We sports fans have our favorite announcers, whether the folks who do play-by-play or the color commentaters. Think of the historic names like Jack Buck, Marv Albert, and Vin Scully! We’ve got our current favorites now, too: John Rooney with the St. Louis Cardinals, John Sterling with the NY Yankees; and the irreplaceable Dick Vitale. We who are blind sports fanatics latch on their every word, emotion, and unique slant in bringing the game to us.
With that said, we need to give a big shout out to those who do commentating for our beloved blind sports like goalball and beep baseball. I couldn’t help but grin last weekend when tuning into the Indy Baseball Bannanza. Indy’s own Greg Rakestraw’s unmistakable voice was calling every hit and defensive stop while the pulsing beep from the ball and bases sounded in the background.
Like with any other game he calls and show he hosts, Greg’s enthusiasm brought me to the action as if I were there myself. He didn’t just give a run-down of strikes versus takes or the facts that someone made an out. He described how an outfielder trapped the ball or rolled over it before snatching it in his hand. With the President of the National Beep Baseball Association beside him, Greg helped explain the rules of the game for those listeners who may not have been so familiar with the adaptations we make to play America’s pastime.
A couple clicks later, I caught the action from the Southeast Regional Goalball Tournament in Smyrna, Georgia. As at other venues, when Marybai wasn’t calling the action, some players who weren’t in action at the time brought us courtside while teams threw the 3 pound ball back and forth, bludgeoning each others’ defense en route to wracking up the points. Of course, the advantage we gained with Marybai’s announcing was that she herself is a goalball player. So when she mentioned someone throwing a full cross shot or a slow ball, we who listened in got a great feel for the game. Of course, it takes some doing to translate the muscle memory and intensity of playing goalball into relating it to an audience of blind and sighted viewers. After all, goalball isn’t an adaptive sport per se. It’s a sport designed for blind competitors where sound and feel are your best senses to orient yourself to the game’s ebb and flow. On the other hand, the sighted viewer needs to know what is involved when three competitors on each side communicate with each other while volleying the ball back and forth.
This coming weekend will feature more blind sports action as our USA men’s goalball team participates in the Nations Cup in Berlin, Germany. You can catch the action starting off here and here with play-by-play, video, and color commentating in full swing.
So, once again, let’s give a big thanks to those who bring us the action of blind sports live on YouTube and Facebook.
Tune it in, turn it up, and enjoy the games we love! Let the beep baseballs fly, the goalballs roll, and play-by-play announcers tell us all about it.!
Boldly Blind 