Red (Walter) Barber was New York City’s first baseball radio broadcaster and the first baseball telecaster anywhere. He chronicled the rise of the Dodgers with phrases like “tearin’ up the pea patch” and “the bases are FOB” – full of Brooklyn. The Mississippi-born Barber said, “(I) didn’t broadcast with a Brooklyn accent, but I did…
The American Sportscasters Association names Dodgers legend Vin Scully as the No. 1 sportscaster of the 20th century. Howard Cosell finishes 2nd, followed by Mel Allen and Red Barber. The Dodgers veteran broadcaster’s 51-year career has included play-by-play of 25 Fall Classics and 12 All-Star Games.
Baseball is the only game you can watch on the radio. Join the community today and listen to hundreds of broadcasts from baseball’s golden age! Sign Up or learn more On October 22, 1992, legendary broadcaster Red Barber dies at the age of 84. Barber announced games for the Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers, and…
With only 413 patrons in attendance to see New York’s 4-1 loss to the White Sox, the team’s head of media relations denies Red Barber’s request for a camera to scan the empty stands. The veteran broadcaster will reportedly lose his job when he continues to tell his audience, “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.”
Red Barber resigns as a Brooklyn Dodger broadcaster and will take the ‘catbird’ seat with the rival New York Yankees. The ‘Old Redhead’ is reported to have left the team because he was upset with Brooklyn owner Walter O’Malley, who refused to support him when he failed to get a higher fee from Gillette, the sponsor of the 1953 World Series on television.
Ernie Harwell, filling in for Red Barber, who is recovering from a bleeding ulcer, calls his first major league game as the Dodgers beat the Cubs at Ebbets Field, 5-4. To obtain the future Hall of Fame broadcaster, Brooklyn general manager Branch Rickey trades minor league catcher Cliff Daper to the Atlanta Crackers.
During a double-header against the Cardinals, a ragtag group of five ‘musicians’, dubbed the Dodger SymPhony by announcer Red Barber, makes their Ebbets Field’s debut. This band, in which none of the members can read music, performs their zany antics at all evening and weekend games.
At Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, NBC televises the first major league game in history on experimental station W2XBS, covering a doubleheader split in which the Reds win the first game, 5-2, and the Dodgers take the nightcap, 6-1. The network employs two cameras, one behind home plate, showing a wide view of the field, and the other on the third base line to capture the plays at first base.
The five-year ban on broadcasting games played by the New York major league teams ends when Red Barber, hired away from the Reds by Larry McPhail, calls Brooklyn’s 7-3 loss to the Giants at Ebbets Field. In 1934, the two National League teams and the Yankees agreed not to air their games on the radio, fearing the exposure would reduce the number of fans attending games.
After resigning as the Reds’ general manager at the end of the 1936 season, Larry MacPhail is coaxed back into baseball by the Dodgers. The Brooklyn Board of Directors, anxious to improve the club’s poor performance on the field and to reverse its financial woes, sign the fiery innovator to a contract that gives him complete control of the franchise.
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