As you saw yesterday, Dick Enberg was named the TV play-by-play guy for 2010. Gaslamp Baller response has ranged from indifferent to almost hostile. I didn't think you guys liked Mark Neely. We had to like explain why Neely was likable and everybody was all like, "The only reason you like him is because he's nice to you!" Which may or may not have been true, but also suggests that many of you don't want us to like you.
In any case, jbox and I actually knew relatively early on that Dick Enberg was being courted by the Padres, but, being unprofessional and not so quick on the draw, we didn't realize that we knew. Let me fill you in...
Long ago, one Tom Garfinkel wined and dined your friendly neighborhood Gaslamp Bloggers. One stop during the course of the coolish evening was a private viewing box where Tom wanted to introduce us to "someone" who, if my mind lets me remember correctly, we'd "get a kick of out meeting". Unfortunately, that certain someone wasn't in the viewing box when we dropped by for our fateful visit, but Tom mentioned that the certain someone he wanted to introduce us to was Dick Enberg.
"The playwright?"
"No. The legendary broadcaster."
"Oh yeah, the playwright."
Oh, dear reader, if you could have seen the way young Tom's face shone alight at the thought of meeting Dick Enberg! Master Garfinkel was already gay with enchantment at the day dreamery prospects of one Mister Enberg supplying cadence in full measure to every pitch yon catch of our beloved base-ball club. Yet we did not know that, ignorant as we were.
To wit! The mechanics of young Tom's mind were already turning and spinning; miniature gyros and servos of imagination spun like furious monkeys, trapped in burlap sacks, stuffed with garlic.
"Let me riddle your minds young gentle-men with a conundrum, nay a dream; perhaps a dream made more of pipe than sustenance; a dream nonetheless that, if the young Tom you see before you has his way, may in fact come to miraculous fruition, not unlike Moses parting the waters before him, I hope to reveal to you in such a manner that you would not record this whether by pen or through means electronic, but only in confidence, so as to satisfy my cravings to reveal that which I have kept in the vault of my heart for so long yet not to reveal in my heart to those who would ridicule the cravings of a young man's imagination."
"What is it?" we asked.
A twinkle befell young Tom's eye and he appeared as bewitched as poor Lot's wife moments before being cast down as a pillar of salt as he whispered, "I hope to convince those who would allow it to make Dick Enberg our man who shall announce each play as they occur by play on the tele-vision. What thinks you?"
But before we could answer, young Tom was already fleeing away, rubbing his hands together in greedy anticipation of that which he knew he could achieve. Giggling like a schoolgirl in the spring time; those girls who know the secrets that would leave the hearts of young boys melted or crushed whether as an iceberg too close to the equator or smashed against rocks, the victim of glacial movements.
In any case, all of that happened pretty much as I wrote it, but jbox and I didn't realize that we had a scoop until just a few days ago when it was spelled out for us. We be not so bright like that.