Opening Game at Cincinnati - The Rite of Spring
Airdate:
Thursday - April 5, 1973
WOR Show
First Spoken Line After Theme Ends
Oh, here we go, let's go. . .
Show Description
Today is Opening Day at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati (Cincinnati Reds vs. San Francisco Giants)
Baseball as a national rite of Spring - "It matters not whether you are interested in sports..."
Spring as a time of great changes - Swings of feeling of exhilaration and sadness
World Series as the Fall harvest celebration of America
Baseball as a total abstraction - "a man with a stick" "a ball hurtling through the Spring air" "ritual cabbalistic uniforms with symbols" (ex. a cardinal, a bear cub)
A description of opening day in Cincinnati with Ewell Blackwell "the Whip" pitching for the Reds - the opening ceremonies with drum majorette and band in a stadium surrounded by green fields, flocks of birds, and the river's "smell of a million kinds of life emerging"
Why do we play games? "I have had victory over my enemies" "Men mulling for weeks over a single chess move"
[ Courtesy: Lowell Thelin - ]
"An especially entertaining and thought provoking show. Shep mentions Grady Hatton, Ted Kluszewski, and Hank Sauer (in addition to Ewell Blackwell) as playing for Cincinnati on the opening day he attended with his college roomate. All four teamates played together only in 1948 and 1949. Since Shep left Indiana University (without a degree) in 1948 to work at WSAI (see Biography), the opening day he attended must have been in Spring 1948."
