Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (32 page)

From 1953 to 1965, Mel Allen, Bud Blattner, Jack Buck, Dizzy Dean, Joe
Garagiola, Merle Harmon, Lindsey Nelson, and Bob Wolff, among others,
aired network baseball. In 1966, Curt Gowdy tried to replace them all.
Unlike Mel, he roused no response to personality. Unlike Scully, Curt was a
small-town boy. His bent was basic, like Wyoming youth. "The game is the
important thing," Gowdy said. "A Voice is no better than his script."

He became a TV generation's sports paradigm: 16 All-Star Games, 13
World Series, 24 NCAA Final Fours, seven Olympics, eight Super Bowls, 14
Rose Bowls, Pan American Games, and "The American Sportsman." For a
decade Curt called the bigs' whole network schedule. "The good news is how
he prepared," said Blattner. Bad: "If only the Good Shepherd did play-by-play,
He'd he overexposed."

In 1970, Gowdy won sportscasting's first George Foster Peabody award
for radio/TV excellence. It led to Canton, Cooperstown, and Springfield,
MA. "Putting a town into a piece about [him]," a writer said, "is like trying to
establish residence for a migratory duck" -a Rocky Mountaineer who conjured respectability, good manners, and pluck.

Growing up, even radio seemed far away to the son of a Union Pacific Railroad superintendent. "Dad would say, `Curtis, there's a big world out there.
Someday I'd like to see a big-league game."'

His mother liked the three R's. On Curt's must-do list: typing, elocution, and one book a week. An early swain was basketball till coach Jack
Powell said, "You're off the team."

"What'd I do?" the senior yelped. As it happened, mom had seen the principal, discussed Curt's low English grade, and ordered him not to play.

"How can you do this?" said Gowdy, livid. `Basketball's my life. We'll he
a great team this year" and were, winning 31 straight games.

"Get your English up!" Mom said. He did.

In 1938, the All-Stater entered the University of Wyoming. Six letters
later he graduated, joined the Air Force, and left with a ruptured spine.
Back surgery failed: for ten months Curt fretted in a hospital. Finally,
doctors sent him home. "More rest, no sports, and with luck you won't
be a cripple."

In Cheyenne, the Cowboy eyeballed ghosts: pals had joined the service.
"It was as low as I've ever been"-until a phone call lit a high.

Bill Grove managed Cheyenne's sole radio station, KFBC. "There's
nobody else. I need you to call football," he told Gowdy. Tiny Pine Bluff and
St. Mary's played a six-man game, before 15 fans and 14 players' relatives,
without yard lines, sidelines, goal posts, or player numbers. Curt "stood on
a soap box, guessed where the ball was, and made up names." For two years
he aired basketball, football, Western Union baseball, and what passed in this
time and place for "big events. We made a big to-do over Santa Claus's arrival
for the Christmas season." In March 1945, chance found a place where
Gowdy did not know a soul.

Driving through Wyoming, the owner of 50,000-watt KOMA Oklahoma
City heard Curt do basketball. Soon, as sports director, Gowdy called Oklahoma A&M, Bud Wilkinson's football Sooners, and Triple-A Oklahoma City
Indians-"the biggest break of my career."To Curt, the minors were a workshop: "all the demands of the sports broadcast business-ads, production,
play-by-play-in one."

By 1948, business meant General Mills, backing 13 bigs teams, and
account executive Frank Slocum, looking for "talent to sell its products"
Wheaties, above all. Frank needed a No. 2 Yanks announcer. Hearing Gowdy,
"he asked for a brochure with tapes." The Cheyenne emigree met Allen. "I
would have settled for nothing. Fortunately, I didn't have to." Curt married
in 1949. His best man made him better. "I was intimidated by Mel. His
timing, reading an ad, weaving it in the play helped me learn."

Class was public: Gowdy's, and the Yankees', flubs. No regular topped
.287. Three Red Sox toppedYogi Berra's team-high 91 RBI. Boston had exStripes skipper Joe McCarthy. The query would endure: how could the
Towne team lose?

NewYork trailed by one game with two left: Boston, at The Stadium. "As long
as I live," said Curt, "I'll never forget volleys back and forth of noise."Yanks,
5-4: race tied. Next day they held a 1-0 late-inning lead when McCarthy
yanked Ellis Kinder. Four runs offset three in the Sox ninth. On the train
back to Boston, Ellis slugged Marse Joe in the jaw.

In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago tells Manolin, "Have faith in theYankees, my son." Gowdy did: They won the 1949-50 Series. He also feared that
Allen would never stop calling them. In 1951, Jim Britt left the Red Sox. The
Cowboy got an offer. "Part of me knew this was my chance to be Number
One." Another part loved New York. Mel said he would piggy-back Curt to
Fenway Park. "Six states, great fans. Today I can't believe I was torn."

The Sox opened in the Bronx, Gowdy botching Boston-area names like
Worcester and Swampscott. Telegrams blared "Yankee-lover, go back to New
York."A day later, ownerTomYawkey welcomed him: listening, Curt felt reborn.

"What kind of play-by-play do you want?" he said.

"No line drives made into pop-ups or excuses for errors, just give 'em
the game."

In time,Yawkey became a father. Reinjuring his back, Gowdy missed all
of 1957. "I don't care how long this kid misses, he's got a job here,"Tom told
a neurosurgeon. He was said to run a country club. "Bull!" Curt flared. "They
were family."

The clan lost the flag, playoff, or Series the last or next-to-last game of
1946, 1948-49, 1967, 1972, 1975, 1977-78, 1986, and 2003. Losing bred
doubt. It did not dim Number 9.

Ted Williams was loyal, profane, and drop-dead handsome-the ultimate
inner-directed man. He tied a .344 average, team-high 521 dingers, six batting, four home run, and four RBI titles, 1946 and 1949 MVP, and 1942 and
1947 Triple Crown. "All this despite five years in the military," said Gowdy.
"Otherwise Ted'd have every record."

Curt called him the most competent man he knew. "Best hitter, best fisherman, best hunter."

Once Ted roared, "There! Watch two ducks coming up at 3 o'clock."

Gowdy: "Where?"They appeared two minutes later.

John Glenn was Williams's Korea flight commander. "What kind of pilot
was he?" Curt asked. Glenn: "Best I ever saw."

Gallup says we liked the 1950s. Not Boston: only the 'SSers vied postLabor Day. The Kid eased blight. Too, Curt's "ever so soothing and sensible
voice, with its guileless hint of Wyoming twang," wrote John Updike, over
WHDH Radio's 50-station and TV seven-outlet network.

"No great teams," said the Cowboy, "but what personalities!" It is no lie
to say they were all the Red Sox had.

Could catcher Sammy White top Yogi Berra? ("Already has," joked a Nashua
druggist. "Seven inches taller.") Was this the Biblical year to redeem post1918? ("Sure," said Berkshirers, "the same year Vermont goes Democratic.")
Name a better outfield than Williams, Jim Piersall, and Jackie Jensen.
("Can't," said the Plymouth housewife, "but where's the pitching?") Roseanne
Roseannadanna: "If it's not one thing, it's another."

Jensen was 1958 MVP. Piersall trussed depression, shock, and resilience,
if not recovery. On September 28, 1960, the Sox retired Williams's number.
"He had an intense pride that every time up he wanted to produce a hit," said
Curt, emceeing. "Not only for himself but for the fans at Fenway whom he
secretly loved, who stood behind him amid ups and downs ... the greatest
hitter of all time, Ted Williams."

Moved,Ted said, "I want a copy. That's one of the nicest tributes to me ever."

"I don't have a copy," Curt said.

"Oh, shit," Ted said, then walked, skied to center field, and flied to right.
In the eighth, Jack Fisher, 21, faced the twice-his-age Kid. "Everybody quiet
now here at Fenway Park after they gave him a standing ovation of two minutes knowing that this is probably his last time at bat," said Gowdy. "Here's
the pitch. Williams swings-and there's a long drive to deep right! That ball
is going and it is gone! A home run for Ted Williams in his last time at bat in
the major leagues!"

Leaving like a deity, Ted declined to tip his cap. "It just would not have
been me." Updike drew an angelic gloss: "God does not answer letters."

The Cowboy would have settled for a card. "The longer I stayed, the more they
were funny without trying." One spring Sarasota, Florida's mayor primed for
the first pitch. At that moment the press steward asked Curt about a drink.
"He was too far away to answer, so he wrote down a suggestion-a
milkshake-and handed it to me." Gowdy misread the steward: "Here is the
Mayor, Mike Shane."

In 1958, two pals telecast the Classic. Mel "talk[s] too much," a critic
said. Curt was "restrained"-literally. "I wore a steel back brace with a painkiller prescription in my pocket. Maids thought I was nuts, sleeping on the
floor." He did the NBA, college football, first 1959 All-Star Game-and
1964 Series. "There's a high drive to deep right! And forget about it! It is
gone! The ball game's over! [2-1,Yanks] Mantle has just broken a World Series
record. He now has 16 World Series home runs. He and Babe Ruth were tied
with 15 apiece."

In 1962, ABC gave Gowdy the AFL. 1964: NBC bought it, and him. Next
year the jets signed Joe Namath. "Suddenly," said Curt, "the league didn't
mean Upper Slobovia."To many, baseball meant CBS's 1955-64 "Game of the
Week" thoroughbred. A year later, NBC bought ABC's 1965 variant of a
mule. "We had the Series and All-Star Game. 11966-68's] `Game' meant
exclusivity," said sports head Carl Lindemann. "[Colleague] Chet Simmons and I liked him with the Sox and football"-also, getting two network sports
for the price of one.

As analyst, Gowdy craved his pal. "[Lead sponsor] Chrysler said no when
[Sears spokesman] Ted was pictured putting stuff in a Ford truck." Falstaff
Brewery hyped Dean "I said, `I can't do "Wabash Cannonball." Our styles
clash"'-then, Pee Wee Reese. "They figured he was fine with me, and they'd
still have their boy."

NBC said okay. Would a generation to whom "Game" bespoke Diz?

To Lindemann, the answer was a gimme. What if Curt's voice was not a feverswamp? He was fair, did homework, and had a Chip Hilton delivery. That would
be enough-until Nielsen's 1966-68 "Game" and Series ratings fell 10 and 19
percent, respectively. Only the All-Star Game nixed the view that baseball was
too bland for a hip and inchoate age. Almost half (48 percent) in a 1964 Harris
Poll named it their favorite sport. Just 19 percent did a decade later.

Why?

Exclusivity, to begin. "Think of the last decade," said Nelson. "Mel, Buck,
Diz-and one guy replaces 'em?" Viewers tired. TSN got so many letters"atrocity ... a pallbearer ... baseball is not dead, no thanks to Gowdy"--it
routed them to NBC. Curt frowned on hype and buzz. The late sixties and early
seventies smiled. "As spectacle, baseball suffers on [TV]," wrote Harry Caray.
"The fan at the park [talk, drink, take junior to the john] rarely notices the time
span between pitches. Not the same fan at home." Not responsible, Gowdy was
held accountable, becoming, as he did, more visible than even Dean.