Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (18 page)

That morning Mel had read Time magazine. "In U.S. drug stores, lunch wagons, barbershops, parlors, and pool halls over 25 million radio listeners
will cock their ears next week to listen to three men [Allen, Barber, and Bill
Corum] that broadcast the World Series." Recalling the story, the "solitary
fan" seemed a horde.

"I bumbled along for a while before I got my wits," laughed The Voice,
ultimately yoking the Rose Bowl, JackPot Bowling, heavyweight fights, "Mel
Allen Sports Spot," record 24 All-Star Games, Little League World Series,
and Fox newsreels: "This is your Movietone reporter." The real Series
dwarfed them. Allen became its post-World War II badge.

"Ask any kid," said Joe Garagiola, growing up in East St. Louis. "It
wasn't October till I heard that voice." Retrieve 1947-48-49 Mutual
Radio: respectively, Bill Bevens's near-no-no, Phil Masi's near-pickoff, and
Tommy Henrich's Game One-winning blast. A record 26 of 39 million
homes with radio heard "Old Reliable" homer. By 1952, one of two NBC
TV sets watched the Brooks and Stripes.

Mel jeweled Game Seven: "It's fairly cool today it's topcoat weather,
but you can be assured that as far as those men on the diamond are concerned
it's mighty hot." A camera fixed the dugout: "Tension everywhere. Moving
around. Slapping hands."The Bums later filled the sacks. "It's a high pop-up!
Who's going to get it? Here comes Billy Martin digging hard-----and he makes
the catch at the last second! How about that!" or this: Yanks, 42.

"Freeze that moment," said Nelson in his melodic lilt. "There was no
Super Bowl or overlapping seasons. Nothing approached the Series." Before
1966, local-team Voices called it. "The Yanks were in almost every year. Mel
did those, and others"-22 overall, including 1946-63's record 18 straight.
"How about that!" turned national idiom. "Hello there, everybody, this is Mel
Allen!" bound stardom of name and game.

Bill Glavin, a teacher, grew up in Albany. "Each year, the nuns arranged
for the Series to be piped into class over the loudspeaker. You'd hear it from
people you never knew `The Duke [Snider] parked one' or `Damn Yankees!' " He shook his head. "Games were daytime. You spent all morning
talking about it, heard or saw it, then argued for hours afterward."

A popular Broadway song of the time was "Happy Talk." Allen ensured
that baseball's was.

Bill Millsaps, ultimately a Richmond columnist, was the son of a Tennessee
schoolmaster. On October 8, 1956, dad appeared at the boy's classroom and
led him to the hallway.

"Come with me," said the father.

Bill panicked. What had he done? Walking past several secretaries, they
finally neared dad's office.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"Close the door, Billy, and turn on Mel Allen. You won't believe what
Don Larsen is doing to the Dodgers."

The Yankees and Dodgers played six times between 1947 and 1956.
Wrote Stan Isaacs: "Their meetings were almost like adventure chapters in a
serialized novel."The 1958 Series matched Milwaukee and New York. A wire
arrived in Game Two: "Allen, you Yankee-lover, shut up." By contrast, Tom
Gallery felt that "something in his presence brought a drama to the moment."

Mel called Casey Stengel's tenYanks Series. "Ask a question and he'd talk
about every club he played with and fans who gave him dinner before he'd
answer the question which now you'd forgot. Oh, yeah, `How did you like
playing under John McGraw?' " Pause. Casey was a minor-league player,
manager, and president. "He didn't like it, and finally figured out what to do."
He quit as a player, fired himself as manager, then resigned.

What a couplet: the Perfessor spinning, and Allen speaking. "White Owl
Wallops" and "Ballantine Blasts" were "going, going, gone." A full count
prompted "three and two. What'll he do?"Yankees-haters charged praise-byassociation-Bert Wilson: "It's easy to broadcast when you win"-panning
Mel about two teenagers in the bleachers.

"That's interesting," he said. "He's kissing her on the strikes, and she's
kissing him on the balls."

Phil Rizzuto shook his head. "Mel," said Allen's 1957-64 partner, "this is
just not your day."

Each day he vied with another Dixied tongue.

"Even now, when you talk announcers," said Vin Scully, "you start with Mel
and Red." They shared eight World Series baseball at mid-century. Often
likened, they differed, too.

Barber was white wine, crepes suzette, and bluegrass music. Allen was
hot dogs, beer, and the U.S. Marine Band. Like Millay, Barber was a poet.
Like Sinatra, Allen was a balladeer. Detached, Red reported. Involved, Mel
roared. Barber chatted on the small of his chair. Allen frayed its edge, filibustering for hours. "To care, to root," Red sniffed, "these are not the rights of
the professional." The Voice cleaved: "Of course, I wanted the Yankees."
Inevitably, you favored one or the other.

In 1953, Mel aired the first tape-measure homer (Mantle's). Another
first: CBS TV's 1957 prime-time "Person to Person" profiled a sportscaster. In 1961, Roger Maris lined record-tying homer 60: "There it is!
There it is! If it stays fair, there it is! ... They are pushing him from the
dugout! This is most unusual!" Audio of the 1960 Series shows him rising,
receding, and cresting, a boom box holding sway. "There's a long drive
into deep left field! Look out now!" he cried of Bill Mazeroski's decisive
dinger. The warning soon applied aptly to himself.

One night Allen froze on a local newscast. At The Stadium he began to
struggle on the air. In 1963, Mantle homered in Game Four of the Series.
"The [Dodger Stadium] crowd roared. I started to roar, too. Then suddenly I
lost my voice"--a gasping, wheezing sound. Gallery yanked Mel from the
booth. Outsiders ascribed causes to his silence: sinus, laryngitis, or shock.
DickYoung wrote that Allen couldn't accept L.A.'s sweep. "His voice refused
to believe it, and therefore he could not repeat it."

Jerry Coleman, aYankees announcer, recalled a game earlier that year. "In
a rain delay, Mel got to talking. He wouldn't stop. It was wild. Something was
happening. You just didn't know what."

In 1964, the Stripes played their first Series sans Allen since 1943. On
December 17-with no reason, not even a release-they fired their apotheosis. "He gave them his life," gaped Barber, "and they broke his heart."

They still had, years later. "The Yankees never held a press conference,"
Mel began, flushing color. "They left people to believe what they wanted.
[NBC and Movietone also ditched him in 1964.]The lies were horrible-that
I was gay or a lush or beat people or had a breakdown." Lacking explanation,
"Allen became a victim of rumors," Sports Illustrated wrote. "He was supposed
to be a drunkard, a drug user. Neither rumor was true, but he couldn't fight
them. It was as if he had leprosy."

Researching books in the 1980s, Nelson and I supposed by mail. One
doctor hinted at mini-strokes. Another recalled Mel's physician, Max
Jacobson a.k.a. "Dr. FeelGood," giving President Kennedy a strange blur of
vitamins, horse placenta, and amphetamines. Broadcaster Bud Blattner said:
"Mel was always going-Yankees, commercials, Movietone. He'd take a pill
to get going, a pill to wind down." Did they dull speech, or mind? "Who can
say?" Lindsey said. Allen tried.

"Ballantine was our chief sponsor, and they made a bad mistake," he said.
"Most breweries built regional affiliates to cut shipping. Ballantine enlarged its [Newark] base. Transportation soared. They cut the budget, and mine was the
head that rolled." He smiled. "If we'd only had time to talk, I'd have taken a
cut, done"-softly-"anything to stay."

Replacing him, Garagiola got a telegram. "Mel said he hoped I'd stay on
the job as long as him. I said-here he is, heart breaking-'I didn't know there
were still guys like you around.' "Vanishing, Allen-childless, unmarriedbegan a decade of curiosa: banquets, random Braves radio and Indians TV, and
voiceovers, including Ballantine's.

For years, an unknown admirer had sent one red rose each day. Mel's
garden was now bare.

July 1968: Minnesota hosts Cleveland. Allen, interrupting Harry Jones, says,
"This is the land of 10,000 lakes. They have these picturesque names."
Reciting them, he paddles to Lake Superior, site of Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow's poem, "The Song of Hiawatha."

Does Harry know the poem? Wearily, Jones mutters that he does.

"Let's see now, how does it go?" asks The Voice, repeating its first 37 lines.

Jones glared. Coleman later laughed. "Who else could make Longfellow
and baseball twins?" Nodding, I relived that good-bye song. For a long time
Mel seemed deader than Marley's Ghost. Baffled, the public felt a gentle protectiveness. "I mean, actors leave, they're forgotten," Allen said in 1975.
"Folks are still writing the Yankees, asking where Mel is." John Sterling joined
the Stripes in 1989: "You could be here till 2525," he said, "and Mel will
always be the Voice of the Yankees."

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that "In America, there are no second acts."
Bereaved, but not bitter, Allen pined for his first. Then, in 1977, "This Week
In Baseball" began on syndicated (later, NBC) TV-ultimately, sport's
highest-rated serial. One Saturday a sometime fan entered the living room.
My mother could not have heard his crisp-voweled vent since 1964. "I can't
believe it. Is that Mel Allen?"

At that moment it seemed he had never been away.

"TWIB" made Mel a Grand Old Man of Broadcasting. "Everywhere I go,"
said creator Joe Reichler, "players tell me, `Jesus, wait till Mel gets ahold of
that play.' " Tug McGraw claimed "the world's best Mel imitation." Young
touted "The Comeback Kid." S1 called "[him] back where he belongs, an old
campaigner, a keeper of tradition. For years he was a forgotten man, but it
has all come back to him in abundance. The taste must be sweet."

Allen added Yanks mid-eighties cable. "He gets him!" The Voice cried in
1983. "A no-hitter, a no-hitter, a no-hitter by Dave Righetti! How about
that!" Next year he did a rap tune voice-over: "Man alive! What a drive! A
grand-slam homer! That ain't no jive!" One "TWIB" feature explored Alaskan
baseball: "Penguins admitted free," Mel ad-libbed as eyeballs rolled. "Our
show," said executive producer Geoff Belinfante, "introduced him to a whole
new generation."

In 1984, Alabama's Farrah Law School named a chair. Class of '36
recalled how joining the Stripes-"the Voice of the Yankees," he said, almost
to himself-once seemed as remote as men on the moon. "`Today we are
afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness,' " Mel quoted
Chinese writer Lin Yutang. "`We don't believe in the good old words any
more because we don't believe in the good old values any more.' "

Listening, you swore that a florist decorated his voice.

MEL ALLEN

Allen died, at 83, 12 years later. The Stadium flag flew at half-mast. Robert
Merrill sang the National Anthem at Stamford, Connecticut's, Temple BethEl. "TWIB" honored "Mel Allen: 1913-1996." Through 2002 his talking
mannequin-"Hello there, everybody!"-began and closed each show.

Such a life deserved a coda, and got it, when in 1990 SUNY at Geneseo
in upstate New York celebrated the first annual Mel Allen Scholarship. I had
seen politicians laid siege to, but not like this: The Voice, flanked by teenagers
and 70-somethings, falling back on his career.

Allen later dubbed the night "among the most emotional of my life."
Most still thought him better than being at the park. Even Yankees-haters no
longer hoped for laryngitis. All prized the comeback-America with him,
with him because it loved him.

Once Mel said, in his not immodest way, "I always thought I had the kind
of a voice that was not unpleasant."

How about that!

I recall, like yesterday, October 26, 1991. Since morning I had worked on a
speech at the White House. At 10:15 P.M., I left, found my car, and tuned to
an already classic Fall Classic.

Three of the first five World Series games were decided by a run. In
Game Six, a Twins runner reached second base. At this point, Allen blurts
"How about that!"; Harry Caray, "Holy cow!"; Jerry Coleman, a malapropism. Instead, the Voice cited Death of a Salesman's "tiny ship" (runner)
seeking "safe harbor" (home).

Only Vin Scully could fuse baseball and Arthur Miller, joining the Dodgers
before "Tokyo Rose" went to prison, William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize, and
the last member of the Grand Army of the Republic died. Once he said, "It was so
hot today the moon got sunburned." A master linguist still links baseball's sun,
moon, and stars.

Explain the inexplicable. Phil Rizzuto was born in Flatbush. Vin was born a
fly ball from the Bronx on November 29, 1927, to a silk salesman and an
"Irish, red-haired, and like me, at times unemotional" mother. Their radio
became a sudden magic place-"a monster that sat so high off the ground
that I was able to crawl up under it-actually under it."