Bob Sheppard - Wikipedia

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that October 20 is the anniversary of the birth of long-time public address announcer for numerous New York area college and professional sports teams Robert Leo Sheppard. In particular he was the public address announcer fort the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (1951–2007), and the New York Giants (1956–2006) of the National Football League.

Bob Sheppard 1999 - CNN-Time Interview w/Jeff Greenfield, 10/3/1999
"Bob Sheppard (10/20/1910-7/11/2010). CNN-Time's Jeff Greenfield did this very elaborate feature interview on Bob in 1999. He visits Bob's house, his church, and that cathedral of sports Bob called his other home, Yankee Stadium. Bob covers in detail the usual clear-concise-correct topics and he also articulates some astute comments on the culture of baseball. Very well done. Produced by Bob Ruff.
Bob was a genuinely admirable human being and a gentleman of the old school who represented a bygone era of aspiration and dignity. The sacred eloquence that Bob's work represented and epitomized has now officially past. He was a credit to his faith, his family, his friends, and to sports. He possessed unrivaled character, integrity, courage, and class. How lucky I was to even know this exceptional man since his sterling influence on my life echoed through to my very heart and soul. I shall miss him terribly. We shall all miss the magnificent Robert Leo Sheppard."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHMh54YLjXE

Images
1. New York Yankees announcer Bob Sheppard
2. Bob Sheppard 1990 - Interview with Al Trautwig Celebrating Bob's 40th Stadium Season, April 8,1990.
3. Bob Sheppard and his wife Mary with his Plaque.
4. Bob Sheppard with Derek Jeter.


Background from newyork.yankees.mlb.com/nyy/fan_forum/bob_sheppard.jsp
"Beyond the Booth
By Kristina M. Dodge
This story was published in Yankees Magazine.
Bob Sheppard is a teacher, lector, former naval officer - oh, and he does a little public address announcing on the side.
On any given game day, anyone in earshot of Yankee Stadium can expect to hear the golden voice of public address announcer Bob Sheppard. But on one particular Sunday in May, it was his lack of words that spoke volumes.

There were still a few hours until the Yankees were set to play the Mariners that afternoon, and Sheppard was sitting in one of the lockers in the auxiliary clubhouse, his attention focused on the altar set up at the head of the room. It was coming on 10 o'clock, and people were still filing in. There were only 20 folding chairs set up, but they were all full. By the time Mass started a few minutes later, more people had arrived, taking standing positions at the back of the room.

Sheppard usually serves as a lector; he has been doing it almost as long as he has been announcing at the Stadium, longer if you count the time he dedicates to the task at his own parish. This Sunday, however, Sheppard remained seated. A young blond woman did the first reading from the Act of the Apostles. She appeared determined, looking up to make eye contact with those in the room as she spoke of Paul and Barnabas. A quiet young man, equally determined, did the second reading from the Book of Revelation. When the Mass was over, the two lectors-in-training approached Sheppard, who extended his arms around their shoulders. Huddled together, the trio talked about the readings. Sheppard advised one to be more vigorous and told the other to add more volume. The two left, promising just that for the next Mass.

For 35 minutes that morning, Sheppard wasn't the "Voice of Yankee Stadium" as he is affectionately called; he was a teacher.

"I love teaching," said Sheppard. "I am a teacher of speech my whole life, and lectoring is just one portion of what I have been doing. When I finished my master's degree, I started teaching speech, and that was many, many years ago, and I have done that all my life-teaching young people how to speak clearly."

Sheppard taught in the New York City school system for more than 50 years. He taught evening and summer classes at St. John's University, his alma mater; taught public speaking to bankers at the American Institute of Banking; and coached speech clubs at several Catholic schools on Long Island. But you wouldn't know that from listening to his voice over the public address system at the Stadium. You'd hope that a man with such a unique, concise and eloquent manner of speaking would put himself in a position to share his mastery of the spoken word, but you wouldn't know that for sure unless you knew the man behind the voice, the man outside the booth. In fact, Sheppard's time in the booth at Yankee Stadium-or any stadium for that matter-is but a small fraction of a very full life.

"I don't want to sound sanctimonious as [in] being overly prayerful and posing as a saint," said Sheppard, a devout Catholic who attends Mass daily. "I am a man who enjoys a cocktail before dinner, but I really believe in prayer because God has treated me well. And one of my perks is this job."

Robert Leo Sheppard was born in Ridgewood, Queens, where he lived with his mother, father and two older brothers before the family moved to Richmond Hills, also in Queens, when he was 7 or 8 years old. His father, a New York City building inspector, and his mother, a trained stenographer and secretary, were active Catholics, and Sheppard attended Catholic schools through college, first St. Mary's Parochial School, then St. John's Prep Catholic Boys High School in Brooklyn, and then St. John's College, which later became a university.

Sheppard recalls his mother having a gift with words, and when the mood hit her, she would write poetry, a hobby he later inherited from her. Her love of piano, on the other hand, couldn't stack up to America's pastime. The family owned a Steinway grand piano, and Sheppard's mother arranged piano lessons for her son during the winter. But as soon as spring came around, Sheppard gave up piano for baseball.

"I had sports in my blood-baseball, football, basketball, swimming," said Sheppard, who started playing sports when he was about 12 years old. "They say it is a dream of every boy to want to be a big-league ballplayer, and I had that dream when I was 12 years old. Then I was mature enough to know that I didn't have the talent, but I played in high school and college." Sheppard received a full athletic scholarship to St. John's. He played quarterback in every game, except for one, in his four years there, and that was the day his father died.

Academically, his major interest was in speech. He took all the speech courses the school offered and did well.

"I liked the way it gave you a sense of command," said Sheppard. "It gave you a sense of pleasure and power in being able to please people and persuade people. I enjoyed the teachers I had who taught speech and exemplified in themselves those qualities that I admired so much."

His speech professors left such an impression that he soon found himself aspiring to the same role. He went on to receive his master's from Columbia University, and upon graduating and after passing the necessary exams, he began teaching, working his way up from teacher in training to substitute teacher to permanent teacher and later to department chairman.

To supplement his teaching salary, Sheppard played semiprofessional football on Sundays with the Valley Stream Red Riders and the Hempstead Monitors on Long Island.

"I earned the magnificent salary of $25 a game," said Sheppard. "Other players, especially linemen, earned $10. Quarterbacks were the prima donnas. That $25 meant a lot when my teaching salary was tiny."

After doing that for a few years, Sheppard came to the realization that the risk of injury was far too great and felt his teaching career would be in jeopardy if he got hurt. Unlike today, there was no insurance for players, he said, and so he retired from sports and got married, but not before having what he considers the best day of his life as a quarterback. In a game against the Manhasset Red Birds, Sheppard completed 14 passes, leading his team to victory. When the game ended, Sheppard got his $25 from the manager and received another $25 from two gentlemen who had bet on the game and won big.

When Sheppard was in his mid-to-late 20s, World War II broke out. By that time, he was married and had three small children. Being a healthy, athletic male, Sheppard feared he was in danger of being drafted. He believed he would be unable to support his family on a soldier or sailor's salary, so he sought out a position as a naval officer. Sheppard spent two years on duty. His first year, he was stationed in Aruba, where his duties were to supervise the loading of oil tankers at the refinery on the island and provide the captains of the tankers with safe routes to the Pacific and Europe.

"It was like going down to St. Thomas for vacation, but it really got boring after a while," Sheppard said. "But it was safe and I had a wife and three kids, and I thanked God everyday that I wasn't being sent out on [a] cargo ship to be shot at and sent down to the bottom of the ocean, which was happening frequently during that war at that time."

As fate would have it, Sheppard spent the second half of his tour of duty as an armed guard commander with a gunnery crew. His ship was on the way to the Philippines when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, ultimately ending the war. Sheppard finished his tour of duty in New York and was released with honor. He returned to teaching as chairman of the speech department at John Adams High School, where he stayed for 25 years.

Shortly after, somewhere in between serving as department chair, teaching workshops and raising a family, Sheppard read about an exhibition football game in Freeport, Long Island, between two big-league professional teams-the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Chicago Rockets.

"I found out who was sponsoring the charity game and volunteered my services as a PA announcer," said Sheppard. "It was the first time I had ever done it."

And so Bob Sheppard the public address announcer made his debut, a performance that caught the attention of a Brooklyn Dodgers football executive who was at the game. The executive liked what he heard and hired him. Soon after, the team folded but not before the New York Yankees football team got an earful. They offered him their PA job at Yankee Stadium, and the rest, as they say, is history.

On Opening Day 1951, with Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio sharing the outfield for the only time during their careers, Sheppard announced his first Yankees baseball game, forever becoming part of the team's tradition and cementing his place in baseball history.

"The first time you hear him announce your name is probably the best memory you have of him because you grow up listening to it, and when he says it, it makes you feel good," said Derek Jeter. "If you are a fan of another team growing up, you probably haven't heard Bob Sheppard's voice too much or heard of Bob Sheppard, but if you are a Yankees fan, that's sort of a symbol that lets you know you are in Yankee Stadium. As a Yankees fan, I think it is a sign of accomplishment, especially as a player."

Over the years, his influence on players has sometimes gone beyond simply announcing their names.

In 1993, when Reggie Jackson was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he approached Sheppard for help in preparing a speech.

With Sheppard's guidance and after several drafts, what Jackson had originally planned to be a 35-minute talk turned out to be an 18-minute speech that Sheppard said was great and very well-received.

"In the Chinese culture, there are people who are masters in martial arts and when they speak, you listen, and it is short and concise," said Jackson, who sought help from Sheppard on other speeches, including his number retirement. "So he is like listening to a master. He is a master in understanding the world of communication, so when he made a statement, I didn't go, 'Oh, my God.' I went, 'Okay, I'll be back. I'll get it right.'"

Sheppard said the experience brought the pair even closer together, and Jackson not only learned lessons in public speaking that he still uses today, but he learned a lot about Bob Sheppard the person, the teacher.

"He's a blessing," said Jackson. "He is a blessing when you are around him. The measure of people is how do you feel after you have been around them and they left? When you are around him and you leave, you feel better."

Going into his 57th year, Sheppard has shown no signs of stopping and still takes joy in the fact that when most people go to work, he can say he is going to a ballgame.

There is just one more goal he hopes to accomplish before his career in public address announcing comes to a close. On Opening Day 2009, he would like to great fans with: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new Yankee Stadium!"

FYI 1SG James MatthewsNicci EisenhauerLTC Stephan PorterSSgt Terry JenkinsSPC Diana RodriguezLCpl Donald FaucettPVT Mark BrownCPT (Join to see) MSgt David HoffmanSgt (Join to see)SFC (Join to see)LTC (Join to see)Sgt John H.1sg-dan-capriSGT Robert R.CPT Tommy CurtisSGT (Join to see) SGT Steve McFarlandCol Carl Whicker

I remember him.

Excellent biography share sir.