4 was good... but 9 was better... I remember some kid who came in with a 17 transistor radio!
Pity the poor kid who had only a 1 transistor radio.
I remember listening to the World Series with an earphone (what they call an "earbud" these days) connected to a red rocket shaped crystal radio that had a wire with an alligator clip that you attached to a ground... a true no-transistor radio.
I'm not quite that old. I think I just missed it. I know I begged my parents for a transistor radio and couldn't get enough of it once it was mine. But I was the only kid I knew who actually knew what a transistor was. Pop was an electrical engineer...he understood. When I was ten, they gave me a great birthday present: a Panasonic AM/FM/SW model that I prized. In a small town, it was my only grasp on civilization (as I saw it). Oh, and that Panasonic served a heavy-duty tour for twenty years before it failed. Those were the days.
You listened to baseball on an actual crystal radio?
Man oh man, you ARE a geek. ;O)