Rich Tandler's Nationals blog.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

W’s reception at Nationals Park

One of the few controversies to emerge from the Nationals' opener on Sunday was the greeting given to President George W. Bush when he threw out the first pitch. As I mentioned in my live blog, there were folks posted outside of the Metro station urging everyone getting out of the Navy Yard station to boo Bush, just in case we didn't have minds of our own.


At the park, I definitely heard a strong undertone of booing mixed in but it didn't strike me as being a particularly hostile noise.


I was somewhat surprised, then, the next morning when I heard the event on TV. The booing was much more pronounced. I was talking with my parents later in the day and they commented on the boos. A Navy veteran in California who, presumably, watched on TV wrote a letter to the Post protesting the protest of the president.


I recorded the first pitch with the video feature on my camera. I finally got around to transferring the video off of the card and, since some people have asked me about the reception for W, I went ahead and uploaded it to You Tube. The video isn't too good but you get a pretty good idea of what it sounded like.


In case you're wondering, I was not in a section that had a particularly high population of Republicans. I wasn't in a section at all at the time, I had stopped on the ramp on my way up to the seat and viewed the first pitch from one of the concession areas that overlook the field down the left field line.

You can compare it here to the sound as it came across on ESPN:



I'm certainly not an expert in audio recording equipment, but I am an authority on hazarding a guess. I would think that the ESPN microphones are better at picking up the low end sounds while the tiny mic on my HP Photosmart M547 records the high sounds. The high-def Dolby equipment is going to capture the lower booing sound while the camera purchased at Target for a hundred bucks is going to get the higher-range noise of the cheering.

Anyway, no dramatic conclusion to draw here, just a different perspective.

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