Center Field Shot 

                      “MAT” Makes for Greatness

For the successful baseball announcer, familiarity breeds, not contempt, but friendship.  The everyday relationship between announcer and fan requires a personality that wears well over time.  But what makes one announcer a legend and a candidate for the announcers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, while another has only a successful career?  We believe that “superstar” baseball announcers often are engendered by an interaction of three elements:  the nature of media they use, the announcers’ own talents, and the quality and location of teams that they cover.  This is what we will call the “MAT” theory of announcing fame.

The superstar announcer emerges from just the right combination of MAT (medium, announcer, team).   Legendary announcers often come to prominence after the introduction of special conditions in the media environment.  Red Barber and Mel Allen capitalized on the end of the radio embargo in New York to become that city’s most beloved announcers of the radio era.  Dizzy Dean’s immense popularity was partially a product of the creation of a national baseball game of the week a couple of years after the completion of the first national television networks.   His rural appeal was perfectly suited to the small market audience created by blackout rules that excluded cities with major league franchises from the telecasts. 

Vin Scully’s superior skills as a radio announcer were well suited to the needs of the new Los Angeles Dodgers franchise, whose television policy severely restricted telecasts well into the 1960s.   In the 1950s and the 1960s, Scully would become the voice of the Dodgers and the fans’ window to the team, just his mentor Barber had in the 1940s.  He even profited from the Dodgers’ first few years in cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, where fans often listened to Scully on their transistor radios, so they could “see” the game from their distant seats.

Harry Caray exploited two media transformations.  He benefited first from the rapid expansion of the Cardinals radio network in the 1940s and 1950s to become a voice recognized throughout the Southern and Western United States at a time when MLB had no franchises in those regions.   His career bloomed a second time with the creation of the cable television Superstation, WGN.  Starting in 1982, Caray’s fan friendly style entertained a now national audience for the Chicago Cubs.    

However, changes in the media environment are not enough to insure legendary stature.  Each of these announcers had special talents well suited to the new media configuration.  Red Barber and Vin Scully had the superior language skills characteristic of the best radio announcers.   Mel Allen and Harry Caray announced with flamboyant style and infectious enthusiasm.  Dizzy Dean brought a larger than life personality and his own version of the English language to his down home audience.  Other announcers without the necessary talent were not able to exploit the new media environment.  After his retirement in 1951, Joe DiMaggio, the most popular player of his era, flopped as television performer because of his reserved personality and inability to improvise (even DiMaggio’s interviews had to be fully scripted).  Announcers’ talents remain a key component of their own success.  They add the “A” to our MAT theory.

Finally, legendary announcers often have the good fortune of calling the games of some legendary teams:  the “T” in our MAT theory.  Barber and Scully benefited from the long run of great Dodger teams, starting in the late 1940s and running through the mid-1960s.  Scully also was positioned to receive the affection of enthusiastic Los Angeles fans excited when Major League Baseball finally arrived in 1958.  Allen presided over a Yankee dynasty that appeared in 15 World Series and won 10 World Championships between 1947 and 1964. Caray covered championship Cardinals teams in the late 1940s and 1960s.  In his third year with the Cubs, he had the great fortune of watching the long dormant franchise win the 1984 NL Eastern Division Championship and come within one game of their first World Series appearance since 1945.   Successful teams bring national attention to their players, managers, and even announcers, making it possible for talented voices to be more widely recognized.  The location of a successful team in a major media market (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) also makes it much more likely the announcer’s gifts will receive national acclaim.