WALLA WALLA — If you love baseball and subscribe to XM Satellite Radio — and I qualify — you probably spend more time listening to the voices of summer than any normal person should.
In case you haven’t heard, XM broadcasts every single Major League game from the first pitch of the first season opener to the final out of the final game of the World Series. And a goodly number of exhibition games as well from the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues.
But this is not meant to be a commercial for XM, although you’d have a fight on your hands before I’d ever part with my Delphi Roady2.
Instead, with Seattle’s Dave Niehaus about to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, this seems to be a good time to recognize and appreciate the wonderful voices — many of them no longer with us — who have entertained us by spinning baseball tales and painting pictures of the games before them down through the years.
I grew up in the Upper Midwest, listening nightly to the calls of Harry Caray and his understudy, Jack Buck, as they unabashedly rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals. I wasn’t a Cardinals fan, but that was my best option until the Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis in 1961 and became the Minnesota Twins. After that, I was mostly tuned in to Halsey Hall, Ray Scott and Herb Carneal as they kept me abreast of my new favorite team.
On occasion, though, I’d search the airways, transistor radio to my ear, for the scratchy sounds of Earl Gillespie and Blaine Walsh as they described the exploits of my old favorite team, the Milwaukee Braves, back in the day when Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews were the best one-two home run punch in baseball.
And then, late at night, long after lights out, I was able to pull in the smooth-as-silk strains of Vin Scully, reminding me that the hated Dodgers were about to win another game.
Scully is still at it today, although he’s now doing mostly television for the Dodgers. But he’s still regarded in most corners as baseball’s best radio broadcaster, due in part to that unmistakable voice but also to his poetic perspective.
Scully once described a play on the field that reminded him of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece Death of a Salesman. He likened a runner on second base to “a tiny ship looking for safe harbor.”
I have always been partial to the Twins’ Carneal, who joined the club’s broadcasting crew in 1962 and remained there until his death on April 1 of last year, one day before the Twins’ season opener. In 1996, Carneal received the Ford C. Frank Award and a place in Cooperstown for his broadcasting excellence.
That’s the same path the Mariners’ Niehaus will follow Sunday when he is inducted into the Hall of Fame. It’s a well-deserved honor for the man who has been the voice of the M’s since their inception in 1977.
I first met Niehaus a year or two later when he came to Walla Walla as part of the Mariners’ preseason promotional tour, known today as the Mariners Caravan. It was held at the Elks Lodge, and I can still see Niehaus, beer in one hand and a cigar in the other, shooting pool in the stag bar.
I later learned of Dave’s love of Walla Walla Sweet Onions. So on a weekend trip to Seattle, I loaded a 25-pound sack of Sweets in the car and lugged them all the way up to the press box in the Kingdome and gave them to Dave.
This Sweet Onion connection has another interesting twist to it.
Niehaus and Carneal were good friends, and Carneal spoke on occasion over the airways of his introduction to Walla Walla Sweets while visiting Dave and his wife Margaret on Twins trips to Seattle.
In the summer of 1992, I was back in Minnesota for a high school reunion and attended a Twins game with my brother Cliff. As it turned out, we were seated directly behind Carneal’s wife Kathy. When she learned I was from Walla Walla, she told us how much she and Herb enjoyed their visits with the Niehauses, not to mention those Walla Walla onions.
And since Cliff still had onions remaining from a bag I had sent him earlier in the summer, he returned to the Metrodome that next afternoon with a small sack of Sweets. He presented them to Kathy, who immediately took them to her husband in the broadcast booth.
By that time, I was en route home, barreling across western North Dakota not far from the Montana line.
But I had the Twins game tuned in on the radio. And you can imagine my surprise when I heard Carneal say in that rich, familiar voice:
“I want to say hello to Jim Buchan, from Henning, Minnesota, who has been back here for his high school reunion and is now on his way home to Walla Walla, Washington. He’s probably out there in North Dakota by now, but I just wanted to say thanks for the Walla Walla Sweet Onions.”
I can truthfully say that I nearly drove into the ditch.
But I think of that story warmly now as my one small connection to two men whom I respect and feel I know personally through all the years we’ve spent together on the radio.
Jim Buchan can be reached at jimbuchan@wwubcom or 525-3300 ext. 292.
Mike Barer commented on Jul 26, 2008 8:14 AM:
" Growing up in Walla Walla, I remember so many great radio voices, Jimmy Dudley doing the Seattle Pilots games, Bob Robertson's Cougar broadcasts, Bob Blackburn's great Super Sonics broadcasts, Bevan Roth's Wa Hi sports broadcasts, and even Verne Russell doing the Walla Walla Bears/Phillies/Padres. "
The article certainly resonates with me. As a longtime resident of southwest BC I'd add the name of the legendary Leo Lassen, who did the Seattle Rainiers radio playbyplay from the '30's through the 40's and much of the 50's, until retiring for a second time in 1961.
And a side note to the author. The wife of Dave Niehaus is named Marilyn, not Margaret.
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