Memories from the Microphone: A Century of Baseball Broadcasting

by Curt Smith, Brooks Robinson (Contributor)(Foreword)

In this second edition in a series of Baseball Hall of Fame books, celebrate the larger-than-life role played by radio and TV announcers in enhancing the pleasure of our national pastime.

Commemorate the 100th anniversary of baseball broadcasting. The first baseball game ever broadcast on radio was on August 5, 1921, by Harold Wampler Arlin, a part-time announcer on Pittsburgh's KDKA, America's first commercially licensed radio station. The Pirates defeated the Phillies 8-5.

An insider's view of baseball. Now listen to 'MEMORIES FROM THE MICROPHONE' and experience baseball from author Curt Smith. He has spent much of his life covering baseball radio and TV, and previously authored baseball books, including the classic 'Voices of the Game'.

Relive baseball's storied past through the eyes of famed broadcasters. Organized chronologically, 'MEMORIES FROM THE MICROPHONE' charts the history of baseball broadcasting. Enjoy celebrated stories and personalities that have shaped the game - from Mel Allen to Harry Caray, Vin Scully to Joe Morgan, Ernie Harwell to Red Barber.

Also discover:

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Images from the Baseball Hall of Fame's matchless archives of photos and artifacts
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A multi-layered narrative exploring cultural, technological, and economic trends that change fans experience of the game
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Anecdotes and quotes from Curt Smith's original research
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Interviews with broadcast greats
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Little-known stories, such as Ronald Reagan calling games for WHO DesMoines in the 1930s
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Accounts of diversity in baseball broadcasting, including the TV coverage of Joe Morgan and earlier Hispanic pioneers Buck Canel and Rafael (Felo) Ramirez
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A special section devoted to the Ford C. Frick Award and inductees

Also read the first in the series of Baseball Hall of Fame books 'Picturing America's Pastime'.

Genres: Baseball, Sports

191 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 3, 2021

Reviews

[David Hallstrom · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was given this book as a gift. I found some of the information interesting although the writing is absolutely horrible.

Open this book to any page and you are guaranteed to find a clunker of a paragraph. Here’s one:

A March 1904 baby, Bob came from a five-child Chicago family reliant on its grocery business, his voice intervening as a career, so wowing nuns at a local church that he won an audition for the Paulist Choir. Making it, Elston competitively toured five years in Europe, taught not to shout for fear it might hurt the voice. He graduated from DePaul Academy, entered Loyola, transferred to Northwestern, but didn’t graduate, finding radio too fetching. In 1928, Bob visited St. Louis to see pool whiz Willie Hoppe, where his career took a carom.

I am stunned that this is, according to the author’s biography, his 18th published book. Maybe the first 17 had editors.

I was nearly two-thirds of the way through the book. And I just learned that Barry Larkin got the winning hit for the Minnesota Twins in the 1991 World Series. Which was quite the feat seeing as Larkin played for the Cincinnati Reds his entire career.

This book was published by the Baseball Hall of Fame. You would think the Hall would care about its credibility but apparently not.

[Chad in the ATL · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some interesting nuggets especially of baseball’s early years, but it read like a bunch of Wikipedia entries glued together. No real narrative to hold the reader’s interest.

[Reid Mccormick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a big baseball fan. I am tried and true Dodger blue, and one my biggest heroes is the legendary Vin Scully.

When I saw Memories from the Microphone pop up on Amazon, I could not order it fast enough.
As soon as it was delivered, I cracked that book open and started to read it immediately.

Then something felt off. The composition of the book was weird. I had a hard time following along. So, I did a quick search online and figured it out.

Curt Smith, though probably an intelligent baseball mind, needs a better editor. Years ago, I picked Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story written by Curt Smith with crazy anticipation only to be let down in a similar way.

I do not understand the structure of the book. Facts are sprinkled seemingly at random. There is no consistent timeline.

I wanted to love this book so much, but I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memories from the Microphone is a history of baseball broadcasting that begins with primitive radio and follows broadcasting into the maturation of radio and television networks. In this, it’s also a partial history of how radio and television developed as media, from local stations and personalities to big networks and corporate deals. It’s roughly, but not strictly, chronological. Smith’s approach is to highlight a few announcers in a given decade, but follow their history well beyond the chapter’s titled limits, so we’re constantly getting stories from across three decades in any given chapter, but moving steadily forward on average. I listened to the audioversion, read by Barry Abrams, and enjoyed it on the whole — though as with most baseball books, I prefer the earlier content to the more contemporary.

Memories is interesting as a baseball history because while the sport’s stars definitely feature, the stars here are the radio announcers and later TV personalities. (The exception is when some ballplayers transition into being announcers, the biggest example being Dizzy Dean.) The early chapters were especially fascinating to me because they involved a lot of ‘announcing by wire’: radio broadcasters would receive news updates via telegraphy, and then use that information to pretend they were announcing the game live. Presumably some listeners knew that their Birmingham radio station certainly wasn’t broadcasting from say, Fenway Park, but some announcers would create sound effects to try to create the sense that they were. Because telegraphy could be interrupted, at least one station made a habit of broadcasting from an inning behind to mitigate that risk. Ronald Reagan, when left hanging during a broadcast, decided to ad-lib, creating fictitious foul balls and field interruptions for six minutes until updates started pouring back in. In these early chapters we also get a sense of radio as an emerging medium, as announcers realized that they were not simply dispensers of facts, but had to be performers: some created excitable vocal styles, inventing words like BLAMMO! to capture and hold the audience’s attention. Others would invent a persona to inhabit while they were alive: Dizzy Dean flanderized himself to a degree, laying on his Arkansas hick-ness as thick as molasses and creating folksy mispronunciations and expressions to charm the listening audience. (When questioned about his syntax, he replied: “They’re taxing that, too?!”) Once, purely to demonstrate this, he announced in his normal voice for a few minutes, then said “That’s enough of that” and “slud” back into his radio persona. Dean would also sing on mic, using the “Wabash Cannonball: to liven up dead air. He wasn’t the only singing announcer, but in the narrator’s voice he’s definitely the most memorable.

For some reason, I thought this would incorporate recordings from across the 20th century. It doesn’t, but narrator Barry Abrams does impersonations of some of baseball’s more impassioned voices, including one of a young Ronald Reagan from the 1930s announcing games. His voice was easy to listen to, and I enjoyed the variety: there are enough interviews and reenactments peppered in so that it never sounded dull. The only blip, audio-wise, is that as with all other Audible productions, the narrators read everything, including things that interrupt the flow of the narrative. This is most egregious in Ready Player One, when Wheaton was forced to read out scoreboards line-by-line, but here it mostly takes shape in parenthetical remarks, which are especially disruptive when Abrams is in the middle of an excited impersonation/reenactment. The remarks are never given in the same voice as the announcement, so what happens is deliveries like this: THE GIANTS WIN! THE GIANTS WIN THE NL (National League) PENNANT! It’s emotion, emotion, then a screeching halt into flat voice, then suddenly whiplash as we go back into emotion. This wasn’t chronic, but it was regular enough to be annoying.

This was a fun approach to the history of baseball that also served up some broadcasting history as well. Although the constant chronological mixing called for better editing, I didn’t find it as bothersome in the hearing as print readers did. It may be a consequence of growing up listening to southern storytellers, who often stagger drunkenly through timelines and sometimes into different stories altogether as the spirit moves. Although Abrams also did the audio for Smith’s The Presidents and the Pastime, a study of American presidents and baseball (something that pops up here a time or two, with Reagan, FDR, and JFK), I’m going to get the print edition of that to see if there’s a marked difference in how strong the narration is.

Related:
Baseball Forever!, a collection of 50 radio highlights across the decades, taken from one man’s private collection that began in the 1940s. I listened to it last year and was able to connect some of the recordings to Abrams’ recreations here.
Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio, Anthony Rudel

[Ed Dorsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was pretty good. One review mentioned that it wasn't in chronological order, but I thought it followed eras, and then talked about one city's broadcast and then go another city. My main disappointment was so little coverage of Baltimore announcers. After all five of the Frick award winners called games in Baltimore (Harwell, Murphy, Carneal, Thompson and Miller), and a couple of others deserve consideration. (Bill O'donnell, Gary Thorne and certainly Jim Palmer who has also done national TV games and I think even Little League Games. A few years back Thorne and Palmer were voted the best duo doing games.)

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate that the broadcasters are being acknowledged. These individuals make or break a game. There are several that have become their own legends such as Harry Caray and Vin Scully. Even going to a professional game you can still find people with headsets listening to the game on the radio. As television started playing a role the commentators seem to be loved or hated.

How did this book find me? It is a book on baseball and leaving the Audible+ catalog on August 5.

[Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

From radio to television a history of baseball broadcasting and the people who made it all happen.
Smith gives us the greats of radio and television and adds the best 'sound bytes' from both over the years.
Baseball fans will love this one.