Baseball and radios

This article about a 50 year old GE radio that still works isn't really about the radio. It's not even about the fact that nothing we use today will still be functional in 25 years, let alone 50. It's about how a piece of technology can connect across 3 generations of a family that used that radio to listen to baseball or get the early morning school closing report.

It reminded me about something I did about 22 years ago, also involving baseball and radios. Streaming the radio feeds of baseball games was technically possible in the 90s. It made Mark Cuban a billionaire when he sold his streaming radio company to Yahoo. Sometime around 2002 MLB started streaming the radio feed for WEEI from Boston. 2002 was well before we all had super computers in our pockets. So I built a FM transmitter from a kit and plugged it in to my PC. That enabled me to sit on the porch with a drink and a radio and listen to the Red Sox on WEEI, in Virginia. It was a big deal at the time. Today I just take my phone to the porch.

I do still own a traditional AM/FM radio. I keep it in the camper. It's useful for weather updates when camping somewhere with no cell signal. Also, when camping I just like to find a local rock radio station and listen throughout the weekend while I'm camping in the neighborhood. I've got a couple of hundred hours of music on my phone, so I'm not hurting for musical entertainment when away from the Internet. We listened to the radio when camping 40 years ago, and I still like to do it today.

Sometimes the old ways, if not better, are at least just fine.