‘Storytellers’ Revives Memories Of Baseball On Radio
In the true-to-life movie “Murder in the First,” the first words uttered by Alcatraz inmate Henry Young, after battling to retain his sanity through more than three years in a medieval pit called solitary confinement, are, “What kind of a year is DiMaggio having?”
It is the early 1940s, Joe D is the crown prince of the diamond and Young, speaking to an attorney who is to represent him on a murder charge, cannot understand why this man has no interest in baseball. He scolds the lawyer for passing up the chance to listen to the games denied him through incarceration.
Hollywood did not play fast and loose with the truth during the depiction of this meeting. There was no need. That is the effect baseball, as delivered over the airwaves, had on thousands of youngsters back then. It’s where the game started for them, with the radio and the imagination.
“Atlantic keeps your car on the go … for business or pleasure, in any kind of weather.” I probably haven’t heard that ditty in at least 40 years. But commercials like it, as well as ones for a beer (‘Gansett) and a brand of cigarettes (LS/MFT) just hang around.
Anyone with a radio that could pull in games from the Big Apple, for instance, knew that when the Yankee Clipper or Yogi Berra smacked a home run for the Yankees, it was either a “Ballantine Blast” or a “White Owl Wallop,” depending upon whether the beer or the cigar was carrying that three-inning segment. Over in Brooklyn, a Dodgers homer was an “Old Goldie.”
Radio coverage of the game through its first several decades spawned the voices kids knew nearly as well as those of their parents. Every town and region had a favorite:
Mel Allen, “the Ol’ Redhead” Red Barber and Russ Hodges in New York. Bob Prince in Pittsburgh. Harry Caray and Jack Buck in St. Louis. Jack Brickhouse in Chicago. Ernie Harwell in Detroit. Jimmy Dudley in Cleveland. Curt Gowdy in Boston. Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola seemingly everywhere.
“Storytellers” is the name of a book authored by Curt Smith that’s just hitting the stands, and a more apt description is not available. That’s what they were: Men who could hold your attention no matter what the circumstances of the game, inform you, entertain you, educate you and, most important, keep you coming back for more.
They had the time during a broadcast to do enthralling things, not being forced into the role of product pitchman half the time, and the game was the beneficiary. Once a kid’s radio discovered baseball, he couldn’t wait for that magical moment when he would witness it live. But that was back when the broadcast was mostly a service and an instrument to increase fan interest, not to wrench every possible nickel, dime and quarter out of the public.
In “Tellers,” Mel Allen says, “Incredibly, New York was the last big league city to allow games on radio. From 1934 through ‘38, the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees agreed not to broadcast on a daily basis. They thought, mistakenly, that if you aired games, people wouldn’t pay to see them.”
Almost as ridiculous as that sounds now is what baseball appears to have accomplished with its radio broadcasts and big rights fees.
Advertisements come crashing down like meteorites and game enhancement by the broadcaster is nearly a thing of the past. “We’ll be back after these messages.”
When you think about it, the listener is paying far more these days via purchase of advertisers’ products for far less of the ballgame from these gifted storytellers.