Reviewing the book The Deerslayer, historian Allan Nevins etched "the story of an America now so far lost in time and change that it is hard to believe it once existed."  Skip Caray's death this month, at 68, was hard to believe:  too, the story of how he altered cable television -- and how cable buoyed The Game.

Return to a 1976 baseball now lost in time and change.  Free local-team TV was the big leagues' foundation.  Pay-cable seemed delusional.  Cable systems existed only randomly.  Ted Turner looked at satellite and envisioned it linking them.  He pined to please -- thus, grow.

In 1976, Turner brought the Braves, upped their TV schedule, renamed WTCG Atlanta SuperStation WTBS, and hired the iconic Harry Caray's son.  "The Braves'll tie the sticks to the big-time," Ted said, sagely.  It was an offer even Don Vito Corleone could not refuse.

Cable soon bulged baseball's stage.  In turn, baseball swelled cable's audience.  The pivot was 1982.  "TBS was, just one offering," said Turner.  "People weren't aware how it could sell the Braves a world from Georgia."  That April Atlanta won a bigs record first 13 games:  suddenly, people were.

The streak was "the 'two-by-four' that hit America between the eyes," said Skip's partner, Ernie Johnson."  A Storm Lake, Iowa, sign read "The Atlanta Braves:  Iowa's Team."  In Valdez, Alaska, a Braves Fan Club chapter pooled cash, bought a screen, and renamed its bar "The Braves Lounge."  In a decade, WTBS households leapt 7,000 percent.

"The greatest thing to happen [to baseball] since Bat Day," the Philadelphia Inquirer called cable television.  You can look it up:  Skip Caray became its first star.

Pere And Fils

Before WTBS, Skip had grown up in and around St. Louis, been an all-city high school linebacker, graduated from the University of of Missouri, and aired Triple-A's Atlanta Crackers and the NBA St. Louis Hawks.  "I'm not good-looking or a threat to Twiggy," Caray joked.  "Fortunately, on radio you can't tell."

In 1968, the Hawks moved to Atlanta.  "Best thing that ever happened," Skip said.  "I got my own identity," Caray pere embodying the St. Louis Cardinals.  "Finally, I stopped being Harry's kid." Soon fils occupied a world of hoops, hockey, and football, chucking raw kid for stardom.  The star he wished upon was baseball.  Irony reached it.

In 1954, Jack Buck had joined the Cardinals, at which point Boss Harry sent Milo Hamilton packing.  Under threads connecting, from 1966-75 Milo, now Braves' Voice, was too busy to settle scores.  Hamilton was then axed again, Skip replacing him.  "It was interesting how fans reacted," said Johnson.  "People expected Skip to be Harry."  They were soon disabused.

Harry roared.  Skip intoned.  Dad rose and fell like a ferris wheel.  Son kept an even keel, showing and prizing modesty.  He never forgot once saying:  "Here's the Voice of the Braves, Ernie Johnson."  During break, Ernie said, "If you don't mind, we're all the Voice of the Braves."  One similarity was controversy.  "The worst call by a major league umpire in fifty years!" Skip raged.  "[Ed] Vargo should be fired because he made all umpires look bad."  You could see pop beaming.

"I didn't set out to be different," said Caray fils, more reflexively than defensively.  "My dad was an orphan, a self-made man, more elemental as a broadcaster.  We're just not the same human being."  A viewer never felt obliged to choose one or the other.

The Super SuperStation 

In 1977, Caray added WSB Radio to WTBS.  Celebrating, Atlanta lost 16 straight.  Laughter got Skip through 1981.  Next year rewarded him.  Atlanta won the N.L. West.  A year later it drew a then-record 2,119,935.  A letter to The Sporting News thanked cable "for getting baseball back in the hearts of rural America."  Full circle:  The 1987-90 Braves dredged last.  "Loosen up," Caray told partner Billy Sample.  "We might be the only team in history not to win a game all season."

In 1982, "I got cheered in a restaurant or grocery store," he said.  "Now if I put on shades, I can slink into Kroger's unnoticed."  TSN, among others, noticed.  "Skip is perhaps America's most prominent baseball announcer," then available in 63 million homes 130 times a year.  Even losing, "the Braves have developed a loyalty among many regions distant from a major-league team."

In 1991, son Chip joined Atlanta -- the first bigs' Voice radio or TV grandson.  "How protective     is telling your kid to be quiet?" said pop.  More history:  Three generations of Carays calling a game that year at Wrigley Field.  Harry kicked himself. "If I'd had sense enough before I was born to nickname myself Flip, we'd 'a had Flip, Chip, and Skip" -- the Singing Carays, for our watching and listening pleasure.

Skip's pleasure seemed to peak in 1992's L.C.S. Game Seven':  ninth inning, three on, two out, 2-1, Pittsburgh. "My biggest thrills have been my kids' successes in Little League or school events," said Caray.  "Professionally, it's easy.  Frank Cabrera," singling to plate David Justice and Sid Bream:  Braves, 3-2.

As Bream slid, people in the booth began pounding Skip on the back.  He never knew it.  "I didn't feel it, my concentration calling the play was total.  All I knew was Frank's hit meant the pennant."  Ultimately, partner Pete Van Wieren a.k.a. "The Professor" aired more than 5,000 games with Skip.  "That play showed how his ability to capture the moment was second to none."  An even better "moment" lay ahead

"Yes!  Yes!  Yes!"

The Braves lost the 1992 Classic and 1993 L.C.S.  Finally, they won the franchise's first post-1957 Series.  "Fly ball, deep left-center!" Skip said in 1995.  "Grissom on the run!  Yes! Yes!  Yes!  The Atlanta Braves have given you a championship."  Harry died in 1998.  Skip had an angioplasty, got a peacemaker that triggered airports' metal detecting device, and was busted to radio and Turner South regional TV in 2003.

"He's identified with the Braves.  We want a national feel," a Turner exec explained, bizarrely. Skip shrugged.  "I said, 'Run that by me again.'''  Ratings dropped, leading TBS, having missed the light, to feel the heat.  "It's nice to be back," Caray smiled, reinstated.  "The fans made it happen."  In 2005, what happened was Chip, rejoining Dad in Atlanta after Seattle via Wrigley Field and Fox TV.

Thomas Hardy wrote Life's Little Ironies.  As baseball's first SuperStation, '70s WTBS wowed the small-town and rural ignored by local-team television.  This year the network ditched the Braves for the first Sunday afternoon national TV series since mid-60s Dizzy Dean gilded the monumentally popular Game of the Week.  Its Voice:  the Chip off Skip's block, wowing Di'z's less Malibu than Mayberry.

Skip's funeral was a day before America's Team's announcer would have turned 69. On Sunday, August 10, airing TBS' Red Sox-White Sox, Chip termed Dad "my hero and best friend."  At a next-day memorial service, Monsignor Tom Kenny gave a eulogy:  "Caray is coming home ... can he make it?  He slides!  He's safe!  Listen to the crowd!"

We did:  Skip let us.  The crowd that was America won't soon forget his voice falling lightly on the ear.

In Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson wrote "how at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes."  To baseball, the Hall of Fame means love, memory, and legends on a giant scale.  Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus has never been to America's most famed small town.  "Thankfully," he mused, "that's about to change."

On July 27, Niehaus will receive the Hall's 2008 Ford C. Frick Award for broadcast excellence.  First, on May 24, he will buoy its Voices of The Game series from the shrine's Bullpen Theater.  "After all these years," said Dave, "I'm making up for lost time," about to discover how Cooperstown can be twice the fun.

Niehaus grew up in a small-town 1950s Indiana of farms and fields and boys playing basketball, often visiting the Palace Pool Rome in Princeton, current pop. 8,175.  Each inning a man, dipping chalk into water, posted a tickertape score on the chalkboard.  Dried, it illumined, say, Cardinals-Cubs.  "I can still see the brilliant white against the dark."

At night, Dave sipped lemonade, caught fireflies, and heard Harry Caray on the porch.  In 1957, he graduated from Indiana University, joined the military, and did Armed Forces Radio. "I'd call games from Yankee Stadium," then Dodger Stadium and the Angels' Big A.  Taking  an apartment in North Hollywood, Neihaus befriended unknown actor Jim Nabors: surprise, surprise, surprise.

In 1977, Dave fashioned the Mariners' Northwest Opening -- their first and still only Voice.  "It's been a wild wholly Pier Six brawl," Niehaus said one night, "and the bullies so far have been the Kansas City Royals."  Number One on this Dave's list:  shunning muted tints for bold pastels.

From Anaheim to Seattle

"Say Dave, you think Seattle," Caray once said.  Many recall his rowing before the expansion M's set sail.  In 1969 and 1973, Niehaus and Don Drysdale, respectively, joined the Angels.  Each worshipped a deity.  "Scully started the West Coast tradition of don't cheerlead or make excuses," said Dave.  How good were they?  "Opposing Vin, we lived to tell the tale."

"I'm going to have dinner tonight at Singer's house," Drysdale once said, apocryphally.  Niehaus asked, "Bill Singer, the pitcher?"  Big D smiled:  "No, Dave.  The singer is Frank Sinatra."

In 1977, the bigs reclaimed Seattle.  "[Owner] Danny Kaye knew me on the Angels [also, Rams football and UCLA hoops]," Niehaus said, "and offered me the job."  He balked.  Kaye persisted.  Dave finally embraced Puget Sound.  "I sit on my deck watching boats on the lake, listening to birds.  It comes to us from God."  Godawfulness sprang from what Niehaus dubbed The Tomb.

"A large mausoleum that gives... the impression of being a poorly lit, damp basement with a beat-up old pool table in the middle," Newsday called the Kingdome,opening April 6, 1977.  "People ask my favorite memory," Dave said.  "It's that night -- against the Angels."  Later the roof leaked.  Balls struck speakers, hit support wires, and entangled streamers.

The ceiling was built to dim the echo of dinky crowds.  Designers knew their team. "It was so quiet," said outfielder Jay Buhner, "you could hear fans knocking you."  Most slowly warmed to Niehaus.  "People had wanted a local guy."  He never blamed Seattle.  "People knocked us as a baseball town.  I'd say, 'You fans don't owe us anything, we owe you a team.'" 

Dave's trademark "My, oh, my!" rose at Anaheim.  His early tater call was duller:  "It's gone!"  In 1978, hearing Seals and Crofts, he affixed "Fly Away" to each M's dinger.   S&C also sang "Summer Breeze."  Lenny Randle's turned personal.  A batter bunted toward third base.  "Lenny knew the Kingdome's flat on the base paths."  He got down on all fours trying to blow the ball foul.

"We might be stuck in traffic or mowing the lawn," the Post-Intelligencer said, "but where we really are is the Kingdome because Niehaus takes us there."   Refusing to fly away was the Mariners' ill wind.

Onward, Upward

Seattle flunked.500 its first 14 years.  "Oh, for a place like Fenway," Dave dreamt amid the mourning.  "I genuflect when I walk through the gates.  You see where Ted Williams played."  No one confused The Kid with any Mariner.  "Yet [despite] virtually nothing to recommend them," said a writer, the M's percentage of radios in use was baseball's best.  Their announcer was stud.

"I've had offers to leave, but why be miserable in New York or Chicago?" said Dave.  "I want to be here when we turn around."  The U-turn began in 1989 with Ken Griffey, Jr., 19, son of the Reds outfielder.  Two years later the Mariners finally made .500, drew a record 2,147,905, and vaunted Junior's franchise-high .327.  Griffey smacked 40 homers before the August 1994 strike.  A year later, the M's asked the state legislature to build a park.  Pols snorted a belly laugh.  "We had no leverage," said Niehaus, who found that in its 19th year a team's luck could change.

Gutting a 13-game Halos lead, Seattle won an A.L. West playoff.  Briefly, the Northwest forgot the NFL Seahawks.  The Division Series began in New York, the M's losing twice.  Dave threw out the first ball at the Kingdome's post-season inaugural:  Randy Johnson,7-4. Next day Edgar Martinez slammed:  11-8.  In two weeks Seattle had become a baseball town.  The final showed why.

Eighth inning: M's tie.  Ninth:  Manager Lou Piniella inserts Randy.  "He'd pitched two days earlier.  But he was the best we had."  Eleventh:  Yanks retake a 5-4 edge.  Payback followed.  "Swung on and lined down the left-field line for a base hit!   Here comes Joey, and Junior to third base ... and they're going to wave him in!  The throw to the plate will be late!  The Mariners are going to play for the American League championship!  I don't believe it!  It just continues!  My, oh, my!"

That winter the legislature OKd $320 million.  "Once in a while, I'll think of what saved baseball here," Dave still says.  "1995."

Painting Cooperstown

No longer was Dave a Monet, etching a paint-by-number team.  In 1996, he brooked two angioplasties, abandoned vodka, steak, and Marlboro cigarettes, and drew shortstop Alex Rodriguez's first full season akin to Cronin, Wagner, and Banks.  Griffey became the A.L.'s ninth unanimous MVP.  The '97ers drew 3,192,237, many from Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Montana.  "For the first time," said Niehaus, "we became a regional team."

Johnson and Junior left for Houston and Cincinnati, respectively.  A-Rod got an A+ deal:  $252 million from Texas, then New York. "Damndest thing," said Dave. "They leave, we win" -- a 2001 record-tying 116 games.  MVP Ichiro Suzuki hit .350.  The Kingdome imploded.  Its replacement, Safeco Field, strutted arched windows, bleacher, and look from its upper deck of Elliott Bay, Mount Rainier, Olympic Mountains, and ferries, ships, and sunsets from Albert Bierstadt.

Outside, the Burlington Northern freight whistle invoked rural Indiana.  "These trains going by are the park's signature," said Dave.  "To me, it s a romantic sound."  Another knit the stands.  Johnson was "humming along."  A strike "had some hair on it, baby."  Enjoy "a nice little pitchers' duel."  Blurted ESPN's Jon Miller:  "It's all here, it's gorgeous, it's got Niehaus, it's open air!"  Dave could be forgiven for feeling he had been paroled.

In 2000, he became the first member of the M's Hall of Fame.  "I really feel as if I know each ... of you," Niehaus told the crowd.  "My, oh, my!" graced a banner, forged a chant, and was drawn by grounds help in the dirt. Sans fielder "loping," runner "lumbering," or ball "Belted! Deep to right field!  Upper deck time!  Yes!" would there have been a team for Safeco to even house?

In 2000, the Seattle Times named the two-time Washington Sportscaster of the Year "one of the top 10 most influential [local] people of the century."  A 2004 Sports Illustrated survey asked Washingtonians their favorite team.  The Mariners got 56 percent; Seahawks, 10.  Next:  favorite announcer.  Thirty-six percent named Dave.  John Madden's 8 was runner-up.

Some ask which all-time Voice most loves baseball.  Niehaus makes the cut.  "Finally," he says, "what a joy to call good players in a great park!"  The 1930s bred the Hudson Valley school of painting.  Dave's school swabs the Sound.  Soon, it will enrich Cooperstown.

America's great divide is not right v. left, rap v. bluegrass, or Bud Light v. Tanqueray:  Instead, it splits into style v. substance.  Style is outer-directed.  Substance turns inward.  People of style love trend.  People of substance deem decency deep-down.  This week a man of substance was elected to the Hall of Fame -- the man who ushered baseball into the Television Age.

Baseball has had nine Commissioners since the post's 1920 creation.  Bowie Kuhn was the fifth (1969-84) -- and in many ways, the best.  We judge a leader by how he finds, and leaves, his job.  Kuhn found baseball on a respirator.  He left the summer game in bloom.

Kuhn, who died this year at 80, grew up in Washington, his Senators the Atlantis of the American League.  "I never had to tell who was winning.  People knew," said announcer Bob Wolff.  "I only had to give the score."  Adversity strengthened Kuhn, priming him to swim upstream.

In a 1964 Harris Poll, 48 percent of America named baseball their favorite sport. Half that did when Kuhn became Commissioner.  Forbes mourned "our beat-up national sport," too bland, it seemed, for a hip and inchoate age.  Aping a 1971 film, baseball resembled sport's Last Picture Show.  Kuhn vowed that the last would be first.

He opposed free agency, fearing a caste system:  teams with the gold rule.  Baseball brooked five work stoppages, but expanded from 20 to 26 teams.  Attendance doubled.  Postseason swelled:  the League Championship Series.  Kuhn KOd the designated hitter, tired of a pitcher trying to hit:  dull as seeing paint dry, hearing George W. Bush speak, or reevaluating Al Gore.

Kuhn fined Ted Turner, for player tampering, and George Steinbrenner, for illegal campaign funding.  Above all, he understand television's role, and need.  In 1969, baseball had one network series:  NBC's Game of the Week.  Worse, pro football blanketed TV syndication.  Kuhn craved a weekly half-hour show of highlight, lowlight, feature, and other fare.

First, he inked a dual-network ABC/NBC pact.  Joe Garagiola replaced phlegmatic Curt Gowdy.  Kuhn tried to bounce Howard Cosell, touted Al Michaels and Vin Scully, and created This Week In Baseball :  syndicated sports highest-rated serial.  Ultimately, no baseball series so bespoke one man:  host Mel Allen, hired by Bowie Kuhn.

Kuhn moved the World Series schedule from weekday to night ("Working men can't see day games") but kept weekend's in the afternoon ("for kids, our next generation").  The balance thrived till his successor made the Series all-nocturnal:  also, killing Game and spurring salary collusion.  Peter Ueberroth was a shallow, glib poseur:  a stylist, to the core.

By contrast, under Kuhn, baseball regained parity with the NFL.  His reward was a 1980s firing.  "What's dumber than football's dumbest owner?" said Orioles don Edward Bennett Williams. "Baseball's smartest owner."  Some writers seemed as dumb. Kuhn was formal:  how old-timey.  A devout Catholic:  how bourgeois.  A model family man:  how square.  His foil was players union leader Marvin Miller. The New York Times, among others, never forgave Bowie, then or now.  Forgetting nothing, it learned nothing, too.

Recently sports economist Andrew Zimbalist bayed that "Kuhn never did anything enlightening."  Bitter over Miller's rejection by the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee, Timesman Murray Chass tarred Kuhn's "legacy as unclear."  On what 1969-84 planet did such ideologues live?  Emerson wrote of Napoleon, "He was no saint, to use his word, no capuchin, and he is no hero in the high sense."  Neither saint nor hero, Bowie was a good man who each day went out and did his job.

Kuhn's Hall election honors, among other things, his fine private sense of humor.  This Induction Day, the last laugh will be on those who could, or would, not grasp his substance:  still blind as a bat, deaf as a doorknob, and dim as a burned-out bulb.

The book Fiasco describes George W. Bush's can't win, leave, or understand war in Iraq.  Its title also etches much of baseball's pre-World Series post-season television. Paraphrasing Churchill, seldom have so many watched so long for so little.

Baseball's bust evokes a mosquito in the nudist company, not knowing where to start.  Perhaps with ratings, biting the bigs' behind.  Bud Selig hallucinated, "Baseball interest is [sic] legendary."  Actually, early post-season's was largely sick, limited to playoff cities, the hard-core viewer, and increasingly, insomniacs.

Network suits like to say that less is more.  Here less was less.  TBS' first-ever League Championship Coverage bred the four least-ever watched L.C.S. games.  Only 2.8. per cent of U.S. TV households watched Rockies-Diamondbacks.  ESPN's Chick A-Fil-A Bowl bared 3.7 percent, ABC's Little League World Series final 3.3, last year's L.C.S. 10.5 million viewers v. this year's 4.3.  "Legendary" interest?  Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th-Grader? had a larger audience.  Baseball gave a dinner, and almost no one came.

Ironically, TBS' Division Series ratings had jumped 26 percent over last year's Fox/ESPN, airing glamor teams in New York, Chicago, Boston, and L.A.  Fox's Hub-Cleveland L.C.S. actually topped 2006's, Red Sox Nation again blaring the devoted and the crazed.  By contrast, the National League was ignored like last week's mashed potatoes.  Its fiasco should teach Selig two things, neither of them good.

First, shrinking interest mocks the view that marquee local clubs can compensate for the bigs' peewee marketing and network TV niche.  "Good cities, good ratings," said a Foxer, "bad cities, bad."  The 2007 Rockies never graced a Fox, ESPN, or ESPN2 game. The Red Sox blanketed 24. Pro football's lure carries each of its 32 franchises.  Baseball foolishly relies on a couple clubs -- Sox, Mets, and Yankees et al -- to carry it.

NFL interest soars because its network TV product is quick, compact, and riveting. "The game sells itself," said NFL FIlms' David Plaut.  "It almost doesn't matter who makes post-season."  Selig's second lesson is how televised baseball can be intolerably uncompelling.  "Network ratings stink," mused a Foxer, "because how TV baseball presents itself stinks." 

Reasons

From Here To Eternity.  Even 2-1 games now routinely top three hours.  N.L. L.C.S. Set 2 took 4 hours, 26 minutes, a Red Sox-Indians match an insufferable 5:14.  Author Stephen King was shown reading a book between innings.  During innings he could have read War and Peace.  "In fan time, pitching changes equate to a day spent at the D.M.V. or the return line at Macy's," wrote The New York Times' Selena Roberts, scoring baseball's "slow-drip cadence." Pitchers dawdled.  Batters stepped in, out of, and back in the box.  Umpires did everything but enforce the strike zone.  Viewers did everything but stay awake.   

Scheduling spurred the stupor.  Several games began at 10 p.m., slighting the populous East.  "Hard to watch," Mel Allen once said, "if you're asleep."  Awful camera coverage hurts at any time.  A typical game may put the ball in play 8-10 minutes.  What happens when you can barely glimpse it?  Post-season accented baseball's refusal to make coverage camera-friendly.  Yogi Berra said you can observe a lot by watching.  Fans can't observe what they can't see.

Baseball's home-plate camera is TV's picture window: a prism through which we watch.  "It's your mirror on the game," Allen said, "so place it low, near the field."  Fenway Park's or Yankee Stadium's exquisitely low home-plate shot is unobscured by a vertical wire backstop.  By contrast, Cleveland's and Arizona's home plate camera is so high post-season players looked like ants.  Worse, Anaheim's and Colorado's wire screen blocked half the infield, like peering through prison bars.  We watch despite, not because of, coverage.

October's most vocal criticism, announcing, was actually a fall guy for larger flaws.  Jon Miller, Dan Schulman, and Dave Campbell aced ESPN Radio. (Joe Morgan, sadly, was Joe Morgan.)  Fox's Joe Buck sprightly re-emerged from his post-August 4 bigs sabbatical.  TBS studio and analyst coverage was benign, if banal.  Division Series ball and striker Don Orsillo adeptly tied insight, bite, and tone. 

Alas, D.S. Yanks-Indians Voice Chip Caray was vilified, clearly unfamiliar with the American League. The New York Daily News' Bob Raissman dubbed the Braves' broadcaster "unsinkable," wishing Caray sunk.  The Post's Phil Mushnick termed "his command of baseball language and concepts so confused that he's like traveling by pinball." USA Today's Michael Hiestand mocked Caray's calling the D'Backs "hole the size of the Grand Canyon here in Arizona." 

Chip gave Richard Sandomir "agita," The New York Timesman detailing "a skein of faux pas.  No fact is safe in the hands of TBS' lead baseball announcer," he wrote, bewailing "errors and silly strategy."  In fact, Allen, Red Barber, and Vin Scully couldn't have saved baseball's early post-season from itself.

Solution

Pro football is a national sport only incidentally regional, not caring which teams make the Super Bowl or AFC/NFC title game.  Baseball has become a regional sport only incidentally national.  As John F. Kenedy once said, "Our problems are man-made.  Therefore, they can be solved by man."  Baseball's problems are self-made:  therefore, they can be solved by baseball.

Earth to Bud:  Make the pitcher throw the ball, umpire call a strike, and batter not leave the box.  Make it constitutional for a game to sing, rock, move.  Angle the backstop below the home plate camera, avoiding a wire lattice across the screen.  Then, put each park's camera as low as Fenway's.  America won't watch players-turned-pgymies on the field.

It is too late to reverse George W. Bush's fiasco.  It is not too late to reverse baseball's.  Perhaps this offseason Selig will help put the bigs' TV house in order.  He'd better, given how America, tuning out, just voted overwhelmingly to condemn.

In 1941, a first-year Yankees shortstop entered the general manager's office.  "I didn't know Ed Barrow," recalled Phil Rizzuto. "I did know that the man being shaved by a guy whom he kept calling Goulash was Barrow."

Rizzuto waited silently. "Young man," Barrow said, "what is your trouble?" Phil's was money.  'I give you this, and no more!" the g.m. flushed.  "If OK sign! If not, get the **** out of here!" Goulash applied talcum power.  Rizzuto signed.

Red Ruffing, Bill Dickey, and Joe DiMaggio gave Phil the cold shoulder. Hurt, the 5-foot-6 new kid on the block approached another star.  "Relax, they're not snubbing you," said Lefty Gomez.  "They just haven't seen you yet."  Later, DiMag became a friend. "If you forget Phil was so tiny as a player, it's because his reputation was so huge."

You gotta' be kiddin! Holy Cow! What a huckleberry! Phil Rizzuto -- The Scooter -- died this week at 90. Smaller than the game, Rizzuto made baseball seem larger than it was.

The Legend Starts

Leave it to The Scooter -- Fiero Francis Rizzuto, a trolley car conductor's son -- to be born in Brooklyn.  At 16, he tried out for the Giants and Dodgers.  "Go get a shoe nox," sniffed Brooklyn's Casey Stengel.  "That's the only way you'll make a living." Phil then phoned the Yanks.  Signing, he went to Bassett, Virginia.

"Bassett!" said Rizzuto. "Sounds like I'm swearing a somebody."  Holy Cow! Cows draped its hill. "The players told me that the front legs of the cows were shorter than the back because they were always on the hill.  And I believed them. With my short legs, I've always had an affinity with cows" -- thus, Phil's trademark.  Billy Hitchcock named him "Scooter": "Man, you're not runnin', you're scootin'."

In 1941, the rookie reached the Bronx. Hitting .307, he replaced Joe DiMaggio at a Newark fireman communion breakfast. "Joe had a family illness, but they were still expecting him.  So I get booed -- at a communion breakfast!" Embarrassed, a fireman asked him home for coffee. Daughter Cora Esselborn then entered the room. Half-a-century later Phil's blood ran, not scooted: "Those legs, her red sweater, those blue eyes." They married June 23, 1943.

By then, Rizzuto, in the Navy, had or would serve in the Philippines and Australia, anchor Pee Wee Reese's team, and get malaria. Released in December 1945, he saw "a seminal American invention," Ron Fimrite wrote of Babe Ruth, break down. In June 1948, the stripes retired No. 3. Said Phil: "He was so sick [of cancer], it took two men to lift him."

Ruth leaned on Bob Feller's bat like a cane. "Any time you want me to come to your house for Holy Communion, I'd be glad to do it," said His Eminence Cardinal Spellman. Babe smiled. "Thank you, but I'd rather come to your place." Rizzuto's place was pressure: "It didn't take long," said Ted Williams, "to see that in big games he was at his best."

A New Career

Phil hit a 1942 Series-high .381. His 1949 last-day triple eluded Williams to help win a pennant. A year later he got 200 hits, scored 125 runs, and was named MVP. "My best pitch," said Vic Raschi, "is anything the batter grounds, lines, or pops in his direction."

Scooter knew how to field, bunt (Joe D.: "the greatest I ever saw:"), hit behind the runner, and win (four All-Star teams, nine flags, and six titles). "Those years I made more money from Series cuts than I did from my salary for the whole year." 1953: now-skipper Stengel benched him. 194: Phil hit .195. 1955: The Yanks held his Day. 1956: The stripes hung a noose.

"We've got a chance to get Enos Slaughter. What do you think/" said g.m. George Weiss.  "Boy," said Rizzuto, taking cyanide, "getting him would be a help." Enos replaced him on the roster. Holy Cow! Released on Old-Timers Day, The Scooter, 39, was unemployed. "From a **** good living, suddenly I didn't have anything." Mel Allen had him call a half-inning here or there. The Orioles offered radio.Phil was torn, not wanting to leave New York.

As Richard Reeves writes of politics, broadcasting magnifies charm and institutionalizes seduction. By late 1956, Rizzuto had charmed Yankees sponsor Ballantine Beer head Carl Badenhausen, who told Weiss to hire him. "Can you picture a thorn between two roses [Mel and Red Barber]? I wouldn't have hired myself!" he laughed. The joke was on them: Stomaching each other, they resented Scooter.

"They were pros," said axed-for-Phil Jim Woods. "Rizzuto'd write down stories in the dugout, go on the air, and hide the paper." Interrupting, he stole one sign -- "Oh, my God! He's going to steal home!" -- as Allen called a pitch. Another game Mel and Red left the booth, forcing Phil not to halt, stumble, and brook dead air."

"Kansas City Ath-aletics," he would say. Mel corrected him on air: "No, Phil, it's Athletics." Scooter accepted it. Mother Rose detested it. Gradually, the two pros warmed. In 1957, the thorn caught a bouquet: CBS Radio's thrice-weekly five-minute "Phil Rizzuto on Sports." On October 1, 1961, he got another.

"Fastball, hit deep to right!" Scooter yapped. "This could be it! Way back there! Holy Cow, he did it! Sixty-one for Maris! Look at '3m fight for that ball out there! Holy Cow! What a shot! Maris had expunged a ghost. "And they're still fighting for that ball out there! People are climbing over each other's backs. One of the greatest sights I've seen here at Yankee Stadium!"  Mel called the World Series v. Cincinnati. Phil called upon aspirin. "I screamed so loud on Maris' call I had a headache for a week!"

At first, he did two innings daily. "He'd leave in the seventh or eighth," said Allen. "Red and I'd finish." One game went overtime. "And now to take you into the tenth, here is ... here is": Rizzuto was already on the George Washington Bridge. "He became famed for leaving early," added Bob Costas. "Even when he stuck around, you'd hear him hooking the mike into the stand announcing the final score."

June 24, 1962: Yanks at Detroit. Inhaled by 35,638: 32,000 hots dogs and 41,000 and 34,500 bottles of beer and pop, respectively, during 600 pitches, three seventh-inning stretches, and a seven-hour game: New York, 9-7, on Jack Reed's 22nd-inning blast. "I've got to leave," an Ontario writer said two innings earlier. "Where are you going?" said a colleague. "My visa just expired."

Leaving in the seventh, Phil flew to LaGuardia Airport, headed to Jersey, and turned on the radio. Time: 7 p.m. The 1:30 game should have ended by 4. "I drop my jaw. Red's starting the 19th": Mel has TV; neither can take a leak. "I'm on the bridge and say, 'What am I gonna' do? Should I turn around and fly back to Detroit? No, that doesn't make sense.'"

He arrives home, kisses "my bride" Cora, and turns on WPIZ-TV. Allen's warm-voweled lilt never seemed so cold.

Some Huckleberry

The 1964 Yanks won the pennant. Next year's flunked .500. Mel and Red both left. "They had Jerry Coleman, Joe Garagiola, but Rizzuto was the guy," wrote columnist Phil Mushnick. "Homework? Stick around? He's The Scooter!"-- increasingly his own best subject matter. An inning, George Vescey wrote, might link "birthday greetings, movie reviews, golf tips, war memories, frequent psychosomatic broodings, fearsome predictions of rain, sleet, snow, thunder, lightning, tornadoes, waterspouts," and allergies and insects: One dragon fly drove Scooter from the booth.

In 1974, Yankee Stadium began a $100 million facelift: Slumming at Shea Stadium, the 1976 pinstripes returned to win a flag. NBC aired the Series. "Under its new pact local Voices couldn't broadcast," said Costas. Phil broke the rule, in his artful, artless way. Later Bob probed Rizzuto's scorecard. A slash bespoke a K. "WW" seemed to mean a single and sacrifice. Puzzled, he said, "I've seen a lot of ways to keep score. What's WW?" Phil: "Wasn't watching."

Carmel DiPaolo, 90, writes a letter. 'Before it gets too late," Phil replied, "she might not be with us the whole game" -- going to bed or the great beyond, he doesn't say. The camera spots a lovely teenage girl. Rizzuto: "She reminds me of that old song, 'A Pretty Girl Is Like A Memory.'" Partner Bill White: "Scooter, I think that's 'Melody.'" Rizzuto: "Really. How do you know her name is Melody?" Cora said hat everyone has a trip door at the back of the head. "When a thought reaches the door, the brain asks if I should say this. My door is always open."

In 1985, the Yanks marked Phil's birthday by presenting a convertible, golf clubs, and cow named Huckleberry, who stepped on his foot, decking him. Soon begins waving from the second deck. "You know, Mussolini used to do this." A visitor arrives from San Jose. "San Jose? I love San Jose. What's that song?" Someone begins Dionne Warwick's tune, "Do You Know The Way ...?" Phil amends: "No, it isn't San Jose.  It's Phoenix."

A grounder finds the hole. "They'll never get him! They got him! I changed my mind before he got there so that doesn't count as an error." At The Stadium, he vows to drive north to Philadelphia, then notes how Benjamin Franklin invented lightning. A sidekick starts laughing. "You know what I meant," Rizzuto says. I didn't mean that Franklin invented lightning. I meant he discovered it." Among other things, he tells of putting grits in his pocket on visiting the South."My first time there. It looked like oatmeal. I didn't know what to do."

A Hindu "or Indian or something" wrote a letter "beefing about that Holy Cow," said Scooter. "He said in India the cow is sacred, and I shouldn't say such a thing." Love that Phil. If it's sacred, he answered, what's wrong with "Holy Cow!"?

Heaven of a Voice

In 1987, Rizzuto cut lyrics for Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," not grasping how it hailed teenage sex. "Meat Loaf said, I've got this song for you.' I thought it was a singing part -- all Italians love to sing." Phil attended the recording session. Meat Loaf says: "It's a talking part."  Scooter: "Where's the band to accompany me?" Meat Loaf: "We'll put it in later."  By and by his son said out of the blue, "Dad, you're a rock star!" Six times pop reran the album, finally grasping its core. "I never knew, so help me. My priest gave me ****" -- Rizzuto amusing, diverting: a character, not drone.

"Any idiot can call a great game," the Cubs' Jack Quinlan claimed. "It takes a different tack -- tell a joke, explain making moonshine, anything -- with a game that's dull." Was Phil a professional? He never feigned to be, said Associated Press' Will Grimsley, "[attracting] a broader spectrum of the audience, nonbaseball people who might otherwise be watching," say, Friends or A&E -- the most popular broadcaster to ever darn the stripes.

In 1994, the Veterans Committee belatedly drove him into Cooperstown. "For years baseball wanted me to sing the Anthem the day players were inducted," said the Metropolitan Opera's Robert Merrill." I said, 'Not till Rizzuto's in.'" Scooter's daughter phoned Induction Eve. "Mr. Merrill, Dad's so nervous, he's losing his voice." Merrill gave her lozenges. Later, Phil: "Where do I get those drops?" The Rizzutos got a trip to Europe that fall from the Yanks. At The Vatican, Pope Paul II changed his schedule for an audience. "I'll tell you," said Phil, 76, "that's as close to God as you can get."

Next August roused another sense of time running out. Mickey Mantle's 1995 death of alcoholism "just hit me. I started thinking of my family." The funeral was in Dallas. Phil aired a game from Boston. "When I saw the [TV] service, I realized what a big mistake I had made [not going]." Distraught, he left in the fifth inning, retired, returned in 1996, and retired again.

In 1997, critic Richard Sandomir wrote, "Where are you, Scooter? The MSG Network's Phil-free games miss his mirth." Bad game, good game, Scooter meant a fun game: more playactor than play-by-playman, baseball's paison with pizzaz.  God bless Phil Rizzuto -- and He will.

A year ago I wrote about baseball's new 2007-13 network television contract:  Fox, finally airing a true Saturday "Game of the Week"; WTBS, adding a Sunday series in 2008.  "Ability is fine," Napoleon said, "but give me commanders who have luck."  The new format could make baseball lucky.  Will fortune hold?

Early returns, as they say, are encouraging.  Last month a TBS special announced each league's All-Star Game starting lineup.  Bad news:  ESPN broke the embargo.  Good:  Host Ernie Johnson and analysts Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn looked ready for prime time, and had better be.  "It's like Fox," said a TBSer.  "Our network likes big players' names."

In October, it will do the entire Division Series and, replacing Fox, one League Championship Game.  Cal and Tony will analyze.  Cable's first SuperStation seems primed by necessity to promote.  Fox can be seen in almost all 110 million U.S. homes.  Reaching 92 million, TBS' baseball's new prosopopeia, like Avis, will have to try harder.  Skip Caray knows the way.

"Having a father in the business was a help and curse," Skip said of his Falstaffian dad.  "Some people didn't like him.  Others opened doors."  At first it bothered him -- coasting on "Holy Cow!"  "Chances are I wouldn't have gotten a job if I weren't Harry's son.  I also knew, because of that, I'd have to be even better."

It is a trade 'TBS is counting on to make the early going that is good even better.

All In The Family

"I didn't want to call sports," Skip said, growing up in and around St. Louis.  "I wanted to play 'em," and did, as an all-city high school linebacker.  Caray than hurt his knee.  Suddenly, the booth beguiled.  The "soprano, back then" began a radio show.  At the University of Missouri, he worked each summer as a KMOX writer, director, and producer.

In 1963, Skip joined Texas League Tulsa, then Triple-A's Atlanta Crackers.  In May 1965, Braves' announcer Mel Allen's mother died.  "Given my Georgia experience," Caray said, WSB Atlanta asked him to sub.  A cup of coffee denotes a brief bigs stay.  Sipping, Skip then cracked the NBA St. Louis Hawks.

In 1968, both moved to Atlanta:  "Best thing that ever happened.  I got my own identity.  Finally I stopped being Harry's kid."  Soon Skip occupied a world of hoops, hockey, and football, chucking raw kid for stardom.  The star he wished upon was baseball.  Irony reached it.

In 1954, Jack Buck had joined the Cards.  Boss Harry sent Milo Hamilton packing.  Under threads connecting, from 1966-75 the Braves' Voice was too busy to settle scores. Milo was then axed again, Skip replacing him.  "It was interesting how fans reacted," said partner Ernie Johnson.  "People expected Skip to be Harry."  They were soon disabused.

Harry roared.  Skip intoned.  Dad rose and fell like a ferris wheel.  Son kept an even keel.  They were alike toward the men in blue.  "The worst call by a major league umpire in fifty years!" Skip raged.  "[Ed] Vargo should be fired because he made all umpires look bad."  You could see pop beaming.

"I didn't set out to be different," said Caray fils, more reflexively than defensively.  "My dad was an orphan, a self-mae man, more elemental as a broadcaster.  We're just not the same human being."  A larger concern was that his Braves and aptitude seemed strangers in the night.

I Love To Laugh

In 1977, Caray added WSB Radio to WTCG TV.  Celebrating, Atlanta lost 16 straight games.  Once San Diego's Gene Richards broke for second base.  The catcher's throw hit Buzz Capra in the head, bounced high, and knocked the pitcher to the ground.  "Capra was a friend and I was afraid he might be dead," said Skip, "but it was so typical of our team that I started laughing."

Laughter got them through a lot.  Phil Niekro won 318 games.  Said brother Joe: "That knuckler got anybody out" -- except Dave Parker.  At dinner, Phil asked, "How do I get Parker out?  My knuckler's not working."

"Forget the knuckler," Skip said.  "Throw your blooper and see what happens."

Twice Niekro knuckled:  Parker lined out and singled.  Next up Phil threw a blooper after waving to the booth.  Dave hit it 400 feet.  His final at-bat went 390.  "Phil takes my advice, Parker bombs two balls 800 feet, and both are caught!" said Caray.  "I can still say, 'I told you so.'"  For too long Georgia said that about its team.

The 1987-90 Braves dredged last.  "Loosen up," he told partner Billly Sample.  "We might be the only team in history not to win a game all season."  Caray recalled Atlanta's 1982 West Division title.  Where had the dream gone wrong?

"That year I got cheered in a restaurant or grocery store.  Now if I put on shades, I can slink into Kroger's unnoticed."  The Sporting News, among others, noticed.  "Skip is perhaps America's most prominent baseball announcer," then available in 63 million homes 130 times a year.  "The Braves [even losing] have developed a loyalty among many fans regions distant from a major-league team."

They heard:  "Guys ask how to crash broadcasting.  'Hit .350 or win the Heisman'"; in "attendance, Sam Scoresby and Linda Yavnov," the branch of scotch and vodka, respectively, in the Braves Lounge bar; about a standing O for Skip at a college basketball game.  In 1991, son Chip joined Atlanta -- the first bigs Voice's radio or TV grandson.  "How protective is telling your kid to be quiet?" said pop. 

More history:  Three generations of Carays calling a game at Wrigley Field.  Making history, Harry kicked himself.  "If I'd had sense enough before i was born to nickname myself Flip, we'd 'a had Flip, Chip, and Skip" -- the Singing Carays, for your watching and listening pleasure.

Baseball found pleasure in that fall's first-to-worst World Series.  In Game Seven, Lonnie Smith's single began Atlanat's eighth inning.  On a double to the alley, two Twins infielders, deking Smith, made him slow, stop at third, and die:  Minnesota, 1-0, in 10.  Even the "Tomahawk Chop" chant seemed weary.  Sadly, it revived.

Yin: K-ing batter 1,000, Charlie Leibrandt forgot to call time, rolled the ball to the dugout, and let a runner take second.  Yang:  1992 L.C.S. Game Seven's ninth inning, three on, two out, 2-1, Pittsburgh.  "My biggest thrills have been my kids' successes in Little League or school events," said Skip. "Professionally, it's easy.  Frank Cabrera," singling to plate David Justice and Sid Bream: Braves, 3-2,

As Bream slid, people in the booth began pounding Caray on the back.  He never knew it.  "I didn't feel it, my concentration calling the play was total.  All I knew was Frank's hit meant the pennant."  Stick a fork in Skip.  He's numb.

From There To Here

The Braves lost the 1992 Classic, 4 games to 2. The final again drained.  "Eleventh inning, we're behind [4-3, Toronto]," Caray cried.  "Otis Nixon makes out buning -- the tying run's on third!" Atlanta dropped the 1993 L.C.S.  In 1995, it finally took a Series.  "Fly ball, deep left-center!" Skip roared on radio.  "Grissom on the run! Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  The Atlanta Braves have given you a championship!"

TV as connecting tissue: the Chip off Skip's block -- "He got the looks in the family" -- left Seattle for Fox's "Game of the Week." Turner Field replaced Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.  The '90s Yanks took three Series to the Braves' one.  Harry died in February 1998.  That May Skip visited Wrigley.  "I think about dad all the time.  Within five minutes of waking up each day and before I close my eyes at night."

Skip did an NBC Division Series, had an angioplasty, and got a pacemaker that triggers airports' metal detecting device."  In 2003, WTBS busted him to radio and Turner South regional TV:  "He's identified with the Braves.  We want a national feel."  Skip shrugged.  "I said, 'Run that by me again.'" Ratings dropped.  Having missed the light, TBS felt the heat.  "It's nice to be back," Skip soon smiled, reinstated.  "The fans made it happen."  Perry Como sang, "Oh, My Papa."  In 2005, Chip joined his in Atlanta.

'Seventies WTBS (nee WTCG) became baseball's first SuperStation.  This fall pop will accelerate its shift from Braves local-team to national.  Next year it will air the bigs first Sunday afternoon network TV series since mid-'60s Dizzy Dean razed language, sang "The Wabash Cannonball," and tied Ma Kettle, Andy Devine, and Tennesee Ernie Ford.  In network baseball, luck is no longer a four-letter word.

In April, The Lyons Press released my new book, "The Voice:  Mel Allen's Untold Story."  So far, so good:  the book recently entered a second printing.  It etches the rise, ruin, and recovery of baseball's ultimate broadcast celebrity: a man who had all, lost all, and incredibly, came back.

  For a quarter-century, Allen defined sports radio/television:  the World Series, All-Star Game, Rose Bowl, Movietone Newsreels, and other marquee events.  Variety Magazine called his among "the world's 25 most recognizable voices."  Mel's gold standard was the Yankees. He became their Voice in 1940.  In 1964, he was fired, at 51, at Allen's peak as an institution.

Long-time New York Post columnist Maury (no relation) Allen observes that "no topic lured more mail than why the Yankees fired Mel."  The Voice spent the next decade a non-person, revived by TV's landmark 1976-96 "This Week In Baseball."  Mine is the first book to explain sportscasting's most mysterious dismissal.

The Firing -- And The Rumors

In fall 1964, Allen expected the Yankees to extend his contract.  Instead, in December they released him without even an announcement, ignoring Mel's honor, chary tenderness, and reluctance to offend.  To America, Allen vanished overnight, ceasing to exist, for reasons he never grasped not understood.  "The Yankees never held a press conference," he said. "They left people to believe whatever they wanted -- and people believed the worst."  Lacking any "[explanation]," Sports Illustrated wrote,  "Allen became a victim of rumors.  It was as if he had leprosy."

A writer told him to publicly deny the scuttlebutt. “The gossip’s not in print,” Mel replied. “There’s nothing to reply to.”  One fiction was being ***: a then-career-killer.  Even in 1957, Allen had felt obliged to apologize for being single. “It has created problems and situations, some of which he finds distasteful,” wrote Leonard Shecter. “He doesn’t think it’s a proper concern for the public prints. Still, he is forced to talk.” It wasn’t just Mel's mother who wanted him to wed. “Everybody in the family seems to spend most of their waking hours trying to marry me off,” said Allen. “I think I must be getting to the point where most girls would consider me too old ... for anything except a rocking chair.”

Nothing suggests that Mel was homosexual. “Just a Mama’s boy,” said Stan Isaacs. “She wanted him to get married, just to no one in particular”: At any rate, sex would not have affected him on-air. Allen blamed his salary. “That theory doesn’t hold water,” the Post wrote, “because [successor Joe] Garagiola did not come cheap.” Brother Larry cited Mel’s last statistician. “Bill Kane had a limp, played it for sympathy, and would make all sorts of mistakes,” earning a flick of Allen’s scorecard. “He started calling Mel a tyrant, saying he beat him. Just ridiculous.  It all played a role.”

Other prattle named disease or heroin. “That doesn’t make sense,” Leonard Koppett noted. “Each’s effect would be obvious, debilitating.” Broadcaster Merle Harmon had several 1990s mini-strokes. “They cause a short-term memory loss. On occasion I’ll forget my kids’ names for several minutes.” Merle’s doctor called it hard “to retain anything. That’s how it may have been for Allen.” 

Mel and I often spoke by phone or in person: He was lucid, then errant, like his last several years of Yanks radio/TV. “This argues against strokes,” a physician said. “The patient’s behavior doesn’t vary.” Another suspect was less déclassé in Mel’s than in our politically lockstep time. Peter O’Toole played “My Favorite Year”’s boozy actor Alan Swann. “With Swannie,” declared an admirer, “you forgive a lot, you know?” It is said that theYankes forgave, too.

“You can’t name one time he got loaded,” ex-partner Jerry Coleman dissented, angrily. “That’s garbage.” New York Times columnist George Vecsey recalls Mel at Yankee Stadium's bar “with a couple beers. Possibly he’d overdo it, not much.” By the 1980s, “Maybe he’d nurse a glass of wine for an entire hour,” said “This Week In Baseball” executive producer Geoff Belinfante. “That was it. I don’t think he had a problem.”

Isaacs fingered the mental, not chemical. “In the end he often couldn’t relate in-depth to people. The Yanks wanted him to get some help. He wouldn’t, a macho thing.” Maury Allen cites September 8, 1964: Bloomington, Minnesota. The press room fills before a game. In one corner, general manager Ralph Houk and a Twins attendant kibitz. In another, The Voice -- “his big voice starts booming, it’s loud, it dominates” -- recalls Murderers Row.

Disgusted, Houk shouts an obscenity, walks out, and phones owner Dan Topping. “He’d had it,” said Maury. “Mel was gone. Ralph won’t talk about it, even now.” Others have.

Enter Dr. Feelgood

One day The Voice took ill at Detroit’s Cadillac Hotel. Treating him, Tigers team physician Russell Wright thought that Mel had more pills in his bathroom “than I have in my doctor’s bag.” Later, Mel's Indians partner Harry Jones told the Red Sox' Joe Castiglione, “He was a hypochondriac. One pill after another.”

Garagiola cracked, “Mel has so many things going for him, if he ever got the flu he’d be a one-man Depression.” In 1962, Bud Blattner, Dizzy Dean’s ex-CBS TV colleague, joined the expansion Angels. “Mel’d take a pill to get up, a pill to fall asleep. He’d do a game, jet somewhere for an ad, then tape a Movietone newsreel. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I’d say, ‘You don’t need this. Slow down.’ He wouldn’t.”

That July the White Sox radio team got to gabbing at The Stadium. “Mel’d stand there, the World Series himself, with that dramatic voice,” said Milo Hamilton. “The strange thing is he didn’t act like he knew us.” Allen stared across the field, “like he was in another place.” Milo whispered, “Gee, Bob [Elson], is that the great Mel Allen?”

Lon Simmons did 1962 NBC Series Radio. “He felt Mel was spaced out,” ESPN's Jon Miller added, “didn’t hear a word when Lon spoke to him off-air.” Casey Stengel would meander in “a dozen directions, but never lose his point,” said Maury Allen. Mel would. “I don’t think there’s any question that in the end he was on something. It was hard to have a conversation -- almost an airy sense.”

The Voice's personal doctor was Max Jacobson, "known to his New York society clients as Dr. Feelgood," wrote Newsweek's Evan Thomas.  Jacobson treated actors, singers, and President John F. Kennedy:  to nurse Ruth Mosse, “a quack ... out of his mind ... a butcher,” often seeing 30 patients daily, including Mickey Mantle in September 1961.  The Switcher had a virus.  Allen told him: “My doctor's wonderful, the best there is.” Jacobson’s shot then struck Mick’s hip bone. Mosse might have warned them: “When he gave an injection he would just spill the contents of his medical bag on the table and rummage around amid a jumble of unmarked bottles and nameless chemicals until he found what he was looking for.” He would then inject himself, spilling “blood all over his whites.”

The patient-physician axis hangs on trust. “You depend on a doctor to prescribe,” said Maury. “What happens when he misprescribes: worse, when he’s crazy? You can get hooked on pills without knowing it.” Reason exists to think Mel did.

After 43 Years, The Reason Revealed

In 1960, Jacobson began treating then-candidate Kennedy’s injured back. Next year he injected the now-President in Washington, Palm Beach, Paris, Vienna, and later Berlin. “I feel much better,” Kennedy said after a shot. By mid-1961, wrote C. David Heymann, the President and First Lady had “developed a strong dependence on amphetamines,” synthesized as early as 1887, popular by the 1950s, later known as “speed,” and finally curbed by Federal law.

In his book, "President Kennedy," journalist Richard Reeves relates Jacobson prescribing a strange mix of amphetamines, vitamins, and human placenta.
“You don’t know what’s in that,” said Attorney General Robert Kennedy.  “I don’t care if it’s horse ****,” said his older brother. “It works.”

PBS Television’s “A Presidency Revealed” tells how Bobby Kennedy raided JFK’s medicine cabinet, found pills, and had them analyzed by the Food and Drug Administration. At the time, Jacobson, flown from New York by pilot, patient, and Presidential photographer Mark Shaw, injected Kennedy up to thrice weekly. Irate, Bobby kicked him from the White House.

“Speed” was then felt benign. “Its effect was [really] an exaggerated sense of power and capabilities,” said Reeves, “and the debilitating symptoms of classic paranoid schizophrenia.” Client Truman Capote didn’t care. “You feel like Superman ... You go 72 hours straight without so much as a coffee break ... Then you crash.” Singer Eddie Fisher was another pilgrim: “Jacobson is my God.” The Voice would have nodded. “Man, what he can do,” he said in 1963. “Those pills, they work.”

By 1968, “Dr. Jacobson could not account for quantities of amphetamines to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs,” wrote Reeves. In 1975, the New York State Board of Regents revoked his medical license. Dr. Feelgood died four years later, having destroyed many medical records. No evidence proves that Jacobson gave amphetamines to his famous broadcast patient. It does show that a charlatan became Allen’s more Hannibal Lecter than Marcus Welby, providing and prescribing, at the very time Mel’s life went belly-up.

In 1974, Mel's dad, Julius Israel, 85, died in Stamford. “Cancer, liver, kidneys, he just fell away,” said Larry. Save siblings, the eldest son was alone. He revisited a fork. “I was near marriage several times,” The Voice said, softly. “My mistake was trying to please Mom and Dad. Every time I thought I’d found the right one I’d bring her to the house. The older you get the more you realize that you should have done what you wanted, then told the others.”

Grab a Ballantine Beer, Mel's famed Yanks sponsor. Light another, a White Owl cigar. Freeze-frame this stretch. Each day a card, passerby, or interview evokes fall, void, and stain. Their subject can’t escape a snide smile, curled lip, the knowing look. What happened? How could a lion turn leper? People still asked in 1995. “****, that’s thirty years ago, and I’m still working,” said Allen. “If I knew why, I’d be glad to tell ‘em, so I could get people off my back.”

Mel had nowhere to hide; nobody, help; no one, defend. Yet -- this is the thing -- he reacted gallantly, even nobly. TV’s John Walton says, “Bad things come to all of us. What counts, son, is how you handle ‘em.” Richard Nixon says, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around.” Teresa Heinz Kerry tells a columnist “to shove it.” Shunning victim-babble, Allen declined to slobber, blame, or rage.

“There is no radio/TV parallel to Mel Allen’s story,” said former Associated Presser Joe Reichler. “Overnight he goes from the planet’s most famous sportscaster to falling off a cliff.” In response, he grieved, endured, and sought a last outpost of strength.  In 1976, Mel joined "This Week In Baseball," voicing, becoming, sport's highest-rated TV serial.  To many, it seemed that he had never been away.  In 1996, Allen died, at 83, The Grand Old Man of Broadcasting, having lived a stirring, then despairing, and ultimately redeeming life.

The writer Ellen Glasgow said,  "I had been born with an infinite sense of the past and a lingering sense of time and place."  Mel Allen meant the Yankees'.  Lindsey Nelson denoted the '60s Mets'.  For 39 years, Denny Matthews has anchored Middle America's flagship team. 

In 1969, the American League expanded to Kansas City and Seattle.  In 1975, partner Matthews succeeded Bud Blattner: still the Royals liegman behind the mike.  By 1980, Denny keyed the A.L.'s largest radio network -- 120 stations, in 11 states.  Illinois Wesleyan '66 is now the longest-but-Vin Scully Voice of any big-league team.   

Recently, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum broadcast committee voted Matthews the 2007 Ford C. Frick Award.  In July, Denny will be inducted, joining 30 others from Mel Allen via Harry Caray to last year's Gene Elston, born in next-door Iowa.  They also serve who only speak and wait.

"What Couldn't He Do?"

"As a kid, I'd listen to Jack Brickhouse," Mathews said of 1950s downstate Illinois.  In high school, the Giants gave a tryout.  Later Matthews manned Wesleyan's middle infield.  In football, Denny's receiving yardage topped Otis Taylor's. "He was the Natural," added Rader.  "What couldn't he do?"

September 1968.  Having never called an inning, Matthews asked the Cardinals if he can tape a game.  "A lot of people [over 300] are going to apply for the K.C. job," a friend cautioned.  "It's not enough that they like your tape.  They gotta remember you."

Schlitz Beer vended the Royals' KMBZ Radio/KBMC TV network.  Denny found a dealer, got several dinner menus, and stole a Schlitz-logo serving tray.  An ad filled the outside flap.  "The inside was blank, for the place to put its menu."  Matthews printed his resume, put a menu on the tray, and enclosed a tape.  "Here," he wrote Schlitz, "is my final pitch for the Royals' job."

Some deem baseball a universal language.  Soon Denny found that its universe surpassed English.  Daily he hosted a pregame show.  By August 1969, each player except utility infielder Juan Rios had appeared.  Magically, Juan gets three hits.  Denny names him next-day Star of the Day.  Shortstop Jackie Hernandez offers to interpret.  The interview begins.

"Jackie," Matthews said, "ask Juan about last night."  In Spanish, Rios seems a chatterer.  Denny thinks that "There must be some terrific stuff."  Rios than hands Hernandez the mike.

"Juan said he feels great," says Jackie.  Producer Ed Shepherd drops his recorder.  Matthews drips with sweat.  "This guy has just told his life story and that's it -- five seconds in translation."

Rolling 7 --Team, and Voice

July 2, 1970.  English again works undertime.  Guy's Foods is a local sponsor.  The third inning starts. Denny's mind begins racing.  "For those of you planning a Fourth of July picnic, take those good Guy's potato chips."  Pleased, he smiles. "And, fans, while you're in the store, be sure to grab Guy's nuts."

Bud's face whitens. Matthews prays for a seven-second delay.  Surprisingly, Guy's head Guy Caldwell howls.  By 1973, all hailed the sole 1962-91 new big-league-only site.  Royals Stadium's 12-story scoreboard in a fountain, waterfall, and pool complex lit a dead-end age of ballpark handiwork, spurring defense, alley pop, and speed.

In 1976, Denny rolled 7: first K.C. title/first year as Voice.  Through 1978 the Yankees stood in the League Championship Series door.  Then, in 1980, George Brett hit .390.  The Royals took a 2-0 game playoff lead.  At the Bronx Zoo, No. 5 hit in Game Three's seventh:  Stripes, 2-1. "Gossage ready.  Swing and a high fly ball!" sidekick Fred White said.  "Deep right field!  There she goes!"  Royals Stadium's scoreboard used more than 16,000 bulbs.  Brett's three-run titian still hangs in lights.

"Making the Series," said Denny, "threw off all that frustration." Renewing it: Philadelphia, in six.  "For us, this was climbing another step."  Ahead: the final rung.

Pre-Cooperstown Everest

Matthews climbed a rung in 1982, calling his first network L.C.S. Yankee Stadium again hosted Kansas City July 24, 1983: Brett, homering for a 5-4 victory; called out for illegal pine tar on his bat; then bolting from the dugout like a lynx on speed.

In 1985, he averaged .333.  K.C. trailed the expanded L.C.S., 3 games to 1.  "Before that year we'd have been dead," said Denny, "but we used our chance," beating Toronto three straight. "The War Within the State" followed, St. Louis taking a 3-2 game lead.  Behind, 1-0, Jorge Orta led off the Royals' next-game ninth by rolling to first base.  Pitcher Todd Worrell beat him to the bag -- until Don Denkinger ruled him safe.  Steve Balboni popped foul -- until Jack Clark lost the ball.  A passed ball and walk preceded Dane Iorg's winning hit.

"It's a situation," he said,"you dream about as a child."  In Game Seven, Bret Saberhagen threw a manly gem. "One out to go in the ninth inning!" Denny said. "Eleven to nothing. The one-oh pitch.  Fly ball! Motley going back to the track! No outs to go! The Royals have won the 1985 World Series! And they converge on the mound in celebration!" Two decades later, he would like to celebrate again.

Waiting for Cooperstown

Ageless:  Brett, winning batting crowns in 1976, 1980, and 1990 -- "only guy ever," said Matthews, "to lead in three decades."  Peerless: the 13-time All-Star, getting his 3,000th hit September 30, 1992 v. California. Timeless: the small-market Royals felt financially strapped.

In 1997, Denny touted realignment.  "Create four geographic divisions," he told the owners. "We'd be with the Cubs, White Sox, and Cardinals." Instead, the bigs eyed "contraction." In 2001, Denny contracted to 130 games a year. "It recharges the battery. You get away from it for a few days and come back strong," reaching Salinas and Ft. Smith and Yuma and Dodge City.

In 2004, Matthews telecast his first play-by-play since 1986. "I had to remind myself you don't need to paint the picture." He had outlasted 16 managers, 139 trades, and five Royals named Jones, but not doubt.  Wrote columnist Joe Posnanski: "Where's the love for Denny Matthews?" Partner Ryan Lefebvre mused how he could walk through K.C.'s Plaza Hotel without someone offering a glad-hand or brew.

Denny hated to schmooze or self-promote. "It's not my job to scream," he said. "I tell what happened and then you can scream." Some Voices think the hymn "How Great Thou Art" means them. To Matthews, story-telling meant team, not self. "You don't learn about his life," White said: e.g. working out with the Packers, catching passes from Len Dawson, or hitting a receiver in a touch football game.

"Denny, thank you," said Rush Limbaugh, eyes moist. "That was the first touchdown I ever had." Why wasn't Mathews beloved? Increasingly, he was.

A Most Happy Fella -- and End

Ultimately, Denny became the Midwest's loyal opposition: the Voice of Cardinals Nation Radio Free A.L.  He was clear, sharp, and subtle.  Umpire Greg Gibson once blew a call.  Said Matthews:  "You might want to tell [him] to take off his sunglasses." 

In 2004, the Royals held Denny Matthews "Talking Bobble Head" Day, named him to their Hall of Fame, and helped fill a special Kansas City to Wellington, Kansas, train.  Denny's granddad had worked for the Chicago and Alton Railroad.  Matthews became a "train nut" -- and Midwest grade crossing safety spokesman.

"The crews were terrific," he said of the thank-you ride.  "The only problem was that they wanted to talk baseball -- and I wanted to talk trains!" Denny loved their lure -- also the flat, tall-grass and endless Plains'.  "That alone would keep me here," he said, waiting for the Royals to again climb baseball's hill.

This year Denny will climb Cooperstown's.  If his hero, Jack Brickhouse, still conjures the Second City, Matthews more than ever bespeaks K.C.

In several books, I have addressed America’s great divide:  not right v. left, rap v. bluegrass, or Bud Light v. Tangueray.  Instead, at some point, each of us becomes a person of substance, or style.

            Style is outer-directed, feeling ethics situational.  Substance turns inward, eying right v. wrong.  People of style love trend.  People of substance deem beauty skin-deep, and decency deep-down.  Recently, a man of substance died.

            Baseball has had nine Commissioners since the post’s 1920 birth.  Bowie Kuhn was the fifth (1969-84) and, in many ways, best.  We judge a leader how he finds, and leaves, his job.  Kuhn found baseball on a respirator.  He left the summer game in bloom.

            Dead at 80, Kuhn grew in up in Washington, his Senators the Atlantis of the American League.  “I never had to tell who was winning. People knew,” said announcer Bob Wolff.  “I only had to give the score.”  Adversity strengthened Kuhn, priming him to swim upstream.

            In a 1964 Harris Poll, 48 percent of America named baseball their favorite sport.  Half that did when Kuhn became Commissioner.  Forbes mourned “our beat-up national sport,” too bland, it seemed, for a hip and inchoate age.  Aping a 1971 film, baseball resembled sport’s Last Picture Show.  Kuhn vowed that the last would be first.

            He opposed free agency, fearing a caste system:  teams with the gold rule.  Baseball brooked five work stoppages, but expanded from 20 to 26 teams.  Attendance doubled.  Postseason swelled: the League Championship Series.  Kuhn OKd the designated hitter, tired of a pitcher trying to hit:  dull as seeing paint dry, hearing W. speak, or reevaluating Al Gore.

            Kuhn fined Ted Turner, for player tampering, and George Steinbrenner, for illegal campaign funding. Above all, he understood the TV age.  In 1969, baseball bad one network series:  NBC’s Game of the Week. Worse, pro football blanketed syndication. Kuhn craved a weekly half-hour show of highlight, lowlight, feature, and other fare. 

            First, he sired a ABC/NBC arrangement.  Joe Garagiola replaced dull as dishwater Gowdy.  Kuhn tried to bounce Howard Cosell, touted Al Michaels and Vin Scully, and sired This Week In Baseball:  syndicated sports highest-rated serial.  Ultimately, no baseball series so bespoke one man: host Mel Allen.  Allen was hired by Bowie Kuhn.

            Kuhn moved to night the World Series weekday schedule (“Working men can’t see day games”) but kept weekend’s in the afternoon (“for kids”). The balance thrived till his successor made the Series all-nocturnal: also, killing Game and OKing salary collusion.  Peter Ueberroth was shallow, glib, and a debacle:  a stylist, to the core.   

            Under Kuhn, baseball regained parity with the NFL.  His reward was an ‘80s firing.  “What’s dumber than football’s dumbest owner?” said Orioles don Edward Bennett Williams.  “Baseball’s smartest owner.”  Some writers seemed as dumb.  Kuhn was formal: how old-timey.  A devout Catholic: how bourgeois.  A model family man: how square.  His foil was Marvin Miller, firebrand players union leader. The New York Times, among others, never forgave Bowie, then or now.  Forgetting nothing, it learned nothing, too.

            Recently sports economist Andrew Zimbalist bayed that Kuhn “never did anything enlightening.”  He must have lived on another 1969-84 planet.  Having little substance, critics couldn’t recognize it in Kuhn.  Emerson wrote of Napoleon, “He was no saint, to use his word, no capuchin, and he is no hero in the high sense.”  Neither saint nor hero, Kuhn was a good man who each day went out and did his job.

            One day Kuhn will be elected to the Hall of Fame:  honoring, among other things, his fine private sense of humor.  The last laugh will be on those who could, or would, not grasp his substance: still blind as a bat, deaf as a doorknob, and dim as a burned-out bulb.