COMMENTARY : Playing Field Drama Eclipses Announcers as Star of the Game

Before he was the baseball commissioner and obliged to contemplate TV contracts, the late Bart Giamatti admitted, “The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and that was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind.”

From now until the playoffs, baseball once again will be an exercise of the imagination played largely on the radio. Familiar voices will describe the action without much neutrality but with a great deal of charm.

The voices change over the years, though not a lot. On the one day a year that Detroit’s orphans got to go to the ballpark, Tom Monaghan ignored the stars on the field and strained for a glimpse of Harry Heilmann in the booth.

“He had the kindest voice I ever heard,” said Monaghan, who made enough money in free pizza deliveries to buy the team.

Red Barber, Mel Allen, Dizzy Dean, Harry Caray, Vin Scully, Bob Prince, Waite Hoyt, Ernie Harwell, Bob Elson, Chuck Thompson, Bill O’Donnell, Arch McDonald--”The Old Pine Tree”--were all, in their way, voices of kindness. They may have been a little short on technology--Barber had to keep turning over an egg timer to remind himself to repeat the score--and they certainly were a little long on corn.

“Run upstairs, Aunt Minnie, and open up the window! Here she comes!”

That was the home-run call of Rosey Rowswell, the ‘40s voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates. As a friendly ball cleared the fence, he dropped a platter of dishes to indicate to his audience that Minnie hadn’t quite made it. Going, going, gone! Touch ‘em all, it’s outta here! It might be . . . it could be . . . it is! Oh, Doctor! How a-bout that! Bye, bye, baby! Go to war, Miss Agnes!

But as idiosyncratic as all the voices were--in San Diego, Jerry Coleman continues to describe runners sliding into second base standing up--none of them shouted over or upstaged the game. They were glad to remain supporting players. They delivered the flowers in the second act.

The broadcaster who is larger than the game--the announcer who is himself the story--is an innovation of television. When this phenomenon came along about 20 years ago, journeymen pros like Curt Gowdy and Chris Schenkel were dumbfounded. Suddenly they were criticized for being unobtrusive. They were run out of the business for not being Howard Cosell.

While phenomenon is the first word he would use to describe himself, it scarcely begins to explain him. Starting out with the grand slam of network liabilities (homely, Jewish, a lawyer, from Brooklyn), Cosell made himself the celebrity of a sporting age.

“If he were a sport, he would be Roller Derby,” Jimmy Cannon wrote. “He put on a toupee and changed his name to tell it like it is.”

That’s the way it went for a while: bright and breezy. Cosell struck a historic alliance with Muhammad Ali and made a variety show out of “Monday Night Football.” With his peculiar references to Joey Theismann and Danderoo, he turned everyone around him into a diminutive character. At the top of his game, he was capable of referring to the Pope as Johnny Paul.

But the country turned on Cosell eventually--and with surprising savagery. People rocked his limousine in stadium parking lots. They bought raffle tickets in saloons for a chance to heave a brick through a TV screen at his face. Newspaper critics vilified him. Everything about him annoyed them, not the least his seven-figure salary.

Then, suddenly, it was over. First, the passion went out of hating Cosell. Next, the passion went out of Cosell. In quick order, he turned against boxing, pro football and television, all of the things that had made him famous. He became most comfortable at congressional hearings, flaunting his law education and denouncing the lionization of athletes.

The broadcaster who is bigger than the game has not left the stage entirely, but he may be on his way out. When CBS recently cashiered anchorman Brent Musburger, who was making $2 million and angling for $3 million, the network spoke of not wanting such a dominant presence anymore, of wishing instead to spread the stories out among less familiar faces.

One of the shiniest ones belongs to young Jim Nantz, who said he strives for the dignity and standards of Jim McKay. “I always ask myself, ‘Would Jim McKay do this?’ ” If the industry is shifting back toward McKay, it is a happy circumstance.

Needing a baseball announcer right away, CBS turned to an old radio type, Jack Buck. His is the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals, although the Cardinals’ territory extends far west of St. Louis.

It should be just the right accent for offsetting the all-seeing, all-falsifying television, a familiar voice to listen to with the eyes closed in that warm, bright place Giamatti described.

Run upstairs, Aunt Minnie, and open up the window! Here she comes!