Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (20 page)

Mookie Wilson's grounder ends 1986's Game Six. "It gets through
Buckner! Here comes Knight! And the Mets win it!" cried Scully, shushing.
Kirk Gibson hits a 1988 Capraesque homer. "A long fly ball to deep right
field! She is gone! In the year of the implausible, the impossible has hap-
pened!"Vin fled the mike, deferring to the viewer. Such class is hard to find.

Scully liked the local/network tandem. At 61, he called 45 innings in 27
hours: four teams, in two cities, awarded a writer's Purple Lozenge. One
game ended at 2:52 A.M. A worse end was CBS TV's, buying 1990-93 bigs exclusivity. It killed "Game," junked regular coverage, and threw their grandstand in the trash.

"It's a staple that's gone,"Vin said. "I feel for people who come to me and
say how they miss it, and I hope me." Many turned to him on 1990-97 CBS
Radio. In 1999, Kevin Costner's For the Love of the Game starred Scully's Irish
tenor. Next year he gave Fordham's 155th commencement speech: "Don't let
the winds blow away you or your faith in God." For an hour, Class of '49 tethered work, honor, and what writer Ellen Glasgow called "the infinite feeling
for the spirit of the past, and the lingering poetry of time and place."

By now, Dick Enberg mused, Vin had become the anti-21st Century-"against the flow, deep and authentic, oblivious to fad." His "safe harbor" has berthed nearly 9,000 games: each ferrying the humility to prepare. The
sixth-century Greek Heraclitus said, "A man's character is his fate." Baseball's
fate has profited from an Artful Dodger's character.

VIN SCULLY

Connie Desmond was Eddie Fisher, losing Elizabeth Taylor; Bill Clinton,
throwing greatness in the can; or ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen, selling
before the getting was good. Put another way, he might have been Vin Scully.

In 1943, Desmond joined Barber at Ebbets Field. "I never thought of succeeding him," he said. "Why would he leave?" The earth turned flat in late
1953: Red moved to Yankee Stadium. Connie took a knockout future-and
flushed it down the flask.

"There are more old drunkards than old doctors," said Proverbs.
Desmond became a drunkard as tomorrow seemed young. Sober, he might
have become Walter O'Malley's Coronado. Instead, recall Churchill's "Terrible Ifs."

The Victorians called cloudless spells "Queen's Weather." A dreambox voice
lit Desmond's. Holy Toledo! In 1932, he crashed radio on hometown WSPD.
"I sang and did band remotes, but I really wanted baseball." He got it through
a Wheaties Toledo Mud Hens ad.

By 1942, Connie calledTriple-A Columbus. "`Help me do the Giants and
Yankees,' Mel Allen said. I was shocked." Next season he moved to Brooklyn.
In 1946, flagship WHN for the first time aired all games live. One day Carvel
"Bama" Rowell broke the scoreboard clock. Dousing Walker, glass drove old
Dixie down.

1947: Commissioner Happy Chandler suspended Leo Durocher for
"conduct detrimental to baseball." 1948: Brooklyn began TV on WCBS
Channel 2. 1949: Desmond added video. 1950: The Dodgers moved toWOR
Channel 9. Even the P.A. announcer wrote an only-at-Ebbets plot. Tex
Rickard wore a sweater, sat near the home dugout, and made English a
second language. "A little boy has been found lost," he said. A pitcher left the
game. Rickard explained: "He don't feel good."Another time coats draped a
wall. "Will the people along the railing in left field please remove their
clothes?"

Like Connie, he could not imagine a team removed from Brooklyn.

About this time, the Dodgers' new president began clothing baseball's largest
re-created body. "Mr. O'Malley told me, `Find a voice,' " said general manager Buzzie Bavasi, "for an idea I've got." The Voice had already re-created
games in the South Atlantic League. The idea became the Brooklyn Dodgers
Radio Network.

As a child, Nat Allbright broadcast to himself in the Class B Bi-State
League. "The Dodgers were a natural," he chimed. "I'd been re-creating since
seven!" More than 200 now call major-league radio and free/cable TV. A
select group of 35-40 did the early 'fifties bigs. "Most had an aide, some two.
They stayed forever."

The upshot was inertia. "The Yanks couldn't air games into Boston. A
gentleman's agreement thrived for years." No gentleman, O'Malley would
beam where he liked. "Much of the East wasn't served by baseball," said
Bavasi. "Walter saw an opening," driving Allbright through.

They began with Bobby Thomson: "a tease for '52." By 1953, the Dodgers
network had tied 117 outlets. A listener fancied Nat and Red cozying. In fact,
Allbright never left D.C. "I'd say, 'There's Newcombe, perspiration dripping
down his face.' You couldn't tell it was a re-creation."

For a while the network seemed as in-the-saddle as its team. Dodgers'
ratings licked the Pirates' in McKeesport, near Pittsburgh. In Washington,
they beat the Nats' over WINX, WEAM, and black WOOK. Owner Clark
Griffith telegrammed Bavasi: "Get your games out of here."The G.M. waited
two years to reply: "No one," he wrote, "tells me what to do with my broadcasts. Sincerely, E.J. Bavasi."

In 1956, O'Malley sold Ebbets Field. A year later he sold out
Brooklyn. Allbright found Eden on Bedford Avenue. It vanished three
thousand miles and a world away. "What killed us was the move west.
Home games would end at 1: 30 in the morning. The audience was gone,"
like the club.

"We began the day the Dodgers lost the pennant," Nat said of Thomson.
Full circle: In 1962, they lost another last-day flag. That fall, the network
pulled the plug. The Dodgers had long ago pulled Desmond's.

In 1955, the Brooks became the Stripes. "We dood it! We beat 'em! We beat
them Yankees!" bannered Willard Mullin's Brooklyn Bum. "We spot 'em th'
foist two games . . . an' we beat 'em! That [Johnny] Podres! Woil Champeens! Me!" Podres went deer hunting near his upstate New York home. Belatedly, the impact reared. "Hey, Podres," he howled in the woods, "you
beat the Yankees in the World Series! Where do you go from here?"

In Connie's case, the tank. Drinking in Ike's America was more kosher
than in our politically lockstep time. Commuter trains rocked to gray flannel
suits getting sloshed. Real men drank pals under the table. Desmond went a
drink too far.

"He couldn't handle it," said Red. "Even when I was there, he'd stop
showing up." In the film My FavoriteYear, Peter O'Toole plays boozy actor Alan
Swann. "With Swannie," an admirer says, "you forgive a lot, you know?" For
a long time O'Malley forgave, too.

Desmond missed September 1955. Walter sacked him. Next year Connie
begged a final chance. Reluctantly, the Bums agreed. "People thought
O'Malley was hard. With me, he was more patient than I deserved."
Reclimbing the wagon, Desmond fell off again.

To Brooklyn, reality soon meant exile. Connie's meant not doing another
game. Harold Rosenthal covered the post-war Dodgers. "Without drinking,
he might have replaced Barber." Instead, Desmond returned to Toledo, did
the Mud Hens, and died in 1983, at 75.

"I had it, had it all," he said, quietly, perhaps not grasping his past, but no
longer at its mercy.

CONNIE DESMONO

In 1957, at Connie Mack Stadium, Gene Kelly heard of Joe McCarthy's
death. He extolled the man who never played in the bigs, but played them
like a bass. Some called Marse Joe pushbutton, he said. Others hailed the best
manager of all time. "I couldn't write a better eulogy," Gene confessed. A
producer then phoned to say that U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy had died.

"Of all people, I should be careful about names!" laughed the 1950-59
Phillies Voice. Meeting Kelly, strangers expected to hear "Singing In the Rain."

Raised in Philadelphia, Bob Brinker hosts the national radio financial show,
"Money Talk." Think of mikemen as playing bass. Speaking, some seem to
squeak. To Brinker, Gene showed his soul.

"Poetry in motion," he said. "He brought baseball play-by-play to its
highest level." Kelly's seventh-inning stretch chanted "rub your noses, cross
your fingers, tug on your caps, and knock on wood." It was no knock on lead
Voice Byrum Saam to say that many preferred Gene.

"You gotta expect a strange life when you're born in Brooklyn 11919],"
he laughed. On February 22, 1939, the Class of '41 journalism major
debuted at Marshall College. "I was on the P.A. system [basketball, not baseball, which he played]. They needed a guy to fill in. I got $ 3 a game."

Kelly inked a minor-league pact, hurt his arm, and left Class C. Ahead:
WGUA Washington, Pennsylvania; World War II; WXLW Indianapolis; and
Mutual's 1946--49 Indy 500. Saam did the A's and Phils. Changing outlets,
the no-world-title, last flag 1915, 1933--48 second-division 1950 Nationals
tapped Gene.

Growing up in suburban Wayne, future Boston Voice Ned Martin liked
the A's. "Yet there was no magic like '50 the Phils', and Gene's." Del
Ennis's 126 RBI led the league. MVP Jim Konstanty relieved in 74 games.
Robin Roberts went 20-11. A franchise high 1,217,035 saw an honest-toGod pennant race-the team vs. its history of gaffe and fear.

Philly led by 7 112 games on September 20. Pitcher Curt Simmons
joined the National Guard. Roberts started thrice in the last five days. The
final came at Brooklyn: win, or brook a playoff. Dick Sisler hit a three-run
10th-inning flag-clinching homer. The wireless knit Center City.

CBS TV aired the Series. Philly preferred Mutual's Kelly and Mel
Allen. Skipper Eddie Sawyer started Konstanty in the opener: Yanks, 1-0.
Next afternoon, Roberts lost, 2-1. The stage moved to Yankee Stadium, confusing the Whiz Kids, average age, 26. Pinstripes sweep. Gene was
singing through his tears.

Coming home: Kelly covered the 1953 Yanks--Brooks convention. In Game
Three, 35,270 jammed Ebbets Field. "The fans know that [Carl] Erskine has
either equaled or bettered a record [Howard Ehmke's 1929 13 Ks]," he said
on Mutual. "They want to see him beat it now. The Oh-two pitch to Mize
from Erskine. He struck him out! Carl Erskine has set a new all-time World
Series record! He has struck out 14 men. To a man, woman, and childthey're up on their feet out here in Flatbush!"

In Philadelphia, the Quakers began video. By 1955, Philly became a oneleague town. "The Phils should have taken advantage." Instead, they hit
bottom in 1958. Gene, Saam, and Claude Haring were "the anti-Phillies," said
Brinker. "Mediocre on the field; great, above." Gene had mistaken McCarthy.
He could not mistake the stench.

In late 1959, new flagshipWFIL decided to cleanse Kelly. "I was given 30
days to find another job in Baltimore. I didn't get it [Bob Murphy did]." A
decade later, another Phils Voice was sacked. "People ask, `What do you think
of what happened to Bill Campbell?' I feel like asking, `What do you think of
what happened to me?' "

GENE KELLY

In 1962, Kelly drifted to Cincinnati. He missed the Seaboard. The Reds
paroled Gene in late 1963. A stroke then reimprisoned him. "Recovery wasn't
easy. I'd forget things, there were medical mistakes."A Philadelphia UHF station
hired/ fired him. He lasted three games on Notre Dame football.