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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Death Claims Hall Of Fame Sportscaster

Lindsey Nelson, the Hall of Fame sportscaster whose soothing voice and brazen sports jackets were fixtures for generations of baseball and college football fans, died Saturday night. He was 76.

Nelson died of complications from Parkinson’s disease and pneumonia, said Marlene Goldman, spokeswoman for Emory University Hospital.

Nelson had Parkinson’s for 17 years and a history of heart disease. He had been ill since a fall in April. He was at Emory for three weeks to treat the Parkinson’s and was in rehabilitation when he contracted pneumonia.

Nelson, the voice of the Cotton Bowl for 26 years, was a longtime Notre Dame football broadcaster and covered major league baseball for more than two decades, spending 17 years with the New York Mets. It was there that he began assembling his outrageously loud wardrobe of blinding colors and gaudy plaids.

Nelson said when he learned the expansion Mets were planning to televise 120 games, he asked a clothing store clerk to show him all the sports jackets the store couldn’t sell.

“People didn’t always recognize me, but they knew my outfit,” he said.

Born in Columbia, Tenn., in 1919, Nelson enrolled at the University of Tennessee to study journalism. He followed the Volunteers football teams of Gen. Robert Neyland and accompanied the unbeaten Vols to the 1940 Rose Bowl, where he worked as a spotter for broadcaster Bill Stern.

After a five-year stint in the Army during World War II, when he was a captain in North Africa and Europe under William Westmoreland, Nelson returned to Knoxville and founded the Vol Network to broadcast Tennessee football.

He also worked at both Knoxville newspapers before moving into broadcasting full time in 1951 for the Liberty Network. When Liberty folded in 1952, he moved to NBC and broadcast there until 1962. He switched to CBS when that network got the rights to the college football game of the week.

In 1966, Nelson did NFL games for CBS. He also became the voice of Notre Dame football for 13 years.

Nelson was one of the three announcers hired by the expansion New York Mets in 1962 and stayed with the team for 17 years. After leaving the Mets, Nelson did play-by-play for the San Francisco Giants for three seasons before returning to Knoxville, where he taught broadcasting at the University of Tennessee. Nelson is a member of the university’s baseball and football halls of fame and its new $2.2 million baseball stadium is named after him.

Nelson, with his trademark delightful and mellow delivery, won the Ford C. Frick Award in 1988 and was inducted into the broadcaster’s wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. At his induction in Cooperstown, N.Y., he reflected on the early days with the Mets.

“To be there from the first day and see a team develop from scratch was tremendous,” Nelson said. “Being around (manager) Casey Stengel was quite an experience. All you had to do was put the microphone in front of him and your interview was done.”

In 1986, Nelson was inducted into the American Sportscasters Hall of Fame. He was honored by the College Football Hall of Fame in 1988.