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Red Barber on Jackie Robinson acceptance
I just recorded this off Netflix. It's from the documentary series Baseball from PBS. Brooklyn Dodgers radio announcer Red Barber on changing his views and a...
Thank you my friend TSgt Joe C. for making us aware that on "October 22, 1992, Red Barber—the legendary announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, with a voice that one sportswriter called “a spoonful of sugar drifting through a glass of iced tea”—dies. He was 84 years old."
Rest in peace Red Barber.
In an era when almost every major league baseball team had a distinct voice—Mel Allen for the Yankees, Curt Gowdy for the Red Sox, Harry Caray for the Cards—Barber’s erudite-but-homespun Mississippi twang was the Dodgers. He pioneered a colorful, reportorial style of play-by-play narration that generations of broadcasters have imitated: He gave his listeners a scrupulously detailed but carefully nonpartisan version of the events on the field, so that they could feel like they were sitting in the stands themselves.
Barber’s baseball-broadcasting career began with the Cincinnati Reds in 1934, when the 26-year-old announcer called the first major league game he had ever seen, and ended in 1966 when the New York Yankees fired him for noting on air that only 413 people had come to watch the last-place Bombers play. But from 1939 to 1953, his years as the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Barber became a citywide celebrity. He invented an entirely new vocabulary that was nevertheless almost instantly familiar to anyone who listened to his broadcasts for more than a few minutes. To Barber, the baseball diamond was “the pea patch.” An argument was “a rhubarb.” A sure-thing game was “tied up in the crocus sack” and a team that had a game well in hand was “sitting in the catbird seat.” Everyone who heard Barber say that the bases were “FOB” knew he meant that they were full of Brooklyn players; likewise, listeners knew that a player who was “assuming the ballistic burden” was coming in to relieve the pitcher."
Red Barber on Jackie Robinson acceptance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMCUblEim-0
FYI Maj William W. "Bill" Price Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown 1stSgt Eugene Harless CW5 John M. MSG Andrew White SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4"SCPO Morris Ramsey SGT Michael Thorin SGT (Join to see) SGT Robert George SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SP5 Robert Ruck SPC Margaret Higgins Maj Marty Hogan SSgt Brian Brakke Sgt Arthur Caesar SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL
Rest in peace Red Barber.
In an era when almost every major league baseball team had a distinct voice—Mel Allen for the Yankees, Curt Gowdy for the Red Sox, Harry Caray for the Cards—Barber’s erudite-but-homespun Mississippi twang was the Dodgers. He pioneered a colorful, reportorial style of play-by-play narration that generations of broadcasters have imitated: He gave his listeners a scrupulously detailed but carefully nonpartisan version of the events on the field, so that they could feel like they were sitting in the stands themselves.
Barber’s baseball-broadcasting career began with the Cincinnati Reds in 1934, when the 26-year-old announcer called the first major league game he had ever seen, and ended in 1966 when the New York Yankees fired him for noting on air that only 413 people had come to watch the last-place Bombers play. But from 1939 to 1953, his years as the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Barber became a citywide celebrity. He invented an entirely new vocabulary that was nevertheless almost instantly familiar to anyone who listened to his broadcasts for more than a few minutes. To Barber, the baseball diamond was “the pea patch.” An argument was “a rhubarb.” A sure-thing game was “tied up in the crocus sack” and a team that had a game well in hand was “sitting in the catbird seat.” Everyone who heard Barber say that the bases were “FOB” knew he meant that they were full of Brooklyn players; likewise, listeners knew that a player who was “assuming the ballistic burden” was coming in to relieve the pitcher."
Red Barber on Jackie Robinson acceptance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMCUblEim-0
FYI Maj William W. "Bill" Price Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown 1stSgt Eugene Harless CW5 John M. MSG Andrew White SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4"SCPO Morris Ramsey SGT Michael Thorin SGT (Join to see) SGT Robert George SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SP5 Robert Ruck SPC Margaret Higgins Maj Marty Hogan SSgt Brian Brakke Sgt Arthur Caesar SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL
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