WAYNE KNUCKLES: The World Series Was Worth Getting in Trouble For

There was a time when the World Series could interfere with your education.

I consider that one of baseball’s better traditions.

When I was a boy, we had a little black-and-white television that picked up three channels on a good day. They came floating over the mountains from Knoxville, Tennessee, courtesy of an antenna on the roof and whatever arrangement the Lord had worked out with the weather.

If the wind was right, you got baseball.

If it wasn’t, you got snow.

Not the kind you sledded in. The kind that covered the television screen while somebody twisted the dial and somebody else hollered, “Right there! Don’t move it!”

Television reception was a family project.

The World Series was different then, too. A lot of it happened in daylight.

That part is not nostalgia playing tricks on me. For years, October baseball really was afternoon baseball.

Which was fine unless you were 10 years old and somebody had decided you needed to be in school.

There you sat learning fractions while the World Series was being played somewhere.

This seemed deeply unreasonable.

Fortunately, mankind had invented the transistor radio.

A transistor radio was one of the greatest pieces of technology ever handed to a boy. Small enough to hide. Cheap enough to own. Powerful enough to bring the World Series into a classroom if you could find the station and keep the volume low.

You might have an earphone wire running up through your shirt.

You might keep the radio tucked in your desk.

You might suddenly become very interested in resting your head on one hand while listening through the other.

Teachers probably knew.

Some probably didn’t care.

Some may have been listening themselves.

That was part of the magic.

You didn’t simply watch the World Series.

You found it.

You hunted for the station. Adjusted the antenna. Listened through static. Asked somebody in the hallway, “What’s the score?”

Then you hurried home hoping the game was still on.

Today we carry televisions in our pockets that can show us almost any sporting event anywhere in the world.

That is progress.

I am not convinced it is always improvement.

There was something about baseball coming through a little speaker, the announcer describing everything you couldn’t see, that made the picture in your head better than anything television could provide.

You could see the ballpark.

You could see the pitcher staring in.

You could see the runner taking his lead.

And you knew it mattered because this wasn’t just another baseball game.

This was the World Series.

The names became permanent.

Koufax.

Clemente.

Bench.

Gibson.

Rose.

And Reggie Jackson.

Mr. October.

Three home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. Three swings that helped turn a very good ballplayer into a piece of baseball mythology.

That is the sort of thing a boy files away and keeps for life.

Hollywood understood the importance of October baseball, too.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson’s McMurphy wants to watch the World Series. Nurse Ratched refuses to change the schedule.

This does not improve their relationship.

So McMurphy sits in front of a blank television and starts calling an imaginary game himself, shouting and cheering until the other patients join in.

I have always considered that one of the most accurate statements about the World Series ever put on film.

You do not come between a man and October baseball.

Nothing good can come from it.

Eventually baseball moved the World Series into prime time. More people could watch. Nobody had to sneak a radio into school. Nobody had to race home hoping to catch the last three innings.

It made perfect sense.

And we lost something.

Nobody stands beside the television antenna anymore shouting, “Back a little! BACK A LITTLE!”

Nobody listens through static while pretending to study.

Nobody has to imagine the green grass, the dirt around second base or the pitcher looking in for the sign.

We can see everything now.

Maybe that is why I remember so clearly the days when we couldn’t.

Every October, when the World Series comes around, I think about that little black-and-white television and those three channels drifting over the mountains from Knoxville.

And I think about a boy with a transistor radio, trying to hear a baseball game when he was supposed to be doing something else.

Some things were worth getting in trouble for.

The World Series was one of them.

Wayne Knuckles has written for, edited and published newspapers and magazines in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. He currently publishes a free weekly newsletter about Appalachian history, news, food and travel. You can sign up for free at www.thewaynetrain.com.