Famous Sports Radio Broadcasts – Keep the Thrills Alive
They are the voices in the night, the play-by-play announcers, whose calls have poured out of radio speakers since Aug. 5, 1921 when Harold Arlin called the first baseball game over Pittsburgh’s KDKA. That fall, Arlin did the first college football broadcast. From then on, radio microphones found their way into stadiums and arenas around the world.
The first three decades of sports radio broadcasting provided many memorable broadcasts.
The 1936 Berlin Olympics were capped by impressive performances by Jesse Owens, an African-American who won four gold medals, though Adolf Hitler refused to pin them around his neck. The games were broadcast in 28 different languages, the first sporting events to achieve worldwide radio coverage.
Many famous sports radio broadcasts followed.
On the muggy night of June 22, 1938, NBC radio listeners joined 70,043 boxing fans at Yankee Stadium for a heavyweight fight between champion Joe Louis and German Max Schmeling. After just 124 seconds, listeners were shocked to hear NBC commentator Ben Grauer growl “And Schmeling is down… and here’s the bill…” as “The Brown Bomber” scored a stunning knockout.
In 1939, New York Yankees captain Lou Gehrig gave his famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. Baseball’s “iron man,” who had earlier ended his record streak of 2,130 consecutive games played, had been diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative disease. That July 4 broadcast included his famous line, “…today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
The 1947 World Series provided one of the most famous sports radio broadcasts of all time. In Game 6, with the Brooklyn Dodgers leading the New York Yankees, the Dodgers inserted Al Gionfriddo into center field. With two men on base, Yankees slugger Joe DiMaggio, representing the tying run, came to bat. In one of the most memorable calls of all time, host Red Barber described what happened next:
“Here’s the pitch. Turned, tight… it’s long to deep left-center. Back goes Gionfriddo… back, back, back, back, back, back… and… MAKES ONE -!” HAND CATCH AGAINST THE BULLPEN Oh, doctor!
The “Oh, doc!” de Barber became a catchphrase, as did many others coined by broadcasters. Some of the most famous sports radio broadcasts are remembered for those phrases. Cardinals and Cubs voice Harry Geez’s line “It could be, it could be, it’s … a home run” is a classic. So are “He shoots! He scores!” by pioneering hockey broadcaster Foster Hewitt, the voice of Johnny Best’s Boston Bruins “He touches and he plays…”, the “Yeah!” by Marv Albert.
Some announcers have been so adept with language that special phrases were unnecessary. On April 8, 1974, Los Angeles Dodgers voice Vin Scully watched Atlanta’s Henry Aaron hit home run number 715, a new record. Scully simply said, “Fastball, there’s a high flyer to left center field…Buckner’s back on the fence…he’s…gone!”, then got up to get a drink of water as the crowd . and the fireworks went off.
Announcers rarely color their broadcasts with creative one-liners now, and sports videos have become ubiquitous. Still, the voices of late-night radio follow the paths paved by memorable sportscasters of the past.