Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers

by Curt Smith

Russ Hodges’s frantic pronouncement at Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World”: “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” and Jack Buck’s incredulous remark after Kirk Gibson’s heroic home run in the 1988 World “I don’t believe what I just saw!” are just a couple examples. The sometimes downright hysterical commentaries of broadcasters very often become more memorable than even the games they describe. Though countless studies have weighed the merits of our great players, none has assessed the virtues of the men who turn diving catches and soaring home runs into the stuff of myth. In The Voices of Summer, Curt Smith has compiled a list of 101 classic announcers—from national celebrities to local favorites, overlooked giants to upcoming stars—in search of the greatest baseball broadcaster of all time. From the poetic reflections of Dick Enberg to the Falstaffian frenzy of Harry Caray, Smith answers the timeless Was Mel Allen better than Ernie Harwell? Does Joe Buck compare to his legendary dad? Which of today’s young broadcasters really matches the all-time greats? Irreverent, authoritative, and uncommonly addictive, this book will be the definitive guide to baseball announcing for any and all baseball fans.

Genres: Baseball, Sports

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2005

Reviews

[JmP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I liked this book. As the title indicates, it includes 101 of baseball’s best announcers. The ranking system was good, and I especially liked the table for each announcer, with details from his career. By looking at it, a reader easily knows when an announcer worked for different teams, networks, and when/if they worked a post season series.
What I did not like about this book was the writing style. The author used a fragmented sentence structure, often tossing information around in an abbreviated way that often left me still not knowing what the text was talking about. In other words, if a reader wasn’t already familiar with the topic they probably wouldn’t know what the author is talking about even after reading. He wrote as if everyone already knows what went on during each of these careers. I’d rather read information in full, straightforward detail.
One announcer who I think deserves to be included in this type of book is Frank Messer. He spent eighteen of his twenty four years in the majors with the Yankees, and was one of the best pure announcers that they ever had. He had a great voice and was near perfect.

[carl theaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for interest and info, 2 stars for writing style. Author has a weird style so it takes 15 minutes to read the 1 or 2 pages on each of the broadcasters, but it's often interesting baseball. Perhaps the author is trying to emulate each broadcaster's style, but it's tough to tell.

A lot of good stuff on the industry. Until the '30s anyone could broadcast a game, so there were often 4-5 different radio stations covering the same game in the big cities.

The feuds are fun reading, I live in the Astros area and have heard Milo Hamilton for years, he was fired 2-3 times by Harry Caray, a lot of big egos. If someone did you wrong somewhere along the line, they say you have a big ego.

Good reading between innings of a game.

I was pointed to this book as it is mentioned several times in "Baseball Book of Firsts".

[Aaron Million · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith ranks all of the greatest baseball broadcasters according to a unique scale and ranking system. He fully admits that, as with most things, it is open to interpretation. I would agree there as some of the people that he ranks highly (Joe Buck, Jack Buck, Bob Costas) I would not consider to be particularly enjoyable to listen to. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed reading about many announcers that I never had the pleasure of listening to.