Radio: Baseball’s Musical Instrument

As sports television celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, it is important to remember that baseball remains a radio marvel. In the video age, baseball sounds as good as ever. TV is the medium of the moment in sports, but the summer game still depends on the out-of-fashion AM dial to get the word out nightly to a team’s thousands of fans.

Baseball remains a friend to radio--and announcers--like no other sport. The NFL is a TV animal. Basketball and hockey have sizable radio followings, but because of their speed, announcers have little time to do much more than call the play-by-play. Baseball, by virtue of its pace, allows announcers the freedom of conversation and gives the best of broadcasters an unmatched forum for casual talk and commentary.

On Monday, when baseball opens another season, the likes of Ernie Harwell, Jack Buck and Vin Scully become the talk of the towns, big and small, across America that follow the fates of big-league teams. And for all its living color and instant replays, TV still can’t match the wireless for bringing the game to life.

“When I’m watching a TV game sitting by myself on the sofa, I have trouble staying up,” said Buck, who does play-by-play for CBS Radio and is in his 35th year broadcasting St. Louis Cardinals games. “Radio’s different--the sounds, the announcer’s voice, the crowd. The foul balls hitting back off the booth. There’s a certain life to it, a certain vitality you don’t get on television . . . For a broadcaster, it gives you a chance to emote. It’s in your lap. You’re not just augmenting the picture.”

“I think you can get a more vivid picture listening to a well-done radio broadcast than watching a telecast,” said Baltimore Orioles broadcaster Jon Miller. “On a telecast, you can only see a few things; on radio, you see the whole field When you’re at a game, the first thing that ever hits you as a kid is a guy hits a popup and it goes 3,000 feet in the air. Major league popups are astounding. You never see that on TV. On radio, you can help somebody to visualize the fly ball.”

It is a power of description--the ability to impart all the detailed scenery surrounding a game--that separates baseball and its best broadcasters from the rest. But with TV weaning more and more announcers, that skill seems to be diminishing.

“I find that younger sportscasters today are lacking for detail on radio play-by-play,” said NBC’s Bob Costas. “When’s the last time you heard a player’s number mentioned or where he holds the bat perhaps?”

Still, from Red Barber to Vin Scully to Jon Miller, some baseball broadcasters reared on radio remember that no detail is too small.

“I’m in Baltimore and when Cal Ripken comes up, everyone knows he’s right-handed,” Miller said. “But I’ve found that in the course of saying he’s right-handed, that, too, is a little picture you create in (listeners’) minds. When I say, ‘Right-handed hitter, deep in the box, feet apart,’ it jogs the memory for the listener, gives you a vision from which to build. I can cause you to see that dirt around home plate, the lines around the batter’s box.”

Scully, a Barber protege, worked with Barber and Connie Desmond on Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasts in the early 1950s. On road trips, one of the broadcasters usually stayed home, as Scully did during one pennant-race game. He remembers Barber’s call:

“Red and Connie were working in Boston at Braves Field. I was at home listening. It was a pivotal game, an important game. Well, Red saw this storm brewing off a ways. He began weaving in the story about the game and the storm. The Dodgers were leading by a run and it wasn’t an official game yet. He kept driving home the point that this game might not be completed in time.

“By the fifth inning, he had you waiting on the storm. As the storm approached the stadium, he proceeded to go into great detail about it, all the while keeping up with the details of the game. It reached the point where I felt that I could almost smell the rain in the air.

“Finally, there were two out in the (Braves’) fifth, the Dodgers up by the run. Red had the raindrops hitting the outfield wall. Now he had the rain stretching across the outfield, all the while stressing that as soon as this storm hit, the game would be over.

“Well, I forget who was up, and usually it would be expected that the batter would stall around the plate, trying to buy some time, but inexplicably, he swung at the first pitch, a grounder to shortstop. Red had the raindrops on the bill of Pee Wee Reese’s cap as he fielded the ball and he had the rain crossing the infield as (first baseman Gil) Hodges caught the ball. And with that third out, he says, ‘And here comes the storm, and there will be no more baseball today.’

“And he was right.”