Leaving The Yard

Leaving The Yard sounds like a studio conversation in no hurry to get to the scores. Chuck Zach hosts, and the chair beside him rotates by weekday, with Carpenter on Mondays and Billy on Wednesdays; David Pinkerton also appears in some episodes. The openings set the tone. One starts after a week away with a pair of reading glasses. Another starts with Billy and his partner finding they have dressed alike, like golfers. A third starts with a Longwood Lancers cap and some doubt about where the school actually is. Then there is the back. In one episode both people at the table are hobbling, and the talk runs through an x-ray, an MRI, a bulging disc and a third dog that needed lifting. It is not sports, but it is very much the show. Most of the sports talk is about Arkansas and Texas. Razorback baseball brings out both moods. In spring, one voice says, a Razorback fan is 'walking in tall cotton', though fall is another story. Elsewhere, a midweek walk-off loss to Missouri State has the table calling for a mini exorcism of the negative energy around hog baseball. An episode title puts it plainly: 'What's wrong with Van Horn's Hogs baseball team?' Texas gets its turn through the Longhorns. Their women's basketball exit gets a brief mention before a real disagreement breaks out. One voice calls women's basketball slow, below the rim and full of turnovers, and admits the opinion will make enemies; the other answers that holding it to the men's game is like judging softball by baseball. Golf comes through Carpenter in 'Rory wins Green Jacket #2'. He recaps the Masters, and the table names players it expects to win majors, Sam Burns, Cam Young and Russell Henley among them. Closer to home, high school baseball gets a practical proposal: once a team leads by 20 after a full inning, the game should end, because no parent or grandparent should have to sit through 25 walks. Titles such as 'Texas Tech picks a fight with the BIG 12', '45-0?' and 'It's all a numbers game....65.....45' sit alongside the golf and basketball talk. The show is opinionated without turning sour. Disagreements get argued out, and at least one ends with the verdict still to be determined. A listener after golf can start with 'Rory wins Green Jacket #2'. One after Razorback talk and studio ribbing should look for Billy's episodes, such as 'What's wrong with Van Horn's Hogs baseball team?' Either way, the small talk comes first.