Mel Allen
Mel Allen (born Melvin Allen Israel; February 14, 1913 – June 16, 1996) was an American sportscaster, best known for his long tenure as the primary play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees. During the peak of his career in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Allen was arguably the most prominent member of his profession, his voice familiar to millions. Years after his death, he is still promoted as having been "The Voice of the Yankees."
Mel Allen
June 16, 1996 (aged 83)
In his later years, Allen was the first host of This Week in Baseball.
Early life and career[edit]
Allen was born Melvin Allen Israel was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He attended the University of Alabama, where he was a member of the Kappa Nu fraternity as an undergraduate.[1]
During his time at Alabama, Israel served as the public address announcer for Alabama Crimson Tide football games. In 1933, when the station manager or sports director of Birmingham's radio station WBRC asked Alabama coach Frank Thomas to recommend a new play-by-play announcer, he suggested Allen. His first broadcast was Alabama's home opener that year, against the Tulane Green Wave.[2][3]
Allen graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1937. Shortly after graduating, Allen took a train to New York City for a week's vacation. While on that vacation, he auditioned for a staff announcer's position at the CBS Radio Network. CBS executives already knew of Allen; the network's top sportscaster, Ted Husing, had heard many of his Crimson Tide broadcasts. He was hired at $45 (equivalent to $954 in 2023) a week.[4] He often did non-sports announcing such as for big band remotes, or "emceeing" game shows such as Truth or Consequences, serving as an understudy for both sportscaster Husing and newscaster Bob Trout.[2][3][5]
In his first year at CBS, Allen announced the crash of the Hindenburg when the station cut away from singer Kate Smith's show. He first became a national celebrity when he ad libbed for a half-hour during the rain-delayed Vanderbilt Cup from an airplane.[6] In 1939, he was the announcer for the Warner Brothers & Vitaphone film musical short-subject, On the Air, with Leith Stevens and the Saturday Night Swing Club.[7][8]
Stephen Borelli, in his biography How About That?! (a favorite expression of Allen's after an outstanding play by the home team), states that it was at CBS's suggestion in 1937, the year Melvin Israel joined the network, that he go by a different last name on the air. He chose Allen, his father's middle name as well as his own, and legally changed his name to Melvin Allen in 1943.[3]
Broadcasting career[edit]
Baseball[edit]
Allen was used as a color commentator for CBS's radio broadcast of the 1938 World Series. This led Wheaties to tap him to replace Arch McDonald, who was moving on to New York as the first full-time radio voice of both the Yankees and the New York Giants for their home games, as the voice of the Washington Senators for the 1939 season. Senators' owner Clark Griffith wanted Walter Johnson, a former Senators pitcher, instead of Allen, and Wheaties relented.[4]
In June 1939, Garnett Marks, McDonald's partner on Yankee broadcasts, twice mispronounced Ivory Soap, the Yankees' sponsor at the time, as "Ovary Soap." He was fired, and Allen was tapped to replace him. McDonald himself went back to Washington after only one season, and Allen became the Yankees' and Giants' lead announcer,[4] doing double duty for both teams because only their home games were broadcast at that time.
He periodically recounted an anecdote that occurred during his first full season (1940) as Yankee play-by-play man. Hall of Fame first baseman Lou Gehrig had been forced to retire the year before after having been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal illness. Speaking with Allen in the Yankee dugout, Gehrig told him "Mel, I never got a chance to listen to your games before because I was playing every day. But I want you to know they're the only thing that keeps me going." Allen broke down in tears after Gehrig departed.[4]
Allen's stint with the Yankees and Giants was interrupted in 1941, when no sponsor could be found and both teams went off the air, but the broadcasts resumed in 1942. Allen was the voice of both the Yankees and the Giants until 1943, when he entered the United States Army during World War II, broadcasting on The Army Hour and Armed Forces Radio.[3]
After the war, Allen called Yankee games exclusively. By this time, road games were added to the broadcast schedule. Before long Allen and the Yankees were fused in the public consciousness,[9] an association strengthened by the team's frequent World Series appearances. Allen eventually called 22 World Series on radio or television, including all but one in the 17-year stretch between 1947 and 1963, and also called 24 All-Star Games.[3] Interestingly, Allen's play-by-play of the 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves alongside Boston Braves
announcer Jim Britt occurred because neither Cleveland Indians announcer was selected by MLB commissioner Happy Chandler;[10] Jack Graney was ineligible due to having been a former player, and Jimmy Dudley was passed over due to a lack of experience.[11]
In 1952, Allen was one of the first three celebrities spoofed in the just-created Mad satirical comic book. In the second issue, Allen, Giant manager Leo Durocher and Hall of Fame Yankee catcher Yogi Berra were all caricatured in a baseball story, "Hex!", illustrated by Jack Davis. His likeness was also licensed by Standard Comics for a two-issue "Mel Allen's Sports Comics" series between 1949 and 1950.[12]
After Russ Hodges departed from the Yankee booth to become the longtime voice of the New York (and starting in 1958, San Francisco) Giants, the young Curt Gowdy replaced him as Allen's broadcast partner in 1949 & 1950, having been brought in from Oklahoma City after winning a national audition. Gowdy, originally from Wyoming, credited Mel Allen's mentoring as a big factor in his own success as a broadcaster and became the voice of the Boston Red Sox from 1951 to 1965. Red Barber, the former Brooklyn Dodgers announcer who had served as Allen's crosstown rival and frequent World Series broadcast partner, joined the Yankees' booth in 1954 and teamed with Allen until the latter's dismissal a decade later.
Allen called the second half of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, as broadcasting duties were split between Allen and Pittsburgh broadcaster Bob Prince.[13] Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run off Ralph Terry to win the fall classic for the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was the only walk-off home run ever to occur in a Game 7 of a World Series.
Awards[edit]
The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association inducted Allen into its Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1978, he was one of the first two winners of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting, along with Red Barber. In 1985, Allen was inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame along with former Yankee partner (and later Red Sox and NBC Sports voice) Curt Gowdy and Chicago legend Jack Brickhouse. He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.[28] In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association ranked Allen as the #2 greatest sportscaster of all time, second only to Vin Scully.[33]
Death and legacy[edit]
Allen died of heart failure at age 83 on June 16, 1996; he had undergone open-heart surgery in 1989.[26] His one-week vacation to New York had turned into 60 years; he had settled in New York after landing a job at CBS Radio and lived there and in southwestern Connecticut for the rest of his life.
Allen was buried at Temple Beth El Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut. On July 25, 1998, the Yankees dedicated a plaque in his memory at Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. The plaque calls him "A Yankee institution, a national treasure" and includes his much-spoken line "How about that?!"[34]