In 1988, I had the privilege and pleasure to meet and talk baseball
and broadcasting with six Hall of Fame announcers: Mel Allen, Red
Barber, Jack Brickhouse, Jack Buck, Curt Gowdy and Ernie Harwell.
I was producing and directing a documentary about them, Ball Talk:
Baseball's Voices of Summer, a labor of love which took me from
California to Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, New York, and Tallahassee,
Florida. And along the way, we stopped in Washington D.C. to film our
host, Larry King. What fantastic gentlemen, and what a great time we
had!
Making Ball Talk also took me back in time, first to 1934 and Red
Barber's first big-league game behind the mic (and first he ever
saw!). On the way back to the present, I visited 1947 and heard about
Jackie Robinson's breaking the color line and how Red reported it.
Then 1951 and the Shot Heard 'Round the World as witnessed and
broadcast by Red and Ernie (although nobody remembers their calls of
it!). Then tales of Yankees victories and Dodgers defeats. The
struggles of the Cubs, White Sox, Red Sox, Orioles and Tigers. The
stars: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey
Mantle, Ernie Banks, Stan Musial and Al Kaline. Amazing baseball and
broadcasting stories from the greatest baseball storytellers of all
time, all living legends.
And guess who they all picked as the the greatest player they had ever
seen play?
Ball Talk was released on home video in 1989, got good reviews and was
distributed on VHS for a few years. If you haven't seen it, you've got
a lot of company. But I felt it was a success because all the
announcers involved liked it. And now, in 2008, sadly all of them
except Ernie Harwell have passed away, leaving a great void in the
worlds of baseball and broadcasting.
If you're a baseball and/or broadcasting fan and appreciate the art
and artists of baseball announcing, check it out, I think you'll like
it. It's a winner!