Transcription Mystery Disc # 176

This is not the kind of disc I normally find. It's a 10-inch Audio disc with an outer-edge start. It spins at 78 rpm though I had to rip it at 33 rpm because of a notable curvature in the disc. It's is labeled in nice clear block letters "9th Inning 2nd game of 1947 World Series Yankees-10 Dogers-3" This is a recording of the last minutes of the most famous 9th inning rally in Baseball history.

1947 World Series

 
The recording is just a bit over 4 minutes long and about half way in Mel Allen introduces "the old red Head," Red Barber who is heard for the rest of the recording. Allen wasn't just a sports fan, he was also a radio man. He started out in 1933 announcing college football games on 960 WBRC-AM in Birmingham. His sports broadcasting career at CBS started in 1937 where he stayed until the Yankees fired him as an announcer in 1964. They brought him back in 1976. In 1990 he guested and did play-by-play on WPIX-TV for a Yankees game making him the oldest sportscaster of the day at 77.  He died in 1996.

North to Jackson

I'm staying over tonight in Oxford Mississippi, home off the mighty WUMS. Mississippi is also the home state of my favorite boxer Sonny Liston and a huge number of iconic musicians: R.L. Burnside, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Arthur Crudup, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Skip James, Junior Kimbrough Fred McDowell, Tommy McClennan, Jimmy Rodgers, Ike Turner, Bukka White, Howlin' Wolf and many others. Wish I had time to stop in Senatobia.Also home of the famed sportscaster Red Barber. Barber grew up in Columbus, MS. The strangelst thing about Barber is that he never intended to become a sportscaster, or a radioman of any kind. He was a janitor on the Gainesville branch of the University of Florida. An agriculture professor failed to show up to read a paper on the air at campus station WRUF. Barber filled in, changing the course of his life away from the mop, into radio.

He held his position at WRUF for the next four years, eventually landing a job broadcasting on WLW and WSAI with the Cincinnati Reds when Powel Crosley, Jr., purchased the team in 1934. What made barber great is that he wasn't a cheering appendage for his home team. He was a fair sportscaster in his calls and coverage.

Problems started in 1964 when CBS bought the Yanks. After commenting on the poor attendance at a Yankees game in 1966 he was shit-canned by CBS Executive Vice President Mike Burke. The exact words that got him the hook were "I don't know what the paid attendance is today, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium, and this crowd is the story, not the game." In fact there were only 413 people in the 65,000 seat stadium. as always, he'd just been telling the truth. Burke's previous experience was in running a circus, and as you'd exfrom the completely unqualified, he continued to be an incompetent twat until Steinbrenner brought the team in 1973.

After that Red Barbers career quieted down, He wrote a few books, including an autobiography, and he began doing commentary for NPR who genuinely appreciated his sense of fair play. he received the Ford C. Frick award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978, and was it's first recipient. He died in 1992. The microphone he used at WRUF is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame.