A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

FLY AWAY! Dave Niehaus, the looooooongtime voice of the Mariners, has passed away. If you didn't grow up in or near Seattle, listening to Niehaus's velvet-and-vodka voice calling Mariners games, seemingly every night at 7:05, you won't ever know what you missed. If you did listen to those games, you know that even though Niehaus could put a charge into you on a deep fly ball or a close play at the plate, you couldn't get a sense of his greatness just from listening to a highlight reel. The best part of listening to Niehaus was just his oscillating narrative unspooling over the better part of an evening, sometimes calmly describing the business of baseball while leaving enough room for the ambient sound to fill in the picture; sometimes getting suddenly tickled into fluid amazement by unusual plays, weird player quirks, or even strange things he spotted in the crowd. Even late in life, when he only called a few innings of the games and frequently mixed up the players or forgot their names, he remained far more entertaining than the bland or outright stupid voices the Mariners hired to prop him up. I loved Dave Niehaus, absolutely loved him, and am sad to see him go. But I am happy that Hall of Fame voters were smart enough to induct him a couple of years ago, when he could really enjoy it.