A Different Opener

AMERICA'S PASTIME

American's Couch-time

the boys of summer

WALLPAPER: THE DUKE OF FLATBUSH

-------

.. Although it's just about Spring in this neck of the woods, it's Summer elsewhere.
.. The boys of summer are now officially earning their multi million dollar salaries by chewing and farting and scratching and digging in their crotch.

THE PILL

.. Baseball is here and our nation is ready. Or so we would be led to believe.
.. Not so very long ago baseball was played on the radio.
.. It's hard to envision slouching on a couch with the neighborhood toughs gobbling nachos and guacamole while listening to a ball game on the radio.
.. Baseball is a different game on the radio than it is on the television. It's a different game in the year 2016 than it was in 1949 as well.

.. Fly fishers in 1949 had a different social millieu to operate within than does the fly fisher today. So too the baseball fan.
.. Today our heroes are ridged fly lines, designer reels, and spouse beating adolescents in adult bodies.
.. Today we can fish the all over the world and torment  foreign fish as easily as we can ignore a soft walk in the woods.
.. Pedal to the metal fly fishing. It's a grand slam sort of deal. Someone is making money. Someone is spending money. Catching is always better where the grass is greener.
.. Today neither fly fishing nor baseball is a pastime. Both are in high gear and dashing headlong into the worlds of lucre and fame.
.. Fame from the radio, (then or now.) is a different sort of beast. Lucre in terms of real dollars or perquisites is different now than then. We're beyond radio.
.. We, ourselves, still enjoy the humor of both contemporary baseball and fly fishing. The play by play re-analysis of an electric image that was available to all from all different angles, is mandatory for the color commentators. Our eyes are just not good enough.
.. This allows time for a commercial break, and extends the air time, - umpires be damned: the game be damned.

NOT RADIO

.. Fly fishers allowing that a fish's eating habits and behaviors can be analyzed ad nauseam from streamside to the abandonment of flicking a fly on the water as an empirical test are  missing the "radio" of the pastime. We must need the 'color' commentators of fishing to validate it.
.. Watching fish is hardly sport but it is certainly an enjoyable pastime. Waste of time?
.. Radio has gone out of baseball. Radio has left fly fishing. Baseball is about to leave television for the "mobile device."
.. Fly fishing has already embraced the cell phone. It's radio days expired with the 'American Sportsman' and celebrity fishers. OOPS! Celebrities who got paid to fish.
.. There never was much radio about the fly fishing pastime on these shores. There was some in Great Britain and Canada right after WWII.
.. For some interesting reasons the way to fame and fortune in the world of fly fishing is through publication and product huckstering.
.. George Kelson taught us how. We've been doing it ever since. Some are good at it. Some are great at it. It's akin to selling autographed baseballs. In fly fishing it's autographed reels or rods or books or flies.
.. Goodby radio, so long television, adios publications: hello adventures, hello internet sales, hello twitter, hello 'Electric Horseman' and Steve Able and Perk Perkins.

Perk Perkins has led Orvis as CEO since November 1992. Under his guidance, the company has grown from $88 million in sales in 1992 to nearly $300 million in 2006. The company simultaneously refined and expanded its product line and sales channels. Perk has built a strong business culture of quality and brand integrity throughout the multi-channel retailer. Orvis has prospered and earned the industry’s highest awards in both catalog and Internet marketing.{{LINK}}

.. So, it's opening day for some. It's not for others.

-----

.. We're headed over the hill to the lowland Madison River. The fishing is proceeding apace with the gentle lowland weather and there are little bitty teeny weeny blueish flies down there.

-------

WALLPAPER:   SPRINGTIME WEST YELLOWSTONE