One Last Season Before the Embers Admit They Are Ash

In my youth, she was one of the great loves of my life, but she stopped caring about me - and herself - many years ago. 

One day I realized I no longer loved her. Still, I clung to the relationship much longer than I should have, even when it stopped providing me joy. 

But now, we both know it is over. She has announced that I will never see her again when summer ends. 

And I am just fine with that. 

I am speaking, of course, of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. 

I was 11 years old when it debuted in 1990 and it quickly became far more valuable to me than ABC's Monday Night Football. 

Vin Scully is the greatest to ever call a game, but no one ever had a better voice than Jon Miller, and he was the voice of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball for 21 seasons. 

When he left, it could have easily been the death knell for the broadcast but ESPN hired Dan Shulman, himself blessed with a wonderful voice and knowledge of the game, and the series continued just as good - nay, better, thanks to the proliferation of HD and new camera technology - for another 8 seasons. 

I really cannot describe how much I loved the show for more than a quarter-century. Like other things now gone from my life - the Sierra Madre Concerts in the Park or the South Pasadena farmers market, to give two examples - ESPN Sunday Night Baseball was simultaneously both itself and a celebration of summer, a reminder that although life passes by, there are things you can count on when the weather turns warm and the skies are high and limitless. 

And then the broadcast, along with the network, changed. 

Baseball Tonight, my all-time favorite of ESPN's shows (yes, including SportsCenter) stopped being a nightly broadcast and instead became once a week. ESPN went from featuring baseball games several times per week to no more than one or two (often, only one - the Sunday broadcast).

And the broadcast crews for ESPN Sunday Night Baseball went from great to average to terrible. There are Minor League announcers who do better. 

Finally, a few weeks ago, ESPN announced that they are opting out of their contract with Major League Baseball after this season. 

Now, this is not bad news. ESPN has not cared about baseball for quite some time now. I appreciate that they are finally admitting it. They care about the NFL and the NBA and occasionally soccer. If a story is not about LeBron James or the Dallas Cowboys, they would prefer not to report it. 

At least now another network can pick up the tradition and hopefully recreate their own version of Sunday Night Baseball, and it will unquestionably be better than the shit that ESPN has been serving us for the last decade. 

But it would be dishonest for me to claim that I am not going to miss it a little. 

I am going to spend time with her for the next 27 Sundays, not because of who she is, but because I owe it to the ghost of who she was for a quarter-century. 

Anyway, I made a turkey chorizo lavash pizza, and it was spectacular.