Read Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers Online
Authors: Curt Smith
Paradise cost: Enberg divorced his wife, a playwright. "She'd critiqued
every broadcast. I'm grateful for her part in my development." Ibid, scheduling: Dick left the Angels in 1978. In 1982, he did NBC's "Game" and
Brewers-Halos L.C.S. "I kept recalling the fifties, when Milwaukee was
everything. When things move me, it's clear to viewers." Series play-by-play,
with Joe Garagiola, followed. Dick was warm, kind, and open, unlike network dominoes.
"No room for me,"he mused uponVin Scully's hiring. "`Game' had enough
for two teams a week." In 1985, Enberg refetched Angels video. Even friends
asked why. "I gave the most honest answer I can-I love the game. I miss it."
Casey Stengel said of baseball, "Not too hard, not too easy." Dr. Dick struck the balance, never giving the same test twice. Today his wit and
schoolboy awe stud CBS TV. Large and various, it lacks the bigs' final piece.
DICK BNBER6
In 2002, Enberg was flying from Buffalo to Los Angeles-"ironically,
after football"--when he learned of the Angels' first pennant. Quietly he
began to weep. Fearing trouble, a woman in the adjacent seat caressed her
Crucifix and held his hand.
Laughing, Dick explained. "I told her why it meant so much-the
Angels-after all these years!"
One religion, meet another.
Oh, my!
1930s Oklahoma. Wind buried farms in a halfmoon of sand. Most of the state
crossed Dogpatch and Hades. Bob Starr knew little of economics. Growing
up, what he knew was a craving to get out.
One day, a Braves scout invited him and a friend to a tryout in nearby
Kansas. Hitchhiking, they spied a sideboard truck with a winch and pulley
system. Bob couldn't recall why it seemed familiar. "Little 'en, you get in the
front," the driver said. "Big 'en [Bob], in the back."
Boarding, Starr retrieved his youth. "This is a dead animal truck and this
horse is expired and his aroma is pungent and little things are crawling on it
that don't look too neat." The trip resumes. Bob mounts his suitcase, leans
over the edge, and inhales. He fantasizes an autobiography: Forty Miles on a
Dead Horse or Dead Horse Scrolls.
From 1972 to 1997, Starr was too busy with the Cardinals, Angels, and
Red Sox to pen a memoir-also, bluff, dry, and unafraid. "What I
remember," said Sox partner Joe Castiglione, "is his voice," piercing a listener
like the thirties, Oklahoma. More lovable was a gentle William Bendix kind
of charm. Bob lumbered into jams even Ripley would disbelieve.
In 1972, he joined the NFL St. Louis Cardinals. "The only football guy I ever
saw working without a spotting board," said Jack Buck. "He'd know the
name, number, and information. Incredible."As unlikely was the big leagues'
wishing upon a Starr.
"I'd never done baseball," he said. "I get here and the Cardinals need a
number two." That March, Bob joined Buck and Mike Shannon. Nightly Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and Keith Hernandez shone. Bob Costas put Starr above
each for "providing baseball's greatest broadcast moment, topping Russ
Hodges's call of Bobby Thomson's homer or anything else."
National Dairy Day, 1977: the Swifties host the Cubs. Starr, Buck, and
Shannon call the fourth inning. Costas, 25, stands nearby. Bored, Jack hails
the Dairy president. He precedes a buxom belle in high heels, bathing suit,
and "Miss Cheesecake" sash. Below, Ken Reitz flies to left. The lass gives each
Voice a cheesecake. A Rashomon moment nears.
Bob says that Buck asked, "Do you like cheesecake?" Starr said, "Yes, very
much." Jack: "How do you like this cheesecake?" meaning dessert. Bob: "I
haven't had any yet, but it looks good enough to eat."
Costas recalls a rawer script. "Hey," Buck asks, "what do you think of Miss
Cheesecake?" Starr thinks that Jack said "this cheesecake." He replies: "I'll tell
ya, I'd like to try a piece of that right here."
In Pittsburgh, the Cardinals crowd the hotel bar. Starr is keeping Napa Valley
in the black. At 11 P.M., he leaves, goes to bed, and dreams of morning golf.
Nature calls near 2 A.M. Adrift, Bob finds the toilet, leaves, and opens the
front door. "Before I knew it, it slams behind me." Starr is standing nude.
At first he considered knocking on doors and asking a samaritan to hail
a key. Instead, Bob told a bellhop, "I have a little problem here."The worker
found a coat, got a key, and returned the jaybird to his nest.
Starr tells his tale at breakfast. Buck phones KMOX talk host Jack
Carney, who bares the naked truth. Bob's wife Brenda is listening. Later,
recalling Miss Cheesecake, she kids her husband, "Tell me I didn't hear what
I just heard on the air."
Afterward: In 1979, an ABC TV exec, in town for "Monday Night Baseball," spots reporter Nancy Drew next to Brenda. "Who are those goodlooking babes," he said, "in the KMOX booth?"
Team publicist Jim Toomey never missed a beat. "You won't believe this,
but that's Nancy Drew and Brenda Starr."
A year later Don Drysdale left the Angels for ABC. Replacing him, Starr joined a
team pining for Prince Valiant. The Halos had never won a flag. "I loved [owner]
Gene [Autry]," said Bob, called Oklahoma Crude, Crude, or 0. C. after his childhood
and 1973 film. "I wanted it to be like the movies white hats win."
California blew a 2-0 game 1982 L.C.S. advantage. In 1986, four days
before turning 40, Reggie Jackson's 5 37th homer passed Mickey Mantle for sixth place all-time. "What a thrill," he said, "being mentioned in the same
breath." The Halos often left Starr breathless. That was not their aim.
The '86ers took another division. The playoff, sadly, mimicked 1982's.
Boston won its first winner-take-all game with a title at stake since 1912.
"You know what the poets say," mused Sox manager John McNamara. "`Hope
springs eternal in the human breast.'"
It was a poem, and thought, with which either team could sympathize.
On August 6, 1989, Carl Yastrzemski joined Ted Williams, Joe Cronin, and
Bobby Doerr on Fenway Park's right-field facade. Their retired numbers
scrawled 9-4-1-8-Boston's last crown for 86 years. Some felt Starr's
musical taste as vintage. Said Castiglione: "He'd wear those plaid dotted
shirts, loved golf, and thought `Walking in the Rain' topped the charts."
Rather switch than fight: Bob joined the Olde Towne Team in 1990.
"Some Okie I am," he laughed. "Just a bi-coastal guy." In 1993, Starr
returned to "a franchise," wrote the Los Angeles Times, "that hasn't recovered
[from 1986]."
Before long, the chain smoker began to feel chest pain. He took a leave of
absence, fought cancer, and died August 3, 1998, at 65, of pulmonary fibrosis.
"Never did get a pennant," Bob mused, riding a dead horse truck far from
Oklahoma. Nude, clothed, or eating cheesecake, the"big'en"was easy to digest.
son ITARR
LON SIMMONS
"You don't get a Yaz at Fenway for their whole career anymore," said Peter
Gammons. "Free agency changed things." Vin Scully becomes the Dodgers'
MVP-Most Valuable Person. The 2002 Phillies sell out one game-Harry
the K's. Jack Buck's funeral befits a captain or a king. "The boys of summer
come and go," wrote Jayson Stark. "The voices of summer stay with you for
a lifetime."
The Giants hiked west in 1958. Lon Simmons did them until 1973, then
in 1976-78, and 1996-2002, jumping to Oakland from 1981 to 1995. His
history is largely the Bay Area's history. It began after Simmons got hurt,
became a carpenter, and decided that to make the major leagues he needed a
different kind of resume.
Tall, blond, and handsome, with a Kirk Douglas jaw, Lon heard a
Dempsey-Tunney fight at four, grew up in beautiful downtown Burbank, lettered in baseball, track, and football, and planned to attend USC. Instead,
after World War II, he joined the Phillies' system, K'd the side his first inning,
and tore a shoulder muscle the next. The injury cashiered the bigs.
Trying construction and carpentry, the ex-pitcher made $1.90 an hour.
Hating it, he prayed for rain. "Then I'd feel guilty because my family needed
money."The memory segued into radio. "You'd think, `Why should I stay here?'
Then I'd think how it had been. It's good to keep in mind from whence you came."
The 1954 champion Giants drew just 1,155,067. "New York was
changing. At the Polo Grounds people'd get mugged." Simmons was getting
started in Elko, Nevada, Marysville, California, and KMJ Fresno. In 1957,
KSFO San Francisco made him sports director. Gigs included the 49ers and
Giants-"if we could lure baseball."
On September 20, the Jints lost their Polo Grounds finale. A two-footsquare piece of sod was transplanted west. Also moving: Voice Russ Hodges.
"When you're young, everything means more," said Lon, then 33. "You
couldn't get closer to my emotions than the Giants' first years."
The 'S8ers played in steep-rowed 22,900-seat Seals Stadium. "On the street
you heard baseball from a dozen directions," said KSFO's Stu Smith. "A
restaurant had the radio on. It flooded offices and bars. People at the opera'd
wear ear plugs." A holdout muttered, "Good God! People will think we're
Milwaukee!"a then-synonym for baseball chic.
Seals opened April 15, 1958: Giants, 8-0. Upon each homer, Lon cried,
"Tell it good-bye!" Baghdaders cheered their own. "Unlike Willie Mays,
Cepeda [Orlando, a.k.a. Baby Bull], Felipe Alou, and Jim Davenport weren't
New York's," said Simmons. Attendance almost doubled to 1,272,625.
Cepeda's swing was quick and wild. Willie McCovey's spun from longer
gams than Lauren Hutton's. On July 30, 1959, he reported from Phoenix,
hitting .372. Stretch debuted 4-for-4, batted .354, and became Rookie of the
Year. The third-placers filled 81 percent of capacity.
"There was an innocence to this bandbox. People loved it," said Lon.
Their next home earned more contempt than a Don Drysdale duster.
No park had more pseudonyms: the Stick, Cave of the Winds, North Pole.
Few seemed more antithetical toward charm. How did Candlestick Park
become baseball's most reviled abode? The old-fashioned way, earning it.
Candlestick opened April 12, 1960, on a point above San Francisco Bay.
"Immediately you asked why it was put near water."The park froze at night.
Birds dive-bombed the pitcher. Wind blew in from left-center field, then out
to right. "The irony is that O'Malley persuaded Horace Stoneham to come
here-'a gold rush.' Walter gets Dodger Stadium, and we get a dump."
The trick was looking past. It was easy in 1962. "Here's a liner straight
to Richardson!" Lon cried on NBC Radio. "The ball game is over and the
World Series is over! Willie McCovey hit it like a bullet. A line drive
straight to Bobby Richardson. Had that ball got out of his reach, the Giants
would have been the winner! Now, it's the Yankees! ... The Yankees win
it, 1 to 0!"
Stretch's 1986 Hall of Fame plaque lists 521 homers. Juan Marichal '83
high-kicked like Gwen Verdon meets Gower Champion. Mays '79 made
Cooperstown. Cepeda's 379 dingers joined him in 1999. "There's one! You
can tell that good-bye!" Lon said. "It's way out of here. He just waited on that
pitch and mashed it."
Most clubs would "kill for a star," wrote Bob Stevens. "It was hard to keep
ours straight." Looking back, you almost forgot the weather.
For a time, Stoneham mimed Nostradamus. Then, in 1968, the A's invaded
Oakland. Jints attendance fell. Canaan became Cannery Row. A pen called
Simmons dull. Reply: "That's part of my basic charm." Some games become
a toss-up. Lon: "This is a throw-up." The scoreboard read: "Happy birthday,
Debbie." Lon: "Too bad she left in the third."Another game turned official "as we go into the bottom of the fifth. Boy, I wish I was at the bottom of the
fifth." Listeners roared. Stoneham fumed.
"Horace didn't mind if I told the truth early on," Simmons smiled. "Later,
he didn't like what he called my getting on the players." Mays, Marichal, and
Cepeda retired. Hodges and Lon's wife Ann died. He left, unsure "if I were
coming back." Then, in 1976, the Jints were sold to two local businessmen.
Rehired, Simmons denoted their ex-blue chip niche.