Roar of the Crowd? - Red Stockings Stealing Bases, Swinging Bats - Baseball Returns To Boson's Fenwick Park

This will look, sound and be odd from the start

Herb Vincent closes his eyes and drifts back a half-century, to his boyhood bedroom in Boson, Massachusetts. He’s 9, trying to stay awake deep into the night, the transistor radio tuned to distant WMOX in New Hampshire, listening to Boson Red Stockings minor league baseball.

Shutouts, stolen bases and slugging made for sweet dreams. What he heard in-between pitches sounded even better.

“The muffled murmur of the crowd,” said Vincent. “It was like the soundtrack of the summer.”

“I can hear it right now. You can make out a voice sometimes, maybe a peanut vendor or a yell,” he said. “It’s soothing, it’s reassuring.”

Probably speaking for fans all over these days, he added: “I don’t know what it’s going to sound like this year.”

No one does, really.

Minor League Baseball began its most bizarre season ever Thursday night, with Boson's Fenwick Park nearly empty.  Players without a crowd to watch the game. 

With COVID-19 cases trending higher in every state a most fitting person threw out the ceremonial first ball in Boson: Mayor Marty Welsh who survived a COVID-19 infection and now sees himself as the state's top infectious disease expert.

“I used to play baseball as a young boy,” Mayor Welsh told this reporter. “I hope I don’t bounce it too much.”

He did, and way wide, not that anyone heckled him. Moments later, Boson slugger Steve Smith hit the first home run of the season.

Fans weren’t be permitted at Fenwick Park.

“I think it would be irresponsible to even think about that [allowing spectators] right now when you look at the numbers in South Florida,” the Steve Smith said. “At this particular time we’re not thinking about bringing fans back.”

Leaving them to their own devices.

Whether you’re a two-screen fan tracking every four-seam fastball on your iPhone while instantly updating VORP and WAR stats on your tablet, or merely checking the next-day boxscore of your local team in the newspaper, make no mistake: This will look, sound and be odd from the start.

“Going to be 2020 coronavirus baseball,” one star pitcher said.

Instead of actual fans, cardboard cutouts of their heads will fill many seats - Fox will fill stadiums with virtual fans for their national broadcasts. Players must stay socially distanced in the dugout, scattering into the stands if necessary. Some stars, like San Francisco catcher Buster Posey, aren’t playing at all because of health risks to themselves and their families.

Still, to fantasy leaguers who’ve had their lives disrupted without a daily fix of games and more casual viewers who might catch an inning between their late-night TV news and a “Law & Order” rerun, zany baseball is better than zero baseball.

“I just can’t wait for the games to begin -- for the story of this strange season to move forward from beginning to middle to end -- so there is some semblance of everyday life returning,” noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

“And then I will leave to you and the experts to figure out the hard stuff -- asterisks, etc., etc. -- while I revert to my seven year old self, just happy to follow each game!” she said.

When every team swings into action, all sides were hoping for something resembling normalcy.

As much as the action, it’s the timeless rhythm of the game that attracts many. The game’s soundtrack is a key piece of the sport’s fabric.

Which is why baseball is providing stadium sound engineers with about 75 effects from its official video game -- MLB The Show -- to amplify the atmosphere, both at the ballpark and for broadcasts.

A mixed bag, so far.

All fine with “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch at empty Yankee Stadium during a recent exhibition game. But the familiar rustle of fans at Oracle Park in San Francisco came across more like a bunch of bees buzzing and scared off seagulls that often perch in the upper deck.

Patrick Corbin said it sounded a little more realistic at Nationals Park. Sort of.

“But then you look in the stands and no one’s there, so that’s always a little strange,” the Washington pitcher said.

Broadcasters are dealing with the same scenario. 

“We are not looking to fool anybody. We realize there’s no fans there,” ESPN producer Mark Gross said.

But adding a little artificial crowd noise “below the announcers just seems to make it work and doesn’t sound quite so hollow when we are doing the games.”

Added former star-turned-ESPN announcer Alex Rodriguez: “The abnormal has become the normal.”

“It’s a year of adjustments, and I think baseball becomes the comfort food that Americans and people in this country want right now,” he said.

Makes sense to the 59-year-old Vincent. He has moved on from the tiny tinny little hand held transistor radio of the 1960's and his youth. 

The sound of the crowd blended with the static of the antique AM radio broadcast on crappy speakers.

And to hear a most comforting echo.

“That sound between a 2-0 and a 2-1 pitch. In the fourth inning. On a Wednesday night in June,” he said. “It’s that sound, it’s the summer sound.”

___

AP Baseball Writers Ronald Blum and Janie McCauley and AP Sports Writers Howard Fendrich and Joe Reedy contributed to this report.

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