Review — The Golden Voices of Baseball

I doubt there’s a baseball fan around who has not heard Russ Hodge’s triumphant cries hailing the New York Giants victorious in their playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951. “The Giants Win the Pennant!” is a staple of baseball’s all-time highlights reel.

Younger fans might recall Jack Buck’s astounded call of Kirk Gibson’s “wounded warrior” homer off Dennis Eckersly in the 1990 World Series.

Then there are the poets of the broadcast booth, like Vin Scully. Or familiar voices like Harry Carry, Curt Gowdy, Mel Allen and Red Barber, whose fame is not based on one incident, but a lifetime of achievement.

These are the broadcasters that made baseball come alive for millions of us down through the years, ever since Harold Arlin spoke into a microphone to transmit that first game between the Pirates and the Phillies for KDKA in 1921.

Ted Patterson, a sportscaster for WCBM Radio in Baltimore, captures these men and memories in The Golden Voices of Baseball. Patterson, one of the foremost authorities on the history of the medium, has compiled a warm tribute to his predecessors, both those familiar to us and others less well known on a national level but beloved nonetheless by their regional followings.

Where today’s broadcasters are content, for a fair part, to sit and repeat anecdotes from their memory banks, the gentlemen in Golden Voices were real storytellers and word painters. Before the advent of television coverage, they had the pleasure and responsibility to provide the mental pictures with their descriptions.

Many older fans will tell you that they developed their love for baseball through these broadcasters. Whether listening surreptitiously at night when they should have already been asleep or sneaking a transistor to class (in the pre-walkman days), the older generation often waxes nostalgic on these moments as some of the happiest of their lives.

In addition to the text and pictures, the book includes a two-CD set narrated by the author. The sound bites, a combination of game calls and personal recollections, serve as a paean to the broadcasters featured therein, making Golden Voices an even more welcome look at the golden age of baseball broadcasting.