The Voices of Summer
WARREN, SPENCER
The Voices of Summer New York baseball, the way it used to be broadcast. BY SPENCER WARREN As a lifelong Yankees fan (my earliest baseball memory is Moose Skowron grounding out to end the 1957...
...Not hustling in the World Series...
...Reynolds probably never heard the current term, "pitch count," where a starter is arbitrarily removed from the game once he reaches a certain number, lest he weaken his multi-million-dollar pitching arm...
...If only Mel and Red were still here to make the music...
...The Golden Age...
...For all the knowledgeable talk of McCarver, picking apart every play in endless detail, we are never in the game today as we are watching the primitive 1952 telecast...
...In the first game this year, Todd Zeile's blast didn't make it, costing the no-hustle Mets (they loafed on a couple of other plays as well) the game...
...We also have to bear massive overproduction of graphics and sound effects...
...The biggest difference between 1952 and 2000 is that now we watch a television extravaganza, while then we were watching a baseball game covered by television...
...They were themselves...
...Television has seen to that...
...With their easy manner punctuated by moments of fierce excitement, Allen and Barber show their respect for baseball, which is a kind of English or nineteenth-century game in its quiet, even pace over a beautiful carpet of grass and earth, but exploding in drama just when we do not know...
...Full of Brooklyns...
...They spiced the action on the field with their matchless voices (Allen a mellifluous baritone, Barber a lyrical tenor) and passionate enthusiasm (understated with Barber, though not Allen...
...Now (with no rest), here he is preparing to come to the rescue in game seven...
...They play with the same quiet assurance and cool professionalism I remember from the 1950s and early 1960s—and they usually come from behind in the clutch to win...
...Reynolds's attitude, of course, stands in contrast to that of many players today...
...But it's not the same as before...
...Today the main shot puts us in the bleachers...
...Mel Allen or Red Barber—only one behind the microphone at a time, four and a half innings apiece—talked at least 50 percent less than Buck and McCarver...
...Today good bunting—the most selfless play in baseball—excites comment because it is so rare...
...This is the same canned, artificial quality television gives to politics and much else in American life...
...But then I was fortunate enough to discover on the ESPN Classic channel the last two games of the 1952 World Series...
...Winning this year's renewal of the Subway Series is the proverbial icing on the cake...
...The Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field...
...Years later, Reynolds, whose career was shortened a couple of years because of his selfless heroics in this and other series, told an interviewer, "I had to do what Casey asked...
...Reynolds, whose part-Indian heritage earned from Mel Allen the sobriquet, "Superchief," had pitched seven innings in the series opener (losing 4-2) and then, with two days rest (there were no travel days in the Subway Series then), had hurled a 2-0 shutout in game four...
...Red Barber, unable to hide his admiration, exclaims: "We don't have to throw a camera down to the Yankee bullpen...
...At which point Allie Reynolds begins to warm up in the Yankee bullpen along the left field line...
...And, worst of all, we have to sit through the robotic play-by-play announcer Joe Buck (so anonymous that he is interchangeable with any of dozens of others who make up the fraternity) and the endless talk, talk, talk of Tim McCarver...
...these are the oldest surviving complete baseball telecasts, and they brought back the voices of my childhood as though they had never left: sportscast-ers Mel Allen and Red Barber...
...They didn't need more, because they let the game speak for itself...
...In 1952, NBC had only a few cameras...
...The bases are FOB," Barber comments...
...One example: In the seventh game in 1952, with the Yanks leading 1-0 in the fourth inning, Brooklyn loads the bases with no out...
...Today only diehard fans know the names, but Reynolds and Vic Raschi—both hard-throwing right-handers—^were two of the greatest money pitchers who ever lived and were the two most important players in the Yankees' unmatched string of five consecutive World Series championships from 1949 to 1953...
...So much for technology...
...Reynolds is on duty...
...So do the television-enforced late hours of the very long games...
...Today we have to suffer a director sitting in a truck, choosing in a split second from so many camera shots that he not infrequently misses plays (three in the first game, two in the third...
...But in the end the beauty of the game, the accomplishments of the players (greats like Derek Jeter, Paul O'Neill, and Al Leiter), and the drama of what is still the greatest of all sports championships does come through...
...You can rest assured Mr...
...they were genuine...
...To have triumphed in three consecutive series in the age of two-tier playoffs is made all the more impressive by their 33-8 postseason record from 1998 to 2000...
...BY SPENCER WARREN As a lifelong Yankees fan (my earliest baseball memory is Moose Skowron grounding out to end the 1957 World Series), I am, of course, overjoyed by the renewal of the Ruth-Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mantle dynasty...
...They are getting to the Yankee hurler, junkman (he threw slow stuff) "Steady" Eddie Lopat...
...Not so rare today are hitters gawking at their homeruns and not running until the ball lands in the stands...
...Then, when manager Casey Stengel (the "Ol' Per-fessor") summons him into the game, Barber proclaims, "Here comes the Chief...
...I used to think my feelings for baseball of the late 1950s and early 1960s were nostalgia and prejudice...
...Such a pace is hardly suitable for television— which is why television always tries to remake baseball coverage into football: Constant, intense action every minute, and if that action isn't on the field, then the director and his dozens of cameras, and the blathering broadcasters, take over...
...Today's overproduction lends an ersatz quality to the broadcast...
...ESPN said President of The Insider's Washington Experience, a policy seminar program, Spencer Warren is writing a book on movies and culture...
...Also noteworthy is the fabulous bunting in 1952, even by the great, stocky catcher Roy Campanella...
...With the Bombers' backs to the wall, he relieved Raschi in game six (on one day's rest) in the eighth inning and saved the victory to even the series...
...Reynolds puts out the fire in that inning and allows only one run in two more innings...
...I couldn't have lived with myself if I didn't...
...the main shot was from the grandstand behind home plate looking down on the field...
...The Yanks go on to win the game 4-2 (second baseman Billy Martin makes a game-saving catch in the seventh), and the series...
...These Yankees—whose fourteen consecutive wins in Series games (ended in game three of the current Series against the Mets) broke the twelve-game winning streak of the 1927, 1928, and 1932 "Murderers' Row" Yankees—are worthy successors of their forebears...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 8
