Baseball Radio ASMR
January 20, 2022 4:27 PM   Subscribe

It’s a radio broadcast of a baseball game. It’s completely fictional. And it’s designed to put you to sleep. The Northwoods Baseball Radio Network is on the air with no yelling and commercials at the same audio level. In an interview with its creator, Chicago-based media producer Mr King said "I experimented with listening to podcasts and white noise, and I found I liked to fall asleep by listening to a west coast game that I didn’t really care about." One game has been "played" with more planned as part of a podcast.
posted by myopicman (52 comments total) 67 users marked this as a favorite
 
I use physics lectures for their soporific effects. Pretty much nightly.
posted by bz at 4:34 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


LOVE this! Thank you!
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 4:35 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


I use short story fiction podcasts that I try to auto-level in Audacity and trim out the opening and closing music and narration. If I could sleep to a sportsball game, this would be perfect for me!
posted by stevil at 4:41 PM on January 20, 2022


In this vein, the shipping forecast is reported to be popular for sleeping.
posted by true at 4:42 PM on January 20, 2022 [8 favorites]


I'm pretty sure the real reason my dad watched baseball on Saturday afternoons for our weekend visits is because it would put me and my brother right to sleep after a morning at the park or beach.

It's not often that I'm even around a TV with a sporting event being watched, but to this day the sound of a baseball game and other sports broadcasts will knock me right out. I've fallen asleep at Superb Owl parties as an adult who was mainly just there to be social and have some beers and BBQ or something.
posted by loquacious at 4:45 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Pitch perfect...
posted by jim in austin at 4:49 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


See also, the 'Sleep with me' podcast
posted by kaibutsu at 4:55 PM on January 20, 2022 [5 favorites]


This is where I mention that Blaseball is back this coming week for their last 2-week Short Circuit before announcing when the game starts again in earnest. Twitch 'radio' broadcasts are available, and will confuse you to sleep.
posted by persona at 4:56 PM on January 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


Ha, this is great, I was sleepy 30 seconds in. Immediately decided I'm a Northwoods Timbers fan; won't ever hear the end of the game to find out if they win.
posted by the primroses were over at 4:59 PM on January 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


I've been listening to west coast games to go to sleep for years. This is pretty cool.
posted by COD at 5:13 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


oh my god YES!!!

Falling asleep to a random west coast game is my absolute favorite thing to do in the summertime. I am Baseball on the Radio 4 Life.

Although I wish he'd done his research to find out that there is an actual Northwoods League (I am currently unaffiliated, but will throw my allegiance to the Mankato Moondogs) so that he doesn't run into copyright issues.
posted by Gray Duck at 5:14 PM on January 20, 2022 [10 favorites]


When I was studying abroad in college, my parents sent me a cassette tape of a Twins game on the radio. I listened to it often not for the outcome, but for the cadence and sounds. It was very comforting background noise.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:15 PM on January 20, 2022 [12 favorites]


Wait, the announcer is the "fictional Wally McCarthy"? Are we sure this guy didn't spend his youth falling asleep to Twins games on 'CCO?
posted by Gray Duck at 5:28 PM on January 20, 2022 [5 favorites]


Slow blaseball
posted by joeyh at 5:31 PM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is really really great. Best of Web, unironically.

I've been to some (actual) Northwoods League games, and even knew the owner of the Mankato Moondogs (he's since divested; it's a terrible money hole).
posted by mcstayinskool at 5:33 PM on January 20, 2022 [5 favorites]


In this vein, the shipping forecast is reported to be popular for sleeping.

I heard the most baffling ad yesterday, for an ASMR podcast designed to create nightmares when you fall asleep to it.
posted by pwnguin at 6:00 PM on January 20, 2022


Oh wow, this is exactly what I need! I've been struggling to find the right sleep cast lately. When I was a kid we'd go to our cottage up north,I shared a room with my grandma. Many a night, we fell asleep listening to Bob Uecker call the Brewers games.

I still listen to Bob (40 years later!), but not to fall asleep. This seems like just the ticket
posted by TheFantasticNumberFour at 6:05 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Goat on the field! Removed , smoothly, without incident.
posted by Gray Duck at 6:12 PM on January 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


Seconding Sleep With Me. It seems to do the trick nicely for me. I'm not really into sports but that could actually help in this case. In my mind's ear the sound of a baseball game does seem like it would be comforting and sleep inducing. There should be one of these featuring golf also.
posted by WhenInGnome at 6:31 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


To fall asleep at night I listen to recordings of various apocrypha. For instance:

https://librivox.org/the-apocryphal-acts-of-paul-peter-john-andrew-and-thomas-by-bernhard-pick/

They’re interesting and novel enough to stop my mind worrying, but not so interesting they keep me awake.

(There’s a selection available for free from LibriVox, a huge project undertaken by hundreds of volunteers who record audiobooks from texts in the public domain including early science fiction, all of Jane Austen, translations of worldwide religious texts. It’s a fucking candy shop.)

Oh also, when I’m in the right mood Pimsleur language learning tapes work for me. It’s super counterintuitive but they do make me fall asleep and I learn a little tiny bit before that happens.
posted by pickles_have_souls at 8:44 PM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Golf broadcasts on weekends do me in every time.

Formula 1, too, especially practice sessions. Droning cars, droning Englishmen.
posted by notyou at 9:13 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


I used to fall asleep listening to baseball broadcasts as a child. It's a warm memory. Unfortunately, Ernie Harwell has left us.
posted by praemunire at 9:31 PM on January 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Ray Lane, remember Ray Lane, Ray Lane.
posted by clavdivs at 10:09 PM on January 20, 2022


"In fact he does what almost looks like some very gentle tai chi around the mound between pitches..."

C'mon, that's gold.
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:17 PM on January 20, 2022 [10 favorites]


I heard the most baffling ad yesterday, for an ASMR podcast designed to create nightmares when you fall asleep to it.

Do you remember what it was called? That sounds delightful.
posted by transitional procedures at 10:21 PM on January 20, 2022


with no yelling - no creaky dulcet tones, no sleepy…

Actually, there’s another show that’s doubly fit: the Blindboy Podcast is brilliant awaketime listening, but its aural qualities (tone, meander, accent, and definitely the gently infinite background piano loop) are practically designed to snooze you, if need be (and there are hundreds of eps).
posted by progosk at 11:39 PM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I fall asleep to old radio episodes of Hancock's Half Hour, which I've now heard so many times I know them almost by heart. There's something very restful about half-listening to such familiar voices and dialogue, and never any temptation to stay awake just to find out what happens next - because I already know.

[If you prefer music to speech when you're dropping off, Bobby Wellins' Satin Album is hard to beat. There's not a single note in that gorgeously smooth 65 minutes that's going to fight you.]
posted by Paul Slade at 2:07 AM on January 21, 2022


This is a wonderful work of art.
posted by quazichimp at 2:32 AM on January 21, 2022


I this vein:
Deep Dreams
By Stavros
Deep Dreams is an AI generated podcast with nonsensical stories to help you fall asleep
to a soothing voice. Let your robotic overlords whisper comforting sweet nothings
straight into your subconscious. What could go wrong?
I've never used this for it's intended purpose, but I've listened to it a few times because I find the concept hilarious.
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 3:20 AM on January 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Feed an AI the career of Vin Scully and you could have an infinite supply of these.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:37 AM on January 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


Gray Duck: Wait, the announcer is the "fictional Wally McCarthy"?

Yeah, the letter "Wally McCarthy's Lindahl Olds" is probably visible on the surface of my brain tissue, given how often I heard it as a kid on WCCO.

McCarthy was a stalwart of the Twin Cities car business for years. But he was always an Oldsmobile guy, never a Cadillac dealer, AFAIK.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:50 AM on January 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


I love this. The sound works perfectly with a cellphone speaker, and I have to wonder if that is what was intended. I am of an age that remembers the first transistor radios with those tinny little speakers, and the sound of this brings that aesthetic right back. There is a light static in the background that sounds exactly like a distant station. One of those that comes in from several hundred miles away at night, skipping across the ionosphere.
posted by cybrcamper at 6:51 AM on January 21, 2022 [6 favorites]


> I use physics lectures for their soporific effects. Pretty much nightly.

Like this?
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 7:01 AM on January 21, 2022


While we wait for more games to be posted, the Internet Archive (blessed be their name) offers 500+ radio broadcasts of games from the 1930s through 1973: https://archive.org/details/classicmlbbaseballradio.

Here's a nice post that talks about the collection from several angles: https://tht.fangraphs.com/radio-days-a-treasure-trove-of-old-time-baseball/

It makes me want to gut an old radio, put a Raspberry Pi in it, and have it randomly play one of these games every time I turn it on!
posted by wenestvedt at 7:02 AM on January 21, 2022 [5 favorites]


This is really wonderful. Just completely perfect.

Sometimes lately I have been falling asleep to the Hit Parade podcast. Even when it's a topic I'm interested in, Chris Molanphy's voice and cadence are so slow and even that it puts me to sleep every time. Last night I started listening to the latest episode and I absolutely could not say how much of it I missed because I dozed off.

Even his ad reads are soporific. Do yourself a favor and find an episode where he does a read for Bush's baked beans. It's genuinely bizarre, but delightful.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:10 AM on January 21, 2022


"There is a light static in the background that sounds exactly like a distant station. One of those that comes in from several hundred miles away at night, skipping across the ionosphere."

Listening to Harry Caray call the Cubs on WGN at night on the car's AM radio from 1,000 miles away in the early 80s.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:42 AM on January 21, 2022 [8 favorites]


Thank you for posting this, I love this idea so much and can't wait to listen.

And I didn't know, but should have, about the archive.org collection, awesome!

For similar vintage baseball vibes, may I recommend the Classic Baseball on the Radio youtube channel?
posted by alsoran at 8:47 AM on January 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Fell asleep during the first inning. Really appreciate the humor laced throughout it.
posted by Callisto Prime at 9:38 AM on January 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


Now do a cricket match!

(and now I'm thinking of that Fry and Laurie skit as the Cricket commentators, which definitely won't put you to sleep.)
posted by small_ruminant at 12:34 PM on January 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


Do you remember what it was called? That sounds delightful.

I don't recall for sure, but googling found Scare You To Sleep, which sounds familiar. Based on the copy I cannot recommend, but YMMV:

Please enjoy this bitterly cold Guided Nightmare. Guided Nightmares are like Guided Meditations, I go through breathing and calming exercises to relax you before I take you on a guided journey through your own personal horror story.

posted by pwnguin at 4:01 PM on January 21, 2022


At any given moment there is a very good chance that a Test Match is going on somewhere in the world, a form of sport that can last up to five days, and you can almost certainly find English-language commentary of it even if the English may be heavily accented, and these will be commentators who have mastered the art of maintaining their listeners' interest enough that they don't switch off but not enough to distract them from, say, gardening or reading the newspaper. For five days. Cricket may be a religion but commentating on a Test Match is one of the purest forms of performance art in the world, up there with Buddhist chants and the works of early minimalist composers, and it'll have you off into delightful tea-infused dreams in a handful of minutes.
posted by Hogshead at 4:48 PM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


Thank you so very much for this. I can't conceive of anything I need more right now.
posted by ezust at 4:54 PM on January 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


Someone should do this with Blaseball games.
posted by JHarris at 5:53 PM on January 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I love this, thank you so much!
posted by 2soxy4mypuppet at 9:15 PM on January 21, 2022


Seconding it could work well with test cricket (and I am a fan!).
Maybe just commentators during an endless rain delay.
posted by bystander at 11:47 PM on January 21, 2022


I have fond memories of listening to baseball broadcasts on a Transistor Radio on our boat or on a beach in my preteen years. It’s a comforting thing for me.

For the past several years I’ve been giving mlb.com about $20/season for the privilege of having access to radio broadcasts of all teams, all season.

I’m currently going to sleep listening to either the Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees broadcasts from the 2021 season. I’m in early June. There should be spring training games before I get to August’s games.
posted by Warren Terra at 12:39 AM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


I've used it as a sleep aid once now, it's pretty good. I am amused by the low-key whimsy in it, with the "unspecified fishing accident," players having names like "Shiny Patterson" and the ads. I understand if they took that much further it might detract from its stated purpose.

I still think Blaseball transcripts could be adapted to this purpose.
posted by JHarris at 6:30 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


I used to hide a radio under my pillow and listen to baseball games as I fell asleep as a kid. I still do it sometimes with the MLB subscription. This is perfect.

On that note, can I recommend the book The Utility of Boredom by Andrew Forbes. It captures this aesthetic perfectly.
posted by dogbusonline at 5:31 AM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]


I managed to be awake during the end, and I noticed the game doesn't actually end, it just sort of trails off in the last inning, the voice getting fainter and fainter until it's just the crowd.

Also, do I want to ask how Mr. King's Party Goods got their quint-city monopoly on helium? It sounds like he made his competitors an offer they couldn't refuse....
posted by JHarris at 7:29 AM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


Tested this last night. What a treat!

In These Unprecedented Times, it’s neat to see hear talented people creatively doing a nice weird thing to improve the well-being of strangers. Thanks so much for sharing this!
posted by armeowda at 7:13 PM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]


Also fell asleep in one inning. Lovely!
posted by rouftop at 5:41 AM on January 25, 2022


Loved this, and I know the game isn't the point.., but c'mon, the tying run is at the plate in the 9th and it just fades out? I NEED TO KNOW!
posted by martin q blank at 9:20 AM on January 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


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