Denzel Clarke Levels Up...Again

This was supposed to be a massive baseball post, but I have spent all morning — ALL BLEEPING MORNING — trying to get my computer and internet to work, and then to work together, and it’s still not quite working like it should, and I’m reminded that we live in a time where our entire lives can fall apart because a bit of technology doesn’t work right.

It wasn’t always that way. When I started in this crazy business, I used to write my stories on a 450-pound monstrosity called the TELERAM portabubble. It looked like this:

I wouldn’t even begin to know how to explain this thing to someone younger than, say, 50. In fact, let’s try a little experiment — I’m going to call up our younger daughter Katie and ask her to guess what this thing is. Let’s see how it goes.

Katie: Can you give me a hint?

Me: No, that’s the whole point.

Katie: Is it a lie detector?

Me: No. It’s not a lie detector.

Katie: What’s the deal with the eye sockets?

Me: Those are not eye sockets.

Katie: Are those cup holders?

Me: No, they’re not cup holders.

Katie: Oh, I know, it’s a speaker. The music comes out of there?

Me: This thing definitely did NOT create music.

This went on for much longer. She could have looked at that photo for 12 years and never come close. As I told her, that’s not a failing on her part. There’s absolutely no reason for her to understand the TELERAM portabubble. And when I did explain that this was a device we newspaper people used on the road to write our tories, and that there’s a little tiny screen to the words TELRAM portabubble, and that the holes on the top are copulers that you would use to jam in a telephone (usually a payphone) in order to send your story back to the office (this worked approximately 1.8% of the time), well I think it’s fair to say that she still has no idea what the TELERAM portabubble is.

My favorite thing about the TELERAM portabubble is that when it didn’t work (98.2% of the time) and you’d call into the “tech support” team in the office, they would go through a three-step checklist questionnaire.”

Question 1: “Did you try turning it off and back on?” (This never fixed the issue.)

Question 2: “Are you in a quiet spot?” (No. As a reporter, you were never in a quiet spot … and, anyway, NO spot was quiet enough for the TELERAM portabubble. You could be in one of those game show sound-proof chambers and the thing would still pick up some static noise.)

Question 3: “Did you try smacking it hard on the side?”

But you know what? On the rare days when the TELERAM portabubble worked and transmitted a garbled but complete version of your story, it was a miracle. It meant we didn’t have to dictate the story to someone back at the office. And that’s how we viewed it. As an occasional miracle. That’s all we expected from tech back then.

Then came an even bigger miracle: T=the portable, Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80, or as we affectionately called it, The Trash-80, seen here in the condition that it was always in.

The Trash-80 was about 50 times lighter than that TELERAM portabubble while still providing the same level of ineffectiveness. The couplers for the TRS-80 were these rubber cups that you carried around, and they almost never worked unless you happened to be sending from an Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance monastery.

But the Trash-80 had other great features … such as a tiny three-line screen! That way, you could only see about 15 words at a time. It also had a cursor that moved slower than Bengie Molina …. for instance, if I was typing this piece on my TRS-80, I’d still be waiting for it to type the words “Denzel Clarke” from the top. So you’d write the story and then wait 15 minutes for the type to actually show up, and Lord help you if you noticed a mistake while the letters slowly scrolled by. It would take you the rest of the month to go back and fix that thing.

But, again: I LOVED my Trash-80. It felt supernatural on the rare occasions when it worked.

Now? Now, technology almost always works. And when it doesn’t? We lack the skills to even process it. I’ve been losing my mind all morning trying to get to the bottom of my computer issues, and it prevented me from writing today’s baseball post (tomorrow, I promise!) and pushed me instead to write this ridiculous piece.

And now I have to get back to fixing this computer. I’ll try hitting it on the side hard.

We live in such strange times.

Kathleen’s Korner

• The Stanley Cup Finals between the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers have been wild. Here are a few of my favorite stats from Florida’s 6-1 victory on Monday:

  • The Oilers had 21 penalties for 85 minutes. 85! That’s more than regulation. That’s actually more than regulation and overtime. At one point, there were so many simultaneous fights that the refs just kind of skated around letting both teams go at it.

  • The 140 total penalty minutes rank fourth all-time in Cup Final history, and 116 of those came in the final 10 1/2 minutes. Calgary and Montreal (1986) hold the record at 176.

  • Leon Draisaitl was held without a shot for just the second time in 93 playoff appearances.

• Back to baseball, Josh Naylor hit a walk-off grand slam for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

• Top prospect Roman Anthony made his big league debut for the Boston Red Sox at just 21 years and 27 days old. He’s the youngest Boston player to receive the call since Rafael Devers in 2017.

• And over in the AUSL, first overall pick Sam Landry made her professional debut for the Volts one week after pitching for Oklahoma in the Women’s College World Series.