"The Voice": Mel Allen, 1913-1996

I’m a frus­trated fan of the Wash­ing­ton Nation­als, as I was the old Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors. As a New York school­boy in the Fifties, I’d go up to Yan­kee Sta­dium to root for the Sen­a­tors when they were in town, wear­ing my navy blue cap with the white block “W.” Big, scary Bronx voices would shout: “Hey, kid—the Wash­ing­ton section’s in the bleachers.”

The Sen­a­tors were peren­nial heart­break­ers, although in mid-1952 they were only three or four games out of first place and con­sid­ered to be pen­nant con­tenders. Known for light hit­ting and good pitch­ing, they played hard and were usu­ally fun to watch. (Click here for a web­site full of DC base­ball history.)

Lately the Nation­als, who returned base­ball to Wash­ing­ton in 2005, have been play­ing good base­ball, and there’s rea­son to hope for “Joy in Mudville” soon. But the first six years were pretty rough. In 2009, another Nats loss again to the Phillies, I did a weird thing. I watched the video on Direct TV while lis­ten­ing to a CD of the New York Yan­kees game at Grif­fith Sta­dium on 5 July 1960, last year of the orig­i­nal Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors. (Found it on eBay.)

Trans­ported back in time, I heard Phil Riz­zuto and Mel Allen (one at a time, no tag-team) call a pitcher’s duel between the Yan­kees’ Ralph Terry and my hero Pedro Ramos, which the Sen­a­tors won 5-3 in extra innings. (As Casey Sten­gel said, “you can look it up.”)

How broad­casts have changed: Allen and Riz­zuto called plays and made pre­scient observations—nothing else. There were no rem­i­nis­cences of their play­ing days, no ball­girl inter­views with celebri­ties in the bleach­ers while the game was going on, no goofy mas­cots, no songfests, no fire­works, no instant-replay, no strike-zone reviews (the zone was uni­form, the umps impar­tial). Just baseball—pure and ele­gant, as God and Abner Dou­ble­day intended.

How the game has changed. Terry and Ramos (chew­ing a big wad of ‘baccy) each went eight innings. Relief pitch­ers came in and stuck—were not pulled after one bat­ter because the next guy was bat­ting from the other side of the plate. The phrase “pitch count” didn’t exist. (I real­ize that since 1980, there is reli­able evi­dence that you can blow a young pitcher’s arm by leav­ing him in too long.) There were no “Des­ig­nated Hit­ters.” From slug­gers to pitch­ers, every­body knew how to bunt and run bases. No balls went through legs or over heads.

“Rhubarbs” (Red Barber’s term) were sim­i­lar: José Val­divielso charged the mound when Terry brushed him back (Phil men­tioned his “Latin tem­per,” which he wouldn’t do nowa­days). The next inning Pedro hit Man­tle while “Meekie” took his base with a big grin, and the umpire fined Pedro $50 and warned him not to do it again.

Sen­a­tors pitch­ers loved to razz Man­tle. In 1956, Mick had hit a Ramos pitch almost out of Yan­kee Sta­dium. And it was Chuck Sto­bbs, the win­ning pitcher in this game, who had served the ball Man­tle hit 565 feet out of Grif­fith Sta­dium in 1953, the second-longest home run on record. (The longest was by Babe Ruth, who hit one 575 feet against the Tigers in 1926.)

I was struck by the clean base­ball both teams played. Aside from a hit bat­ter and a wild pitch, there were no gaffes. The typ­i­cal inning ended “noth­ing across” (a medieval term mean­ing no Yan­kee runs or hits and no Sen­a­tor errors, or vice versa). Hits were scat­tered, even from the vaunted Yan­kee lineup. Deci­sions on reliev­ers, pinch hit­ters and run­ners by man­agers Casey Sten­gel and Cookie Lavagetto were foxy and smart; nobody could argue with them. The Wash­ing­ton crowd booed José when he charged the mound, know­ing Terry wasn’t pur­posely try­ing to hit him.

Even the adver­tis­ing was fun. The spon­sors were the Atlantic Refin­ing Com­pany (“Atlantic Impe­r­ial, the gaso­line that cleans your car­bu­re­tor as you drive”—remember car­bu­re­tors?) and Bal­lan­tine Beer (“the Crisp Refresher”). There were no ads for patent med­i­cines designed to ward off RLS, DES, PID, HIV or the dreaded ED. Mel and Phil would have been embar­rassed to talk about such stuff.

Ah, the sum­mer of 1960. The Yan­kees went on to win the pen­nant, the Sen­a­tors played close to .500 and fin­ished 5th out of eight before pack­ing up for Min­nesota. What a won­der­ful, enter­tain­ing game that was—managed, pitched and announced—now a half cen­tury ago.

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Tagged as: Adam Dunn, Anderson Hernandez, Atlantic Refining Co., Ballantine Beer, Baseball, Chuck Stobbs, Griffith Stadium, Mel Allen, Mickey Mantle, New York Yankees, Pedro Ramos, Phil Rizzuto, Washington Nationals, Washington Senators