Drabble by Kevin Fagan for September 01, 2014

Most of the Announcers sound as if they are about to wet themselves.

I think that baseball announcers are hold overs form the days of radio; they had to make sound exciting for the fans who could only listen. I wonder if they did radio broadcast at the same time as television then they could claim to bi-media skilled.

Dizzy Dean and Mel Allen – true originals – unfortunately inspired a generation of wannabes. Our Braves have a good match: Don Sutton (stylistically like Vin Scully) and Jim Powell (much like Bob Uecker.) The banter is often better than the game.

When I watch a baseball game (rarely), I turn off the sound and find it on the radio. I grew up doing that, but I was spoiled. I was a Dodger fan — Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett did all of the local radio broadcasts.

Somehow this reminds me of one of my favorite gags from the Simpsons, where they’re showing a possible home run in the ninth inning. “It’s going, going, going … our technical director today was Stan Kadlubowski!” (Cut to a shot of a guy eating a hot dog in the control room.) “It’s out of here, the ’Topes win!”

@jbmlaw. Dizzy Dean was my husbands uncle, was wondering if anyone would mention him.

In Seattle, whenever a Mariner hit a grand slam, the late Dave Niehaus would call, “Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, it’s grand salami time!”

When I’ve called baseball on radio myself (prep, college, semipro and minors), my home run call’s been a line Phil Harris voiced as Baloo in the Disney movie “The Jungle Book”: Take me hooooooome, Daddyyyyyyy! Guess you had to be there.

“There it goes! Way back! It might be! It could be! It IS! A home run!”

“It is high! It is long! It is GONE!”

The first is Harry Caray as I remember him from the St. Louis Cardinal broadcasts. The second is the announcer from the Yankees broadcasts.

Two of the best announcers in all of baseball are Vin Scully and Bob Uecker.

“I don’t believe what I just saw!”“Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!”

I admit to being biased, but I would listen to Vin Scully read the phone book (remember those?). Vin is a master — and one of his key talents is to know when to shut up and let the crowd noise tell the story.

I remember the old Laker broadcasts — Chick Hearn would say “It’s in the refrigerator” when victory for the home team was certain. In later years he added the nonsense about “The light is out, the butter is getting hard…” and so on. I preferred the original shorter version, without all the stoopid condiments.

In hockey, the Pittsburgh Penguins have a wonderful old radio (and, for a while, TV) announcer named Mike Lange, whose catchlines include “He beat him like a rented mule” and “He (the goalie) doesn’t know whether to cry or wind his watch.”

I’m a White Sox fan. We have the worst announcer ever – Ken Harrelson.

I remember a college football announcer who inadvertently came up with lines that sounded like a Doodles Weaver routine. “And he was tackled by Cook and Hamburger”, “Moon comes up”, “In fast cadence the band slowly marches off the field”. The end zone was always “the promised land”.

Great

Who was the baseball announcer of yesteryear that always spoke deadpan? His catchphrase for an exciting play was, “Wow…wee.”

I like Hawk Harrelson. He makes the game exciting.