The joys of baseball on the radio
A century after hitting the airwaves, the game has never sounded better
Sports Biblio Reader, 10.31.21
Also in This Issue: The Most Jewish World Series Ever; The 1981 World Series; The 1970 World Cup; Newcastle United; Chuck Hughes; Ivan Maisel; Remembering Arnold Hano
As I write this, Game 4 of the 2021 World Series is unfolding just a few miles from me.
My hometown Atlanta Braves are a most improbable entry this year, overcoming numerous injuries just to get to the post-season, then to oust the defending World Series champions Dodgers to win the National League pennant.
Ticket prices are outrageously expensive—standing-room only is more than $1,000, if you’re even that lucky—and the entertainment complex surrounding Truist Park is packed to capacity, cordoned off during games at the behest of the local fire marshal.
But for years, especially since my sportswriting days have been behind me, I’ve become a fan accustomed to consuming sports on television, even in a city with an abundance of major sports.
That is, until earlier this year, when YouTube TV and the Braves’ regional cable outlet had a falling out. After cutting the cord a few years ago, streaming had been a better and cheaper option, but that industry too is going the way of cable.
The truth is, I’ve soured on television in general, so as spring training wrapped up I cut the stream and turned on the radio.
It was like being transported back in time to my youth, when most baseball games anywhere were carried over the radio. Until Ted Turner showed up, that’s how I experienced being a Braves fan.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first World Series game carried on the airwaves, an all-New York affair between the Giants and Yankees.
As Jared Diamond noted last week in The Wall Street Journal, that was very unlike today’s announcers in the booth, calling the action that takes place directly in front of them.
On Oct. 5, 1921, a reporter at the Polo Grounds transmitted telegraph reports to his newspaper office. In turn, his sports editor relayed the information by phone to a WJZ radio announcer, who never saw what he described to listeners.
If that required some imagination, then consider the contemporary product we listen to today, and consider what one of sports television’s biggest names, Al Michaels, told Diamond about the magic of the radio:
“Television takes your imagination away. If you’re listening to a game on the radio, you can dream along with the game.”
The definitive history of baseball on the radio, James R. Walker’s “Crack of the Bat,” is devoted chiefly to evolution of game on the platform through a business and technology lens.
But for someone who grew up with the game in an audible format, renewing that dreamscape during what’s been a magical season has been a delight.
While hometown announcers grouse about balls-and-strikes I can’t see, I wait for quickie highlights to show up on social media feeds or MLB.com’s At-Bat app.
I don’t really feel like I’m missing anything.
As retired Dodgers legend announcer Vin Scully told Diamond:
“Radio means freedom. You have the radio on and you can paint the garage. With television, it’s a commitment. Radio is your associate—you have it with you and you’re listening while you’re doing something else. Television, you’re saying, ‘You’re the boss. I can’t leave while you’re on.’”
This is what I’ve always sensed, as TV announcers accentuate what viewers see. While I’m tooling around in the kitchen, hearing the enthusiastic, talented new Braves play-by-play man, Ben Ingram, shout “steeee-rike three!” brings back fond memories of the voices of my youth.
Ted Turner may have revolutionized baseball on television with the rise of WTBS, but he also overhauled his radio booth in stellar fashion. Ernie Johnson Sr., who for years had teamed up with Milo Hamilton, was joined by Skip Caray—son of Harry—and the longtime Hawks radio voice, and the encyclopedic Pete Van Wieren.
Dubbed the “Perfesser,” Van Wieren rattled off statistics and trivia in rigorous fashion, the perfect foil for the sarcastic, glib Caray, whose son Chip, is now the Braves’ lead TV announcer.
Ernie, Skip and Pete all have passed on, and as this season has progressed, I have thought about them often. They would have loved this drama, of a team under .500 at the start of August, reaching the World Series with 2-1/2 starting pitchers, a traded-for replacement outfield and some gutsy relievers.
To feel the intimacy of the human voice, absent the dominating visuals that demand all of your attention, is like hearing an old friend checking in, renewing connections that remain fresh for a lifetime.
For further reading: “Pull Up A Chair: The Vin Scully Story,” by Curt Smith
A Few Good Reads
When Braves pitcher Max Fried faced Astros third baseman Alex Bregman in Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday, it was a rarity, an all-Jewish contest at the plate in the Fall Classic. Fried, Bregman and Braves outfielder Joc Pederson make this, in the mind of Howard Wasserman, writing at Forward, the most Jewish World Series ever. He recounts the October exploits of Ken Holtzman, Larry Sherry, Jason Marquis and of course, Sandy Koufax. While Fried retired Bregman twice, the Astros jumped on him early to tie the Series at 1-1, with a possible Game 6 rematch looming;
It’s been 40 years since the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in a strike-shortened season over the New York Yankees. Japan-based American sportswriter Ed Odeven recalls that occasion, as a seven-year-old from Gotham;
On Oct. 24, 1971, Detroit Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes caught his only pass of the game for a first down and absorbed a massive tackle in the process. Three plays later, as he went back to the Lions huddle, he collapsed on the field and never recovered, becoming the only player in NFL history to die on the field. At The Sporting News, Bob Hille recounts the tragedy by talking to eyewitnesses, including legendary Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls, who wrote simply: “I saw a man die before my eyes;”
The struggling Newcastle United Football Club has new owners from a Saudi Arabian wealth fund, which has set off grousing about foreign takeovers English sports entities. At The Guardian, David Goldblatt, author of the 2020 book “The Age of Football” and other accounts of the globalized game, writes how this latest development reflects political failures in Britain that frown upon the regulation of the soccer industry and the notion of “German-style social ownership.”
Now Hear This
Newly published, by Birlinn Books (UK) is “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Reuters sports journalist Andrew Downie’s look at the 1970 World Cup won by Brazil, considered the greatest soccer team of all time. The author (personal website here), whose last book was about the Brazilian 1982 World Cup captain Socrates, is interviewed on the Monocle’s The Stack podcast;
Sportswriter Ivan Maisel, author of the newly published memoir about his son’s suicide, “I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye,” talks with The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis on the Press Box podcast.
Passings
Arnold Hano, 99, a prolific baseball journalist and author who in his later years became a citizen activist in southern California, was best known for “A Day in the Bleachers,” his detailed, sharp-eyed account of the first game of the 1954 World Series, symbolized by Willie Mays’ breathtaking catch in deep center field.
Hano, who grew up near the Polo Grounds in Washington Heights, paid $2.10 for that bleacher seat, and described “The Catch” this way:
“Mays simply slowed down to avoid running into the wall, put his hands up in cup-like fashion, over his left shoulder, and caught the ball much like a football player catching leading passes in the end zone.
“He had turned so quickly and run so fast and truly that he made this impossible catch look — to us in the bleachers — quite ordinary.
“Mays caught the ball, and then turned and threw like some olden statue of a Greek javelin hurler, his head twisted away to the left as his right arm swept out and around.
“Off came the cap, and then Mays continued to spin around after the gigantic effort of returning the ball whence it came, and he went down flat on his belly, and out of sight. This was the throw of a giant, the throw of a howitzer made human, arriving at second base.”
Hano started his career as a copyboy at the New York Daily News, and scribbled obsessively after that, later working as a book editor in New York.
After moving to Laguna Beach, Calif., in the 1940s, he freelanced in many places, including a lengthy association with Sport magazine (1955-1981).
He took notes in the margins of his program from that 1954 World Series game, then tried to sell a 10,000-word magazine about it to The New Yorker, which rejected it.
“A Day in the Bleachers” was published in book form in 1955, and Da Capo Press re-released it in 2004 in a 50th anniversary edition.
Jon Leonoudakis, a producer and documentary filmmaker in Los Angeles, made a documentary about Hano’s life in 2015 entitled “Hano: A Century in the Bleachers.” It was included in a 2016 film festival at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Hano once wrote that despite its problems, baseball "still remains our greatest game. It is also the simplest. It often comes down to a boy, his baseball glove and a hero."
More remembrances: Washington Post | The New York Times
The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 249, published Oct. 31, 2021.
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