Longtime baseball voices in final year

By JOE KAY

AP Sports Writer

Steve Blass spent his boyhood afternoons in Connecticut flinging a rubber ball against the side of a half-barn, fantasizing that he was pitching in the majors. Come evening, the 10-year-old would get his radio and tune into a game, delighted when Mel Allen’s voice crackled from the transistor.

“When I thought ‘baseball,’ I thought about Mel Allen,” said Blass, now a Pittsburgh Pirates announcer. “When I thought ‘Mel Allen,’ I thought about baseball.”

More than in any other sport, baseball broadcasters become an inseparable part of the game they describe. Their voices are the backdrop to all those warm summer nights. Their distinctive calls are part of the game’s lore. Fans visualize the action through their stories and descriptions.

“There’s definitely an intimate link between the fan and the broadcaster that is much more impactful and prevalent in baseball than in any other major sports,” Cincinnati Reds play-by-play man Marty Brennaman said.

Both 76, Blass and Brennaman are retiring after the 2019 season, ending long careers in the booth — 34 years for Blass, 46 for Brennaman. Throughout the decades, the wins and losses, and the historical moments they’ve witnessed and described, they’ve also experienced how much fans identify with their voices coming into their homes.

They’re treated like adopted family members, greeted on a first-name basis.

Brennaman teamed with former Cincinnati pitcher Joe Nuxhall for 31 years in the booth. Fans tuned into “Marty and Joe,” a pair of old friends who visited Reds fans nearly every day from March to October.

“The time I realized what an impact Joe and I made was when we started getting mail addressed to ‘Marty and Joe, Cincinnati, Ohio’ — no address, no anything,” said Brennaman. “And it went to the main post office downtown and they had no problem at all figuring out where it was supposed to go.”

The game lends itself to those relationships and over the generations has become intertwined with those voices crackling from transistor radios tucked beneath pillows for night games.

Unlike sports where the action is nonstop, baseball provides many opportunities for broadcasters to fill with stories and personal anecdotes. That down time also allows color commentators like Blass to bring the sport to life with stories that revive listeners’ memories.

“To me, much of the game is about stories,” said Blass, who pitched for the Pirates from 1964-74, famously winning Game 7 of the 1971 World Series. “I think our game of baseball is unique. It has more stories than any of the other major sports. Baseball lends itself to the stories.”