Future Visions: Organizational and Personal Preparation

Abstract

In a retrospective audiotape about the professional life of the great sports announcer, Red Barber, it was interesting to hear him describe “announcing” the play-by-play description of an away baseball game in the early days of radio. Sports announcers in those days did not travel; therefore, Barber stayed in his team’s hometown and learned about the game by reading the ticker tape. It was then his role to translate the information from the ticker tape into a “live” play-by-play commentary. In one particularly humorous anecdote, Barber describes what he had to do when the ticker tape stopped for a period of time when the game was at a particularly intense point.¹ While all this may seem ludicrous by modern standards, some of our antics and attempts at applying technology in healthcare will probably seem as ludicrous to future generations as trying to announce a baseball game without seeing it.