So Long Mel, It Was Great Listening

In a delightful conversation just after his 80th birthday, Mel Allen sauntered through the fields of baseball, stopping to observe everything from the panorama of the Fifties to the nuances of the present.

We talked not only about batters, but batting stances; about how loose-limbed infielders tensed before a pitch, and also, I recalled Monday, about the body language of sports fans.

“After a number of years in this business, you notice things,” Allen had said from his Connecticut townhouse, where he died Sunday at age 83. “People listening to the game on the radio lean forward. In the stands, they also lean forward -- if they’re interested. Those laying back, half-falling asleep, weren’t interested. With radio, you lean forward to make sure to catch every word and have your mental process fill in certain details. Watching TV, they’d sit back and relax. The picture’s right there for them. That’s why I loved radio; you knew people were paying attention.”

From 1939 through 1964, legions of New York Yankee followers certainly paid attention. Monday, they paid tribute.

Callers commiserated on New York radio station WFAN, reliving childhood memories of hearing Allen describe the Yankee dynasties, halcyon days at the ballpark in the Bronx. A 32-year-old doctor who cared for him in Connecticut, Baby Boomers from the suburbs, a gent in his 60s, NBC’s Bob Costas. Another part of their youth had passed.

Fran Healy worked with Allen from 1981 to 1984, when SportsChannel carried 40 Yankees broadcasts, including Dave Righetti’s no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox on July 4, 1983. “He was an old-school guy even then,” Healy said. “He scolded me for mentioning that Righetti was working on a no-hitter.” Healy also remembered a telecast in Oakland, Calif. “On my right was Mel and on my left, just for one game, was Joe DiMaggio,” Healy said. “I thought to myself, DiMaggio was the Mel Allen of players and Mel was the DiMaggio of broadcasters.”

In a sport built by and for radio, Allen was a master designer, the unquestioned voice and conscience of the Yankees.

He called 20 World Series, 24 All-Star Games, DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941 and the classic 1961 home-run record chase between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. He was on the hallowed Yankee Stadium ground to introduce Lou Gehrig at his farewell on July 4, 1939, and at Babe Ruth’s exit in 1948. He coined phrases that sold products -- the Ballantine Blast, the White Owl Wallop -- and in 1949, after DiMaggio had hit home runs in three consecutive games, Allen first served up the exuberant “How about that!”

He created nicknames: “Joltin’ Joe”; “Old Reliable” for Tommy Henrich, and “The Scooter” for Phil Rizzuto, who later would replace him in the booth in the 1964 World Series, shortly before the Yankees fired him.

He was born Melvin Allen Israel on Valentine’s Day, 1913, in Johns, Ala. His parents, Julius and Anna Israel, were Russian immigrants. Allen never called a sports event until 1935, when he was in law school at the University of Alabama. He was student manager of the football team and was asked to replace the team’s announcer for a salary of $5 a game.

After an audition at CBS in 1936, he was hired as an assistant to Ted Husing in sports and Robert Trout in news. There, he discarded his last name.

“In 1939, I was asked to do Giants and Yankees home games, which was all they did back then,” Allen told me. “In 1946, after three years in the Army, I agreed to a contract to handle all 154 Yankees games on WINS.” From 1954 through 1964, he shared the broadcast booth with Red Barber. In 1978, they would be the first broadcasters inducted at Cooperstown.

Allen recalled to me how intense Barber was, “even working on the Little League World Series.” That was why some fans disliked the Old Redhead -- not just for his Brooklyn Dodgers background -- but for his no-nonsense, matter-of-fact style. Allen wasn’t afraid to get excited, to be passionate about the game.

Allen was close to returning to the airwaves. He and his sister, Esther Kaufman, spent the winter in Tampa, Fla., and he attended opening day at the Yankees spring training complex. He was hospitalized with intestinal problems in March but appeared to be recuperating nicely.

“He called and said he was feeling stronger,” said Geoff Belinfante, the executive producer of the syndicated show “This Week in Baseball” and a colleague of Allen for almost 20 years. “He asked to do a demo to see how his strength was. We had lunch last Wednesday at a restaurant in Moonachie (N.J.) near our studios. He looked a little drawn, but when he walked into the studio, I handed him a list and he got right back in the saddle. The expressions, the intonations, were there. The only thing was that his voice didn’t have the same resonance.”

Belinfante arranged to send Allen a script and a video of one of three 20th anniversary shows that TWIB is producing. “We wanted him to work on it, practice reading out loud, and we agreed to decide if he was feeling strong enough to do a whole show, portions of it, or just the flashback segments,” he said. “Mel was amenable, and we were going to reconvene here on June 26.”

Then, Sunday night, Belinfante got a call from a member of Allen’s family. “It came as a shock,” he said Monday. “His spirits were high. He was still sharp, still humble. For us here, it was a pleasure that we could let a whole other generation of fans get to know him.”

Death is never appropriate, but it is quietly fitting that Mel Allen died not in some cold January, but amid a baseball season, soon after watching a telecast of the Yankees’ victory over the Cleveland Indians in the ballpark where his career reached its apex. Where someday, out in Monument Park, there should be a plaque in his honor.

Monday night, flags flew at half-mast at Yankee Stadium. Funeral services will take place Wednesday in Stamford, Conn. In the minds of the mourners there and everywhere, The Voice will echo: “Hello there, everybody, this is Mel Allen!”

So long, Mel. This is from everybody.

You kept Yankee fans leaning forward, hanging on every word.