Bill Littlefield To Fans: "Thanks For Listening, Week After Week"

Host Bill Littlefield closed the Only A Game 2oth Anniversary Live Show on May 12 with these remarks.

I wish you great seats and hot franks, cold ice cream,
And a home club that's good enough so you can dream;
And people to share it, help carry the load
When a prince of a player turns into a toad;
And to share it as well, when the foul ball bends fair
And delirious shouts split the ballpark's charged air.
May you star in the clutch when the outlook is bleak …
And again, thanks for listening, week after week.

Now I want to take a few minutes to thank some people without whom, as Yogi Berra once said, all this would not have been necessary.

Thanks to David Greene and Gary Waleik, who were present at the start of the program in 1993. It is still my great good fortune to work with Gary each day — and with Karen Given and Doug Tribou. Our technical director, James Trout, carries on in the excellent tradition of John Perotti. My thanks, also, to Charlie Pierce, long the favorite part of the show for so many listeners.

That's only the current staff. Thanks, also, to all those who have supported us at WBUR and NPR.

Our intention from the outset has been to tell stories set in sports — or at least vaguely set in sports — as well as we could. I hope we've also increased appreciation for women's sports. I hope we've helped to establish a reasonable context for thinking about our games in a culture sometimes inclined to take them too seriously at all levels. I know, as I said earlier, that we've had a lot of fun in the process. Thanks to all of you for coming along for the ride.

The only problem with saying all that is that it sounds like the end of something, and it's not, which is why I'll close by  saying what I've been saying at the end of the program since July, 1993: I'll see you next week.