The Twitterer of Shea
The original short message service provider of New York died this week. Karl Ehrhardt's signs presaged Twitter and text messaging by more than three decades, and I remember that his short messages provided clever exclamation points to what the Mets did on the field. An advertising copywriter and big-time Mets fan, Ehrhardt was 83, and had packed away his signs years ago. But for those of us who lived at Shea in the era from (roughly) Seaver, Jones, Grote and Koosman through Kingman, Taveras, and Hubie, the sign man of Shea gave us brief tidbits of wit and commentary. When the Mets won it all in '69, Ehrhardt flashed a short, sweet message: "There are no words." In an age before JumboTrons and flashing "Make Some Noise!" graphics, the Sign Man was our SMS system at the ballpark, our baseball Twitterer - the Jenny Holzer of Shea Stadium.
UPDATE: Paul Lukas at the brilliant UniWatch site has a great post on the sign man.
you put up a great post yourself on this topic, Tom. Nicely done and very insightful.
Posted by: bruce b. | February 11, 2008 at 12:00 PM
I went to a game at Shea this year and wasn't sure if a baseball game was taking place. I like going to Ducks' games where I expect the non-stop inter-inning nonsense of t-shirt cannons, funny base running etc. But it had been a long time since I'd gone to see the majors and it was a joke. The amount of BS and NOISE that substituted for the game at work was astonishing. Hearing a bat crack or a mitt pop was impossible. End of older guy rant...
The sign-guy was great. Real quips. And he got covered by the camera back in the old Channel 9 days when games were on daily.
Posted by: wilson | February 11, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Great post -- I wish there were more fans like this now, and fewer "who let the dogs out" sing alongs. Alas...
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Posted by: lisa levy | February 29, 2008 at 06:13 PM
Cracking post this, thanks for sharing your knowledge of the legends work ;)
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