THE WORLD SERIES : OAKLAND ATHLETICS vs. LOS ANGELES DODGERS : Barber Left His Imprint on Series

No one called baseball better than Red Barber. He was literate and lively, descriptive and dispassionate, conversational and colorful. For 33 years, Barber’s voice was the sound of summer for a generation of baseball fans; to hear Barber was forever to feel the breeze of late August and to smell the fresh-cut infield grass of Ebbets Field.

Barber turned 80 this year, and although it has been 22 years since he last broadcast a baseball game and 36 since he broadcast a World Series, his spirit has permeated every Series broadcast since. After all, it’s his beloved Dodgers--albeit in Los Angeles rather than Brooklyn--playing in this World Series, with his beloved protege, Vin Scully, calling the games for NBC. Scully called his first World Series in 1953, one year after Barber called his last. Dodgers fans now have enjoyed 50 consecutive years of the Barber-Scully school, each broadcaster enjoying an intimate relationship with his listeners perhaps unmatched in baseball history.

“That was a special relationship in Brooklyn because the Brooklyn Dodgers had a special relationship in the borough,” Barber recently recalled from his home in Tallahassee, Fla. “You must remember that the New York teams (Giants, Dodgers and Yankees) had a five-year radio ban from 1934 to 1938, so in 1939 I was the first announcer to tell the Brooklyn people about the ball club. The Brooklyn people couldn’t get enough of it. Just the same, when Scully goes out to Los Angeles (when the Dodgers moved in 1958), he was the first to tell them about major league baseball. You can’t discount the impact of that.”

The impact of Barber, though, was first and foremost: all other baseball play-by-play, since his heyday, should be measured against his.

He was born Feb. 17, 1908, in Columbus, Miss. His mother was a schoolteacher, from whom he developed an ear for English; his father a locomotive engineer, from whom he developed a gift for storytelling.

In 1934, he got his first play-by-play job in baseball, with the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1935, he broadcast his first World Series (on the Mutual Broadcasting System). “Commissioner (Judge Kenesaw Mountain) Landis instructed us before that Series that our job was to report,” Barber said. “He said, ‘Suppose a player, with a mouthful of chewing tobacco, walks over to my rail box and spits in my face. Report from where he started, report how close he got to me, report the accuracy of his delivery and report the reaction of the commissioner. . . . No opinions, just report it as you see it.’ That became the foundation of my philosophy.”

Barber switched to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939--one year before Mel Allen became the voice of the Yankees--and for the next 15 years those two men symbolized the differences in the two franchises and the divided loyalties of New York baseball fans. Barber was the detached, impartial Southerner with a voice of restraint; Allen was the impassioned, excitable fan’s man with a voice of recklessness.

“Mel was a marvelous technician, as good as anyone who ever came along,” Scully said. “Mel, though, was more associated as a Yankees fan than Red was as a Dodgers fan. When Mel said ‘the Yankee Clipper’ it was almost as if he was worshiping the player. When Red said something similar there was a warmth, but not the quality of a fan rooting.”

“I never rooted,” Allen said. “I answered to the fans and their emotions, but I did not root. I told the story of the game.”

The 1947 Yankees-Dodgers World Series, Barber and Allen sharing the booth, best pointed up the differences in their approach. In Game 4, the Yankees’ Bill Bevens, who walked 10, was bidding for a no-hitter. Allen, respecting a long-held baseball tradition, did not mention the no-hitter as he broadcast the first 4 1/2 innings for fear of jinxing the pitcher. Barber, as soon as he took over, announced the Dodgers’ totals: one run, two errors, no hits. With two out in the ninth, Cookie Lavagetto broke up the no-hitter, reaching the right field wall for a double and a 3-2 Brooklyn victory.

“That was simply a superstition (not mentioning a no-hitter). It was sound psychology and made sense as far as the players were concerned,” Barber said. “This spread to the press box. The writers wouldn’t mention it. I never did respect a superstition. It made no sense for (the broadcasters). Suppose I decided not to report that the team had made any errors; how silly could you get?

“The next day I went to Bill Bevens and he said, ‘You didn’t have anything to do with it. It was those base on balls that did it. And (Yankees Manager) Bucky Harris told me, ‘If you can control what happens in a game by what you say, I’ll have you sit next to me in the dugout for a lot more money than you make in the booth.”

From 1950 to 1953, Barber and Connie Desmond were joined in the Dodgers’ booth by Scully, then in his middle 20s. Barber groomed Scully; the pupil has repaid the teacher by emulating him for the balance of his career.

“It was only a short time I was with him,” Scully recalled, “but the impact was tremendous. Red was the No. 1 announcer, he was the father to me. Connie was the older brother with the big sweeping baritone. I was the kid off the street. What Red instilled in me was the drive to be accurate and his great work habits. . . . He was more stylized than I am--in the sense he was a Southern announcer with wonderfully Southern-based expressions.”

For many listeners, those expressions defined Barber more than anything else. There was, of course, “the catbird seat” (the booth) and “the rhubarb patch” (where umpires and players argued). When a hitter got hot, he was “eatin’ high on the hog” or “tearin’ up the pea patch,” and when the bases were loaded, you’d hear that “the bases are FOB” (full of Brooklyns).

But the Barber-Brooklyn connection ended abruptly. A year after Yankees owner Dan Topping and Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley nearly traded Barber for Allen, Barber joined Allen on Yankees broadcasts in 1954. Many expected some public Allen-Barber discord, but it never materialized. The two never were close, but they also rarely broadcast together; one would do radio while the other was doing TV.

“We were two different people, yes,” Barber said. “He did his work his way and I did my work mine. (But) we had a very sound relationship. People expected there would be some type of public contest between us. There was not.”

So they both served the Yankees. And as both of their careers were indelibly woven with New York baseball, each of them, appropriately, met similar fates: Topping fired Allen in 1964; new Yankees president Mike Burke fired Barber in 1966.

Barber’s firing came late in the season, four days after a Yankees-White Sox game at Yankee Stadium drew a paid crowd of 413. He asked his director to have a camera pan the empty seats. He was refused. He asked again and was refused. “It was the story of the game,” Barber said, “an historic day because of the small crowd, the fewest number ever to attend a game.”

So, Barber, at 58 and on top of his game, was out of baseball. He never returned.

“It was the only time I ever was fired. I did not like being fired. I was at the peak of my abilities. But after about two weeks at home, I realized I had been a broadcasting hobo long enough. Maybe the Yankees did me a favor. I believe that you have to accept things as they are and go on. Suddenly, I was back in (Florida) and very happy being at home. The Yankees did me the favor I didn’t have the sense to do for myself.”

So Barber, a lay preacher, began spending more time with his wife, Lylah, his garden and his reading and writings. He also realized that an era was ending when he and Allen were shuffled out; the new order was one in which ex-athletes were favored in the booth.

“Ad agencies deal in names. They think the public is gullible and wants to see celebrities,” Barber said. “I never heard a former athlete bring any more insight to a broadcast than a professional broadcaster would. Some of the so-called great athletes mumble and stammer. They found out Mickey Mantle couldn’t do it. They found out the same about Earl Weaver. Or (Joe DiMaggio). DiMaggio, of course, later developed an ability to do Mr. Coffee commercials as he matured. . . .

“I understand that the new breed of owner doesn’t give a hoot about the accuracy of the game. (Yankees owner George) Steinbrenner has exactly what he wants in (Yankees broadcaster) Phil Rizzuto.”

Barber hasn’t attended a baseball game since his firing, and the man who broadcast the first major league game on television (Aug. 26, 1939) says he seldom watches games on TV. He concentrates instead on his hobbies and other work, including a monthly column for the Christian Science Monitor and his wonderful four-minute chats on National Public Radio every Friday at 7:35 a.m. with host Bob Edwards. When he does watch games, he often is disappointed by the quality of the chatter. “I may as well had the sound down for the All-Star Game (on ABC this year),” he said.

He’ll probably have the sound up for some of Scully’s work during the Athletics-Dodgers Series. But in the current broadcasting climate, Barber said, “I might not make it if I came along now. I came along at a wonderful time.”

“I would have to think,” Scully said, properly and politely correcting his mentor, “he’s so enormously talented, he’d have made it in any era.”