A Beautiful Thing

Chuck Thompson and Brooks Robinson used to broadcast on Channel 2 in the 1970's and 1980's. Their style was quiet and soothing, putting the viewer in a meditative state. Chuck Thompson was already a Baltimore broadcasting icon by the 1970's. His voice dripped with the sensations of a Maryland summer: the Boardwalk fries at Ocean city, sun-brewed tea on a porch in Dundalk, a smoked-filled diner in Highlandtown. Brooks was "Mr Oriole", the living embodiment of what had, by then, become the codified system known as "the Oriole Way". They would call the game in a nearly sound-proof booth. When you watched the game on TV, (back then always in mono), the experience had an unearthly aspect, and it would seem as if you were right there in the booth. If there was a better reason for the invention of baseball on TV, I have yet to see it.