of hot, humid Summer days, the voice heard coming from small, black and white TV sets and radios, while charcoal smoldered on barbecues and while children ran to and fro in bathing suits, describing in his inimitable way Jerry Koosman outfinessing Jerry Reuss. He and Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner, providing the soundtrack to Summer all the way from Nyack to Point Pleasant, from Long Island City to Riverhead. It was a unique show...and a wonderful one.
Today, the Mets have the most incredibly boring radio broadcast in the Western Hemisphere...you have anonymous clowns in the booth just talking back and forth, and you'd never even know there was a game going on. With Murph in the booth, there was not only a game going on, but you could envision the game in your mind. The current Mets announcers, on cable and radio, all seem to be in a contest to see who can discuss baseball theory in the most long winded manner possible. Thing is, very few people give a shit about baseball theory. We lost not only a Hall of Famer, but a way of life as well.
For me, he and the other two still provide the background to the most incredible summer of baseball in my life, when Woodstock and Vietnam and the paranoid schizoid in the White House were chased off the front pages by an orange and blue machine that waved a magic wand, in the same way as Luke Skywalker, and when I lived in Jamaica, ten minutes from Shea.
"Pitching, three and two..."
Rest easy, Murph.