DX Audio Service Historical Moments December 1996 Thanks, Phil. And now, Historical Moments in Radio .. a collection of stories of the rich and exciting past on the a.m. radio dial .. and today a brief look at the career of one of America's premier sportscasters, Red Barber. I wonder if you can remember where you were on October 22, 1992? Red Barber died that morning and broadcasting lost a man whose style and 62 years of broadcasting expertise had touched millions of listeners from Gainesville, Florida to New York City. Red's start in broadcasting was at the University of Florida station, WRUF. They carried a farm program featuring agricultural lectures! One weekend in 1930, Red agreed to deliver one of the lectures on the air to fill in for his college roommate. The program went so well that the station manager offered him a regular job at the top salary of fifty dollars a month. His years at WRUF consisted mostly of news and interviews But Red ached to be heard on one of the big city stations. Of course, this was at the height of the depression and no company was expanding. But up in Cincinnati, Larry McPhail was talking Powell Crosley into taking a majority ownership in the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. You see, along with Mr. Crosley came the midwest power house, WLW. Powell Crosley agreed to move the Cincinnati Reds broadcasts over to WLW from their former 5,000 Watt home at WSAI. The only question was, who would be the play-by-play announcer. Now, the Reds spring training field was in Florida and Red Barber asked for a try-out on the air during the spring training games. He was an instant hit .. $25 a week to do all the home games of the Reds on WLW, and to handle the away games by means of telegraphic re-creation. Red jumped at the chance. Cincinnati, opening Day, 1934. The Chicago Cubs were in town. Red Barber at the microphone broadcasting the first major league game .. he had ever seen! And wouldn't you know it. Cubs pitcher Lon Warneke took a no hitter into the ninth inning! Boy it was exciting. At every opportunity, Red Barber reported that the Cincinnati team had no hits and that a no-hitter was quite a way to start a season for the Chicago pitcher. With one out in the ninth, the Reds finally got a hit. And the roof fell in on poor Red .. no one had told him that it is unlucky to say anything about a no hitter after the fifth inning .. even just sitting in the stands! Red was blamed for the bad luck hit. But somehow he survived .. and his reputation grew as a play-by-play announcer. Later he recalled that the way he handled all fly balls during a game was to announce the hit, and then describe what the outfielders were doing. So instead of saying something like .. going, going, gone! He would say, ..it's a hit out into right center field, Kronowski is digging for it .. toward the fence .. and watches it sail over his head into the bleachers! Not long after, Larry McPhail left the Cincinnati organization and moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers where he asked Red Barber to join him. For the first time, the Brooklyn home games were broadcast on the air .. using 50,000 Watt WOR. Up until then, the three New York City baseball teams had agreed not to broadcast any home games. Red was terrific calling the games, and was particularly good on the Dodgers away games.. you see, all the out-of-town games were reported by telegraphic re-creation. Red refused to use a crowd-noise background on his broadcasts because he felt that mis-led the audience. Instead, the audience heard the clack-clack of the telegraph receiver on Red's desk .. and when there was no action to report, or when the wire went out, he would relate stories about the players. Red quickly became one of the most popular people in Brooklyn that spring .. his broadcasts were unique for nearly 20 years there. And then in 1953, Red began a 10-year play-by-play stint with the New York Yankees followed by another 20 years commenting on sports on National Public Radio. If you get a chance, read the book called Fridays with Red. There isn't a page that doesn't include an anecdote or an interesting fact about broad-casting or about baseball. You'd enjoy it. For Historical Moments in radio, this is John Bowker.