Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Aaron Kuhn, who shares the following guest post:
Live Baseball on the Radio: Radio Selection Considerations
The authors own Sangean Portable + AirPod Pros + a Bluetooth Transmitter rubber banded to the radio back, Coca Cola Park – Allentown, PA
In recent years, I’ve enjoyed attending minor league baseball games in my region. One of my favorite aspects of live baseball is bringing a radio to listen to play-by-play commentary. Experiencing the game in person while hearing the commentary in my ear offers the best of both worlds.
Over the years, I’ve brought various portable and ultra-portable radios to games, and I’ve realized that certain criteria make for a good “Live Baseball Radio.” Whether it’s form factor, size, or features, a live sporting event presents specific considerations and trade-offs for the radio you choose to bring.
“I’ll just stream the game on my phone”
While there are many options for internet streaming on a smartphone, like the free game audio feeds from MiLB.com, streaming game audio on a smartphone is not ideal for live baseball due to one major issue: latency.
Ideally, you want the action you see to match as closely as possible with the play-by-play you hear. With internet streaming, you’re subject to internet latency and buffering, leading to audio delays that you cannot fix. This makes streaming better for listening to games from afar, but not for live baseball.
Selecting the Ideal Radio
Picking a radio to bring to a game involves considerations that become obvious only after you’ve tried it a few times. Hopefully you can learn from my past mistakes and be more informed.
AM, FM, or AM/FM?
There are no fixed rules about the frequency’s baseball teams use for broadcasting. Some teams are on AM radio, some on FM, and some simulcast on both. Some teams don’t broadcast on free-to-air radio at all, opting for streaming-only solutions. Choosing a radio that receives both AM and FM is your best bet to ensure you can use it at different stadiums.
Many ultra-portable “pocket” radios support only FM, which might leave you without audio if your local team is on AM. Conversely, vintage pocket transistor radios might leave you stuck with AM-only signal receiving capability, missing the FM signal.
Amazon Product Listing Photo for “ZHIWHIS” Ultra-Portable
Vintage RCA Transistor Radio, Photo by Joe Haupt – https://www.flickr.com/photos/51764518@N02/49435844673/
HD Radio
The Author’s recent ill-fated radio choice for a live game
While HD Radio seems like a great idea for live baseball, the HD signal suffers from similar issues as streaming a game: latency
I recently picked up an ultra-portable FM HD Radio for a great deal secondhand, only to take it to the ballpark and realize the HD Signal was delayed by nearly 20 seconds. Worse yet – the radio offered no way to turn off the HD signal and revert to analog! The radio was unusable for watching the game as play-by-play in my ear was nearly four pitches behind what I was seeing live.
If you choose a radio with HD Radio features for the ballpark, check the broadcast delay on the HD signal before the game, and ensure you can turn off the HD Radio features if necessary.
Radio Size and Antenna Considerations
Any radio can be portable if you try hard enough, but space is often limited at live sporting events. Stadium seating varies at some ballparks, you can spread out a blanket on a hillside, sit at a picnic table, or even watch the game from a pool (better check that IPX rating!). However, you’ll likely be using your radio while seated in your ticketed seat. Some stadiums offer spacious, modern seating, while older stadiums may have small, cramped seating.
Antennas on radios are another consideration. In cramped stadium seating, you may not have the luxury to fully extend the antenna for the best signal without poking the person in front of you or next to you. You might want to consider a radio without an external antenna, such as one like the Retekess V112, which uses the headphone cable as the antenna. You may also need to stand up and sit down repeatedly to let people through the aisle rows to their own seats, which is where going “antenna-less” can be useful.
Retekess Product Image for V112 Model
While a headphone-wire antenna setup may be a perceived undesirable feature for dedicated radio hobbyists, pocketability and ease of use in a crowd can be beneficial at a crowded game. Many stadiums are moving towards bag restrictions or not allowing bags at all, making the proposition of transporting even a modest-sized portable radio to a game a chore. A pocket-sized radio you can stick on a lanyard, wear into the park, or stick in a pocket may be the difference between being annoyed all game carrying around a radio, or just enjoying it.
On the flip side, if you plan on pairing your radio with a Bluetooth transmitter to use Bluetooth earbuds or headphones, you may want to select a radio with an antenna. The short cable run on many Bluetooth transmitters may not provide adequate reception for units that use connected headphones as the antenna.
Speaker or No Speaker
If you’re not using the radio for tailgating, consider whether you need a speaker on the radio. Many pocket radios omit a speaker to reduce weight and cost. If you need to unplug your headphones during the game, it might be better to avoid a speaker that could blast game audio accidentally and disrupt your neighbors. Ditching the speaker is also likely to save weight and battery life.
Cost Considerations and Final Thoughts
Choosing the right radio for live baseball involves considering factors like frequency options, latency issues, size, portability, and whether you need a speaker.
Everyone’s finances and purchasing abilities differ, but there are many adequate radio options available for under $20 USD that check a lot of these boxes, making it possible to have a dedicated radio for live sports without spending a lot of money. As radio hobbyists, we sometimes want the best for our listening experiences, but taking an expensive radio to a live sporting event can be risky due to cramped quarters, constant movement, and the potential for spills or accidents.
In my opinion, it’s better to enjoy the game with a “lesser radio” than to spend the entire game worry about damaging an expensive radio. After all, cleaning mustard out of your expensive radio’s speaker grill is not fun post-game entertainment. Focus on enjoying the day and the live sporting experience while enhancing it with the wonder of live ballpark radio – no matter what you bring along.
Awesome article!
I have been going to minor league games for years, and finally realized to bring a radio this season. What an experience! My local minor league team is on AM only, and has almost no latency. This makes the listening experience extremely enjoyable, even the crowd noise syncs up. I agree with your notes on radio size considerations, and bringing a “lesser” radio to the ball park. I bought at Prunus J-985, in order to have a extremely portable, and less expensive radio in case it gets damaged or lost. I really like it with an internal AM bar, and FM headphone antenna. Having a clip is a nice feature too in order to secure to your jersey or hat.
At my states MLB ballpark, AM and FM are both available with similar 2-3 second latency. The last few games I have gone to the latency seems to decrease around the 7th inning or so. However it is never as good as the small town AM minor league station. I appreciate sharing your experience with HD radio ,as I was also looking into that for major league games. From what I can see HD ultra-portables are no longer being produced. Your Audiovox is sweet!
Thanks for the great read,
Dennis
I did some testing this morning comparing over the air radio to internet streaming and to using a websdr receiver.
Internet streaming can have a very large lag compared to over the air. I found some stations lagged by as much as 45 seconds. I checked both the direct radio station url stream, Tune-In radio Stream and the radio station web site stream. It seams that many radio stations have a delay in their stream. Not sure why they would do that.
Web based sdr receivers typically had about a 1/2 to 1 second delay. So they would be usable for listening to while watching a game. But most of the web receivers only do AM (are there any that do FM?). And you would need to access one that can pick up the station carrying the game.
Looks like over the air is the best solution.
As for antennas:
If it’s a local FM station, then a small length of wire, concealed on your clothes, can really increase the reception without the problem of using the telescoping antenna. If it’s an AM station, then not much you can do except orientate the radio for the best reception.
73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
I agree that a portable radio makes a live game experience a little better, and I always take a pocket portable with earbuds when I get a chance to see a game in person. The biggest problem with this is, as you discussed, latency. A modern live event broadcast has several potential sources for minor latency and they all add up. Plus, different stations (HD or analog, different stations in the network, AM or FM versions of the same game) have different latency times. It can be a pain, but listeners can adjust. One solution for listeners who complain loud enough to the right people might be for the play-by-play audio to be fed to a stadium “Part 15” low-power AM or FM transmitter for latency free reception of the audio before the broadcast chain. Listeners in the stands could get the feed in the clear.
Great article. I haven’t been to a ball park in many years. If I make it back home to Indiana this Thanksgiving, I may try to take in the Purdue vs Indiana Old Oaken Bucket football game. If I do, I’ll definitely take a radio with me.
Currently I try to listen to all the Indiana University and Purdue University football and basketball games by streaming local Indiana stations. Since I don’t have TV service at home, radio it is. Works great. And I really enjoy just listening to the game as opposed to watching it on TV. Frees me up to do other things while listening.
But I do notice that occasionally, I’ll tune in to a stream that normally works and receive a message that they cannot stream that week’s game due to contractual agreements. I can usually find another station that is streaming the game. guess certain games get blocked from radio broadcast in certain areas. Not sure what the reason would be.
So my question is: Do the pro teams block local radio streaming in some cases? Such as a not sold-out game.
A few years ago, I would go to New Jersey Motorsports Park and watch the ARCA Car Races. Unfortunately, ARCA no longer comes to the Motorsports Park. Since the cars are so loud, it is difficult or impossible to hear the Public Address Speakers at the Park. So the park also broadcasts the PA system via a low power FM station. At the time I had a Motorola Phone that also had a FM receiver in it. With the earpiece plugged in, the cord acted as an antenna. Worked very well.
It’s a shame more places don’t use a low power FM station to also broadcast inside the stadium.
73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
It appears TuneIn used to blackout radio games on streaming in the past, but as of 2022 it looks like they signed some kind of agreement with MLB (https://cms.tunein.com/press-release/baseball-fans-rejoice-tunein-signs-multi-year-partnership-with-major-league-baseball-solidifies-place-as-an-official-audio-partner-of-mlb/) but you may need TuneIn Premium to benefit from that.
I can’t get a straight answer when researching this, but if the TV Blackout rules are anything to go by there’s still probably some short-sighted decisions / exclusivity agreements on radio as well.
Thanks for posting this. I remember going to baseball games as a kid and seeing old guys with radios in the stands and wondering what the point was. I’m really not the type to bring one myself, even today, but there are times in a baseball game it can really add some context to what’s going on, like what they umpires are discussing on a weird play. It happens. And just this year I think, in the majors, does to head umpire have a mic to talk to the crowd, and it’s only on replays (something else new).
It’s probably an entire article of it’s own for another day, but the way sports are broadcast are completely different, and for different reasons than they used to be, and it’s unfortunate radio is pretty much an afterthought. It used to be to promote the venue, to attract people to come watch in person on regional markets, whether on TV or radio. Now they make contracts with TV networks and there’s less riding on attendance.
The latency issue is annoying, not only as an accompaniment to being at the game either. I remember in the early-mid 90s when we were just glad when we got 2 Va Tech football games on TV for the entire regular season. It was so funny within about 5 minutes into the broadcast watching my grandfather get furious with the TV commentators and mute the TV in favor of having the radio provide the sound instead. I’d still prefer that but the radio is always a minute ahead. I miss the less stressful days of knowing the game isn’t on TV and not feeling jerked around wondering what streaming place is going to have it and if I’m going to have to subscribe to yet another thing. We used to go fishing with the game on the radio and I think I still have a radio down in the basement with fish blood on it.
The local AAA minor league baseball team here still has a radio broadcast but it’s just one guy in the booth. It’s simulcast on MiLB TV too for subscribers of that, who I would imagine are mostly scouts and not the average baseball fan. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no radio broadcast. I listen to it sometimes, and he’s decent for a one man show…but when I do go to a game, I’ll have the pregame on the radio on the way in and the problem is it’s a FM station roughly 30 miles from the stadium. If your car radio was built 15 years ago or more, that’s totally fine, probably sounds good, but most cars aren’t that old. By the time I’m down the street, it’s crackly and weak. Cheapo radios will struggle to receive the station in the stadium and interference will add to the problem. It just feels like it’s there to fulfill a contract. Incidentally, the broadcast plays in the stadium bathrooms and it sounds nice…but difficult to see the game from in there.
I do wish major sports teams would keep their broadcasts on the AM band though. It’s actually difficult to find a stream if you’re outside of the market area for a certain team. I know for the Baltimore Orioles, it’s totally ok to go to the WBAL website and stream the audio from the game if you’re in their region, but if you’re not, you can’t. I have used that WebSDR, KiwiSDR someone else mentioned to listen to baseball games before when I’m out of town. It isn’t really what those things were designed to do but it does the trick.
And while they’re at it, after they get back on AM, maybe they can get rid of the designated hitter and give pitchers at bats again, have more bunts and sacrifices, have better athletes than a bunch of body builders trying to hit the ball out of the park but striking out 50% of the time, have more aggressive base running, stop having every pitcher have Tommy John and being perpetually injured for the remainder of their careers while needing 100 pitches to get through 4 inning no decisions…in fact, let’s stop counting pitches again…but one thing at a time I guess.
If a station broadcasting a live game broadcasts on FM in HD you can’t avoid the latency issue on-air, I believe. Those stations build in a latency to their FM analog signals so that when an HD-capable radio swtiches between the analog and hd signals, there is no loss. At least that’s how it was when iBOC HD on FM was introduced. Your best bet would be to find an AM signal that airs the game. However in many markets there is no local AM station airing the games; Philadelphia is one such market.
However there is a (somewhat) bizarre workaround: Using your smartphone or tablet at the ball park, Find a web tunable SDR that is within range of a station broadcasting the game on AM — likely that signal won’t be offered in HD. So that signal might not have that latency. It’s my experience that web tunable SDRs introduce no more than a 1/2-second delay — which I observe when tuning to WWV / WWVH / CHU with those radios.
All digital transmission systems have latency. These include all types of digital television, DAB+, DRM & HD radio.
Not only is there processing delays in the electronics at the encoding and decoding ends. However the greatest delay is caused by the need protect the receiver from bursts of interference, The encoder stores the data from sound and it is then shuffled in memory in a pattern determined by the standard. Then the data bits within a block of data is added together and inserted into the data stream. When the receiver recovers the data it is stored in and reshuffled to bring the data back to its original sequence. The error correction data is applied to remove any errors. This means the interference has been stretched in time but also the error rate also drops within the correction range. Thus reliable reception is obtained . There does come a point called the ‘digital cliff’, where the error rate is greater than this system can handle and the receiver is designed mute the output.
Typical sources of burst interference is thing which arc such as lightning, ignition systems, electrical line insulators and unsuppressed switchmode power supplies. This means the interference is strongest at the lowest frequencies.
This means that the longest periods to be randomised is in the medium and high frequency bands and the least in VHF frequencies. So DRM can be up to around 5 seconds, this is selectable by the broadcaster. The shortest time is DAB+ which operates around 200 MHz is around 0.5 seconds.
Some digital systems also accumulate the data and transmit it in bursts. The receiver can recognise the beginning of each burst and starts demodulating it for a fixed duration, and the rest of the data is ignored. This is because it could be a reflected signal or from another transmitter on the same frequency, transmitting an identical signal. Those signals cause errors and hence muting. This system is essential for high frequency (SW) and medium frequency broadcasting because the signals can take multiple different paths to the ionosphere and reflected back to the receiver. The delay in each path is different because they are different lengths. DRM has some long interleaving modes to cope with such signal paths.
The internet on the other hand is sent in data blocks in which each contains the destination address but also the time stamp. The route taken can continuously change, but the receiving processor will reassemble the data in time stamp order. Since sound data streams do not have priority, so instead the data must be stored at the destination until all data is received. If not destination has to have blocks of silence. It should be remembered that cell phone systems are digital transmission systems which have their addition delay to the internet between the broadcaster and the cell phone tower.
Cell phones are a two way radio system in which each active phone has to be sent its own separate signal. So if there is a large audience all with cell phones trying to access a single base station overload is bound to occur. 5G has a broadcast mode so it can transmit the same signal to multiple phones. It depends on what frequency they use to transmit the signal in such venues. The high speed mode uses such high frequencies shadow areas of no signals will occur.
Even if the arena has a public address system the speed of sound is about one thousandth of radio signals. So the only solution is to sit near a public address speaker for minimum latency in the commentary!
Interesting info on the HD latency – I wasn’t able to find any good info on this and figured maybe, somewhere out there someone would be lucky enough to have an HD Station with low-latency. Sounds like the latency may just be baked into the protocol / standard based on what you describe.
The Web SDR workaround is certainly in an interesting idea! Are there any good Smartphone WebSDR Client apps that exist, or do WebSDR packages have a mobile web view?
The first transistor radio I ever saw was owned by an uncle. It was a tiny “shirt pocket” model and he said he used it to listen to baseball broadcasts while watching the game on TV. (He said the radio commentary was better than the TV commentary.) Seeing that little technological marvel made me want one and I eventually got a Zenith Royal-100 (avocado green). When XHDATA recently came out with the D-220 in green and about the same size and shape as my Zenith I had to have one.
What does this have to do with your post? In addition to the baseball connection, it sounds as if the D-220 would be the perfect baseball radio — small, cheap, AM/FM, good performance, and the whip is a mere 10 inches long! 🙂
It was pretty funny the D220 posts came out as I was writing this. It’s nearly a great choice in my opinion for live sporting but the finicky analog tuning would kill it for me. I left “digital tuning” off my list but the D220 tuning knob sounds really sensitive in that aspect based on reviews. That said, it would probably work pretty well if you can dial it in and not poke someone with the antenna
The D-220’s tuning really isn’t too difficult to master, and once you get on or near a strong station it tends to “latch on,” after which you just need to peak the signal. A couple of nights ago I was trying to relive my early “DX” experience with my Royal-100 (which covered the entire AM band in about 85 degrees of rotation of a small thumbwheel) and snagged a whole bunch of clear channel stations: WBAP, WSM, WTAM, WSB, WBBM, WHAS, WLS, KRLD, and WLAC. (Using the technique of listening near the top of the hour when a station ID is most likely.) Sounds like you need to get one! 🙂
Aaron,
What a great article!
I never thought of doing that, but it sounds like fun.
Cheers, Jock
Find your local minor league / independent team and get out there with that D220! 🙂