Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (52 page)

SomeVoices fail trying to be funny. Not trying, Hank was. Said a writer: "The
only failing broadcasting grade anyone would give Greenwald is an F in ego."

Five times, the 1980-85 Giants placed last or next-to-last. Hank's real bane
was the pregame show. "There's not one of us who doesn't hate sorting, gees,
who'm I gonna get today?"Visiting a bar, he and partner David Glass were
hustled by a prostitute. "For $100 I'll do anything you want."

Glass missed not a beat. "How about the pregame show for a week?"

Greenwald turned 50 in 1985. "It's funny," he said. "When the season
started I was only 43." One foul hit a sea of empty seats. Hank gave the section number. "Anyone coming to tomorrow's game might want to stop and
pick it up." San Francisco drew 1,632 on September 3. "Sixteen thirty-two!
That's not a crowd. That's a shirt size."

In 1986, the Yanks laundered a five-year $ 30 million WABC pact. "I had
problems with KNBR management," he said, joining New York next year. Its
problems were a bad team; Billy Martin, drinking; and George Steinbrenner,
meddling. "Any criticism, he'd phone you." Greenwald stuck it out. "It's
amazing how a couple of years with the Yankees can validate your career."

Hank rejoined San Francisco in 1989. "KNBR still didn't want me, but
the Giants did. WABC'd tried to keep me on the cheap." Frisco made the
Series. The '93ers won 104 games-but lost the West. One night he taped an
open: "Good evening, everybody, I'm Hank Greenwald, along with Duane
Kuiper. We're here at Three Rivers Stadium...."

The producer tells Hank to shorten it. He tries. The producer asks again.
"Good evening, everybody, I'm Hank Greenwald, along with Duane Kuiper.
We're here at Two Rivers Stadium...."

September 1996: Hank aired his 2,798th straight game, retired, and turned
traveling man. His fixed idee, Douglas MacArthur, had returned in 194-4 to the
Philippines by wading ashore at Leyte Gulf. A picture by wife Carla shows hubby
splashing toward the beach. In Rome, he held a sign in front of the Colosseum: "I
need tickets." Greenwald schlepped the Canadian National Railroad, Johannesburg to Capetown Blue Train, and Eastern and Oriental Express, and took a
two-month freighter to Australia. "All this before I retired. Watch me now."

Once he watched son Douglas Aaron, named for MacArthur and another
hero, Henry Aaron, batboy at Shea Stadium. Brett Butler fouled a hunt.
"Doug gets the bat, waits to give it to Butler, then swings it." Pitcher Rick
Aguilera mistook him for the 5-foot-9 Brett. "He's about to throw at my kid
in the batter's box. Thank God the ump intervened."

Doug followed pop to play-by-play. "At least one of us is working. He has
to so I can stay retired." In 2004, Hank followed his past to Bay Area A's TV.
"Okay, enough retirement," he said, lauding two truisms:

1) In baseball, often not a hell of a lot happens.

2) "The more I laugh," sang the actor Ed Wynne, "the more I'm a
merrier me.

HANK ORBBNWALO

Announcers can be deacons, dirtbags, beggarmen, and/or thieves. "We're
different behind a mike," said Harry Caray. "Why should broadcasters be the same away?" Pew, bar, or library: they loved diversity before diversity
was cool.

A bilingual Voice has called the Giants, Athletics, Twins, Orioles, Yankees,
Marlins, The Baseball Network, ESPN, and Jints and O's again. "I can play it
either way," said Joe Angel of English and Spanish. "Just tell me how to play it."

In 1956, the native Colombian, eight, moved to San Francisco. Later, Joe
hosted talk radio, was a 49ers fill-in, and replaced Al Michaels. "What could
be better? Home team, home town." In 1979, a new Giants flagship made the
City College of San Francisco grad odd man out: local boy without a job.

Next year a new owner bought the A's. Hiring Angel, Levi Strauss tried to
gussy them up. "In '79, one game'd drawn 653." Plus: attendance tripled.
Minus: the suddenly chic A's changed flagships, too. "I'd wanted to be a Giant.
Now the Bay's other team dumps me." Security seemed as fickle as the curve.

Joe repaired to golf, his children, and Bay hoops and football. Daughter
Natalie became a CBS reporter. Actor son Jonathan rang NBC's "Saved By the
Bell." Minnesota's saved dad's. In 1984, "missing the involvement of a team,"
he joined WCCO's Herb Carneal. Their workplace was the Hubert H.
Humphrey Metrodome, whose roof made each fly an adventure.

Snow postponed one game. Wind and rain stopped another for nine minutes. In 1985, Dave Kingman popped toward the ether. "When the ball gets past
a point, you lose it and look at fielders." Mickey Hatcher began circling first
base. "Soon the whole team's running around. Nobody could locate the ball!"

In time, umpires found it above a false ceiling, clearing ventilation holes
barely larger than the ball. Kingman got a ground-rule double. Later Mickey
decided to catch a ball dropped from the roof. "The law of gravity. What goes
up comes down."

The quarry darted and knuckled. Raising his glove, Hatcher missed. The
ball didn't, hitting his toe. "Sometimes, you can't win," he said. Unlike Joe,
the Twins were about to.

On St. Patrick's I)ay 1986, Hatcher arrived for an exhibition game with his
face, neck, arms, and hands painted green. Mates roared. Is he a package, or
what? Mickey's skin began to burn. At the hospital, doctors removed the
paint. "It was killing oxygen," said Angel. "Since then I stick to fingerpainting." Next year, change fingered Joe, kicking him to Baltimore. "They
say war is hell. Play-by-play's a close second."

The 1988 Orioles began a record-breaking 0-21. As sad: Angel's 1991
hiatus in the Bronx. "I couldn't say no to that tradition. But I didn't like the city." Partner John Sterling didn't help: "It was a clash of styles. Joe does
everything by rote." Next year he returned to Baltimore, still pining for
No. 1. "With Jon Miller on radio, it wasn't going to happen there." It might,
however, in an expansion year/bilingual city.

On March 6, 1993, the Marlins began a four-hour ride to Homestead,
Florida, for an exhibition. Manager Rene Lachemann's bus burst a tire. The
players' bus kept going. "I wanted both to arrive at the same time," said Rene,
who, reaching the second bus, U-turned it and begged a soda. "Our traveling
secretary," Joe laughed, "had forgot soft drinks."

Belatedly, each bus found the park. The club slept overnight at a hotel. At
3 A.M., Angel awoke to bagpipes on his floor. "A convention, and in their long
boots and short checkered shirts they're blowing up and down the hallways."
Opening Day seemed an eon away. Actually, it arrived April 5.

That morning, a storm hit south Florida. Clearing, the sky dimmed Joe's hirings and firings and changes and moves. "I'd waited so long. I knew we'd be
bad, but couldn't wait for the season." Introducing each Marlin, he called
reliever Bryan Harvey "a man with almost as many saves as John the Baptist."

A month earlier Charlie Hough, 45, threw Florida's first-ever pitch.
"[He's] into his motion," Angel began the exhibition, "and [it's] a knuckleball,
high and low, ball one." Hough's first Real McCoy now knuckled a foot outside the plate. Ump Frank Pulli called strike: 42,530 roared. Hough threw
one wider: strike two. "Anywhere the pitch was, Frank was going to inaugurate this place with a strikeout."

Jose Offerman K'd. Hough won, 6-3. Florida drew 3,064,847. By 1996,
only 1,746,767 dotted Joe Robbie Stadium. "We can still make it," said
owner Wayne Huizenga, buying Bobby Bonilla, Moises Alou, Alex Fernandez,
and skipper Jim Leyland. Next year, adding TV, Joe doubted he would make
it through the opener. "I do nine innings [not six] now. My voice is `going,
going, gone.

The wild-carders made the Series. Each Marlins dinger sired "Hasta la
vista, baby!" Game Seven built through climaxes. In the ninth, Craig Coun-
sell's sacrifice fly tied Cleveland. "Each pitch was the universe," said Angel.
"There's nothing like it in broadcasting-easily, the highlight of my career."

Bases full, 11th inning, two out and all: Edgar Renteria singled past
Indians pitcher Charles Nagy's glove. "A five-year-old child has become
king!" Joe bayed on the Marlins' network. Their reign was briefer than
summer in Saskatoon.

Huizenga iced the Fish in a 1998 fire sale, then sold to a commodities trader.
"Either people don't go to [renamed] Pro Player [Stadium]," said John Henry,
"or they cheer the opposition." Suddenly, Miami seemed as camp as Glenn,
Mitch, and Mrs. Miller combined.

"The situation was so chancy,"Angel conceded. "No wonder I was let go.
The upset is that I stayed so long." On the road again: from 2001 ESPN, Joe's
wound to Pac Bell Park. "It took me 24 years to get my heart back, but I've
got it back," rejoining Miller. "I debuted a Giant and with some luck I'll
retire one."

In early 2004, his road picture improbably led hack to Baltimore as lead
announcer. "What's the good of a home, if you are never in it?" said a 19thcentury British singer and comedian.

Angel hopes to be in this home a while.

JOE ANGEL

In Hamlet, Banquo's Ghost hovers like a cold front: actors respond for good
or ill to exterior things at play. Like Janus, the Pirates' Lanny Frattare's ghost
was two-headed. Would outliving mean excising them?

Frattare grew up to their north and east. "Look at big-league guys from
Rochester," he said. "Greenwald, Pete Van Wieren, Fox's Josh Lewin." Each
watched the Cardinals', then Orioles', Triple-A affiliate. Lanny wasn't picky:
any bigs aviary would do.

"I'd look at the booth and think, `This must be the best seat in the house.'"
His hero ruled the Yanks'. "Everywhere you'd hear Allen. I got a tape
recorder and imitated him." Mel's voice was rich, clear, and urgent. Lanny's
was deep, stout, and calm.

At 20, the Ithaca College student met two local announcers "who got me
in the market." In 1974, airing Triple-A Charleston, he overnighted at Steve
Blass's home in Pittsburgh. Bob Prince asked Frattare-dirty, hair askew,
having blacktopped Blass's driveway-to do an inning.

"If I never get to the majors again," he said, "they can't take this away." In
October 1975, the Pirates took Prince's job. From 65 applicants, Lanny and
Milo Hamilton succeeded Bob and Nellie King. Their problem was Pittsburgh's psyche. The Gunner filled its core.

Prince's ghost was as real as any relative. "Ironically, Bob'd buck me up, say
to get involved in the community," said Lanny. A second specter, Forbes
Field, draped the Bucs' new home. "At Three Rivers, charm had to come
from the team, not park." In Pittsburgh, both meant Pops. Where Willie the
Starge led, even umpires went.

In 1977, manager Chuck Tanner put Stargell's name in the fourth and
sixth lineup spots. Alvin Dark waited till Willie doubled and the second
Stargell hit.

"We got two Wilver Stargells!" San Diego's skipper told Doug Harvey.

The ump eyed his scorecard. "Mr. Dark, I know who Wilver Stargell is
and he's not at home plate now. No matter what the card says, Stargell's hitting fourth and this man up for the second time is hitting sixth-and I don't
care who he is!"

Next season ended at home against Philadelphia. "We're trailing the
Phils," said Frattare, "but sweep a twinbill": two games left, 1 1/ 2 behind. A
day later radios tuned to KDKA at a University of Pittsburgh football game
shook on Pops's first-inning slam. "That's what baseball is about-a whole
city riding on each pitch."

Pops headed the Pirates family. In 1979, southwest Pennsylvania's melting
pot-Slavs, Poles, Blacks, Germans sang Sister Sledge's "We Are Fam-i-lee."
Pittsburgh won the Series vs. Baltimore. Sadly, it banned local radio till 1980.

"We came from 3 to I [games] behind," said Lanny. "It'd have been great
to call the Classic." Next week, another kind of call cleared his line.

"Even during the Series, I knew Milo wasn't going to extend his contract. He
was done trying to replace the Gunner." Up: Frattare replaced Hamilton, not
Prince. Down: Bob began local cable-TV in 1982.