My, oh my: Niehaus gets his Hall call

He was going to be a dentist. That’s what sent Dave Niehaus off to Indiana University in 1953.

“Then I woke up at 6:30 one morning,” he recalled, “and thought to myself, ‘I can’t stare down somebody’s mouth at 8 in the morning for the rest of my life.’ The hardest thing to do was call my parents and tell them that.”

His one regret Tuesday – his 73rd birthday – was that he couldn’t call to let them know how that decision ultimately worked out.

Instead, it was Niehaus who got the call. Just out of the shower and dripping wet, Niehaus – not just the voice of the Seattle Mariners for each of their 30 seasons but pretty much their soul and identity – picked up the phone to learn that he’d been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s broadcasters wing.

It might have been expected that he’d respond with his signature, “My, oh my.”

“But my mind just turned to mush,” he said.

Baseball is a game of days, a game every day, and the days run good and bad. A week ago we were exposed to one of the sorriest – the Capitol Hill spectacle in which both the sport and Roger Clemens were stripped of their dignity. Tuesday was something much better – a gifted and loyal servant of the game receiving his just, and maybe even slightly overdue, reward.

“All these years, you don’t really care if it happens to you,” said Niehaus, the 32nd Ford C. Frick Award winner, “but down deep you know you do care.”

Best of all, we know how much he cares. His voice tells us every summer night.

When major league baseball returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1977 – born of a lawsuit filed after the Pilots were kidnapped to Milwaukee in 1970 – Niehaus arrived with it. He’d been third banana (behind Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale) on the California Angels broadcast team, but his style had charmed Danny Kaye, one of the M’s owners, who certainly had a good feel for what entertained.

The start was not auspicious. The Angels’ Frank Tanana shut out Seattle in its first game. Nolan Ryan shut them out in Game 2. The Mariners had managed to blow a 5-3 lead in Game 3 when Bob Stinson and Larry Milbourne doubled home runs in the bottom of the ninth for the franchise’s first win.

“Bill Laxton was the winning pitcher,” Niehaus recalled.

Who else would know?

Fourteen losing seasons would follow. Say what you will about Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, overcoming a woebegone franchise to hit his way into Cooperstown, but even he can’t match Niehaus. That much they share, along with being beloved by an entire region.

The fact is, the Mariners had no real personalities on the field until Ken Griffey Jr. came to town. If it’s true that Junior and the M’s improbable 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle, it is not a stretch to say that it survived to that point because of Dave Niehaus, who somehow kept radios on patios and in Plymouths tuned to Mariners broadcasts through the slapstick of Lenny Randle’s blowing a ball foul, Rick Honeycutt’s thumb tack and Funny Nose and Glasses Night.

“In the early days, it was fun just to be the first announcer,” Niehaus said. “But I always looked at every game for exactly what it is – 1/162nd of a season. I always look forward to coming to the ballpark and telling a different story every day.

“It was never a downer to me to do losing baseball because you always think every night might be the start of a winning streak.”

In ‘95 it was. Junior scored from first on Edgar Martinez’s double and the Mariners stunned the Yankees in the ALDS. Niehaus’ call is still played over Safeco Field’s loudspeakers before nearly every game 12 years later and his audience has mushroomed. Mariners TV broadcasts were the most watched in baseball between 1996 and 2003. Fox Sports Northwest just reupped with the M’s until 2020 – for $450 million. Yet his reach is probably the greatest on radio, where his voice is a brush on a blank canvas.

It’s been a remarkable journey from little Princeton, Ind. – population 7,000 – where watching an old gentleman named D.A. Keimer in the Palace Pool Room chalk up baseball linescores in a precise hand “mesmerized” Niehaus and whetted his love for the game. On Tuesday, among the first to call to congratulate him was Griffey, once the M’s transcendent star. Later came a message from former manager Dick Williams, who will be inducted along with reliever Goose Gossage this July.

Both finished their careers in Seattle. Niehaus saw them. He’s told us about them in a mellow baritone perfect for both balls and strikes and the conversational storytelling that’s always been his strong suit.

But he hasn’t seen it all.

“I’d like to see the Mariners in the World Series and win it,” he said. “As Lefty Phillips, the old manger of the Angels, would say, ‘That would be the Coupe de Ville.’ “

It would indeed, for the Cadillac of baseball broadcasters.