Speaking of "out of sync," I have a question which will probably have to be answered by a baseball fan in Los Angeles.
When I was a kid and occasionally following the L.A. Dodgers, one of the big appeals was Vin Scully, who called the play-by-play. He's still the most important person in the stadium whenever that team plays. My father, who followed baseball more than I did, wouldn't dream of watching a game without Scully in his ear. Whenever we went to a game, he took along a transistor radio so he could listen to Vinnie describe what we were seeing…and even if he hadn't brought the radio along, so many other Dodger fans did that you could often hear Scully throughout the bleachers.
Even watching the Dodgers on TV, he had to have Vin Scully. For a time, Scully's co-anchor was a guy named Jerry Doggett, who was probably a decent-enough sportscaster but he wasn't the Ol' Redhead. Scully and Doggett would switch off. One would call a few innings on the TV broadcast while the other did the radio narration, then they'd swap. Whenever Scully was on the radio, my father would mute the sound on the television and haul out his radio so he could hear Vin.
The other day, I was discussing this with a friend who, unlike me, follows the Dodgers these days. She said that you can't do this now. According to her, they have the radio transmission of Vin Scully on a five second delay. So if you listen to him, he's not describing what you're seeing live or on your TV screen. He's a few seconds behind and it doesn't work.
I guess this is a multi-part question, then. Is this true? And if so, is it being done intentionally to discourage people from listening to Vin Scully on the radio while they watch the game at the stadium or on TV? I can't imagine why Vin Scully would need to be broadcast on a delay, nor can I fathom why anyone would care if you listened to him this way. Can anyone clear this up for me?