Nov
11

A rumination on baseball, its soul, and the men that bring it to us

Dave Neihaus

Another voice of baseball passed today. Dave Neihaus, the Seattle Mariners radio guy, is another of a list of men who made baseballcome alive for us that have died in the last few years. Ernie Harwell, Jack Buck, Herb Score a couple years back, Dave was up there with these men, regional souls that kept the imaginations of fans of all ages dancing with their descriptions of the game. It’s a sad day for baseball to lose a guy like Neihaus, and not only because it means he’ll be replaced with a Joe Buck or Chip Carey clone. No, Neihaus’ death is another sign of the passing of a generation and the movement of baseball as a whole, from a small-town, real America kind of a feel to a business, glossed over and devoid of emotion. Without guys like Neihaus, baseball loses a bit of its soul.

There was a time when these voices were all a kid had to tell them what was going on with their heroes. The play-by-play man was the eyes of the listener, and what a job that was. To be able to watch baseball all day, talk about it with millions of eager fans, was a dream job for any red-blooded American lad (and I’m sure young lady, too). They told the stories of the rise and fall of your champions, the tale of the quest for a championship. The bards of their day, what they wanted you to see, happened. It didn’t even matter if they told the truth.

“Is it fair? Is it foul? It is!!!”

This quote is a classic example of Herb Score, the Indians long-time radio man. What does that mean? It doesn’t matter, listeners of Herb knew what he was trying to say, and they fell in love with him. Outside of the Indians network, you didn’t know anything about him, but the radio guy, be is Score, Harwell, or the great Vin Scully, created fans by virtue of their words alone. The Dodgers wouldn’t be what they are today in LA if it weren’t for Scully coming across the country with them.
Nowadays we get guys like Joe Buck or Chip Carey that announce games, and in short, its just terrible. Other than when his father Jack Buck pre-wrote his McGuire home run call for number 62 (“Earth to Planet Maris…”) what the old guys said was genuine, and captured the spirit of the team. That’s still true to a degree, but now it seems like the franchises want a radio personality that is acceptable to all, what with the national and sometimes worldwide reach these teams want. But that takes away from the mythology, the soul of the game. Baseball is the only sport where the announcers can become bigger than the game itself, in a good way. Football has its national guys that people love, but there is little to no following of football on radio that I know of. The guys that do it have personality are great, I’m sure (Gill Santos and Geno Capeletti in New England, or Greg Papa and Tom Flores in Oakland come to mind) but generally the way people take in football is through the television. Baseball has a spirit on the radio that is unmatched.

I worked this past summer with a radio crew for a minor league baseball team, and I can’t tell you what a neat experience that is. The regional aspect of it not only allows for great commercials, but also colloquialisms and people from around there talking about the team. If you ever listen to Red Sox radio guys, they are perfect for that team. New England-sounding through and through, they despise people who don’t work hard and keep their mouths shut. For instance, Manny Ramirez. In New York, the Mets guys sound like they expect the Amazins’ to blow it, and the Yankees people make it a production, bombastic and in your face, just like the Yankees are. Now the guys that do the Indians are pretty good, basically just your typical Midwesterner. But someone like the Texas Rangers or the Braves, these guys are employees of Fox Sports first and the team second, it sounds like. They are part of that featureless crew that’s given us Joe Buck. These men’s’ voices are the product of training and elocution lessons, not whiskey and cigars. They create sayings and catchphrases that just plain suck, while the old guys just use sayings their mother yelled at them, or something they picked up along the way. Without a road of many paths traveled, a good baseball announcer just doesn’t exist.

One of the best things about the finest of them, the radio announcer of a baseball team acts as the memory of the team. On television, unless you’re watching YES or NESN (or SNY I guess) there’s no dedicated focus on the team. On radio it’s the same guy often for decades, if you can get a good one, and they’ll recall things that happened 40 years ago sometimes. They’ve experienced the ups and downs of the team, the bad trades and good ones, often more than the players. When you’re listening to a guy that was there before the current owner, it’s a place to keep the dial. Without the radio announcer, more than any other functionary on the team, the history of the game would be lost. The players only care about stats and winning, the owners only about money and winning, while the radio guy sees the poetry in the loss. He remembers that kid who could field like the Musial but hit like Mendoza. He remembers that can’t miss prospect that was going to save the team, you know, the one that couldn’t find a hit if someone handed it to him. The lead-footed first baseman that caused as many headaches as errors but blasted the ball to the upper deck, the talented but underachieving centerfielder, and that nothing kid that came up, took the world by storm, and carried the team on his shoulders. Having a good radio guy is like having your grandpa around to tell you about the old days, the good times long gone.

In the end, the radio announcer is the voice of the team. Neihaus was baseball to Seattlites, just as Harwell was to Detroitians, Score to Clevelandonians, and even now, John Sterling to New Yorkers. Baseball is the American pastime, and what better way to pass the time than to listen to an old friend on the portable, out on the porch on a summer’s afternoon with a beer in hand. The radio announcer brings the game to our homes and into our hearts, and when a great one leaves us, a little bit of us dies, too. Anyway, thanks, Dave, I only knew you for a year or two, but every time I tuned in, it was glorious. Time’s gotta pass, it just sucks it has to take people like him from us.