Dan Patrick is my Crazy Uncle

In talking about Phil Rizzuto, the late New York Yankee shortstop and broadcaster, Billy Crystal said (on Wednesday’s DP Show) “he was like a crazy uncle.” It struck me that I feel the same way about DP.

OK, maybe a crazy cousin ….

And I find that rather odd, since I’ve only listened to DP since January or February 2006. I didn’t grow up with him, as many Yankee fans did with Rizzuto. I didn’t even watch Dan during the golden age of SportsCenter, when he was on with Keith. But somehow over the past 18-19 months DP has become part of my weekday afternoons. I love how he discusses sports and the interface between sports and society. I’ve listened to him talk about his job, his wife, his kids, the bird in the Christmas tree.

Geez, he almost feels like family.

Radio is intimate. You’re not distracted by visuals and fancy graphics. You have to be pulled in by the ideas, the thoughts expressed. And the quality of that expression. When the DP Show comes on it’s almost like Dan is in your living room or sitting on your porch talking sports. Sure, he gets emotional over some subjects, but he doesn’t scream or whine or berate. He just talks.

There are only so many sports stories that go around each day. On ESPN Radio it starts with Mike and Mike, then goes on to The Herd, then to the DP Show, then later on into the night with other hosts on other shows. The Mike and Mike schtick is “the jock and the metrosexual non-jock.” Colin Cowherd’s schtick (as far as I can discern) is “the loud and annoying guy.” (If DP is your crazy uncle, then Colin is the deranged brother-in-law you really, really wish your sister hadn’t married.) Dan’s schtick is … what? It’s kind of hard to say. “Interested observer” comes to mind. Not really a schtick, more a point-of-view. A way of being.

As rrgirl commented in The Dan Patrick Show: a eulogy:

my love affair with radio extends back to pre-school when my mother tuned into a lunchtime story show on a Canadian station that played “Teddy Bears Picnic” for a theme song, and a man with a distinguished accent read for a few minutes. it kept me focused when not many things could keep in a chair long enough to get me fed. I have no idea what station it was – Canadian AM would drift in on the breeze in French or English like lake effect snow.

over the years, the radio has been my companion whether I was freelancing in my living room, or needing an aural focal point above the din in a crowded office. I used to like call in talk radio before it got so damned political. I’m not sure the “fairness doctrine” should be restored, but anyone too young to remember Johnny Carson probably never knew general interest talk radio before the right-wingers took it over. DP gets pretty close to it.

there’s no point in denying that I found my way to the Big Show in…hot pursuit of all things KO, early in 2006. the state of my workday makes it impossible to follow even an hour of radio without interruptions, so I try to record the show and time shift it every day…full disclosure, I have a reminder programmed into my Outlook at 1:30 every day so I can check in to see if the Big Show will be broadcast, then decide whether to record. yes, I’m still wrestling with XM. maybe if I’d been a little less impetuous, I’d have seen the benefit of an Insider subscription with full show podcasts.

I think I had higher hopes for XM, and besides, didn’t everyone have a radio tuner synched with a cassette recorder on a timer, back in the 80’s? how else would I have a recording of the ying-tong song? pod-casts are for sissies. no, seriously, the internet has changed my relationship to broadcasting as much as everyone else, and I wonder if DP is trying to anticipate the next phase of media. there is no “radio” or “television” anymore.

it’s becoming clear enough that DP is engaged in some epic negotiation. gosh, the longer it takes, the closer I get to the edge of my seat. no news is not good news. I’m really not in the mood to lose one of the best things in my daily routine right now. damn it, what’s a girl to do without a Big Show to look forward to? I’m going to choose to hope the best is yet to come. yeah. that’s the ticket.

We have now come to the time when Radio Companion Dan has one more at-bat before hanging up the spikes. I have a feeling that he’ll leave us with a walk-off homer.