Remembering Red Barber, the voice of The Brooklyn Dodgers

We remember that Red Barber died on this day in 1992:


“Barber’s baseball-broadcasting career began with the Cincinnati Reds in 1934, when the 26-year-old announcer called the first major league game he had ever seen, and ended in 1966 when the New York Yankees fired him for noting on air that only 413 people had come to watch the last-place Bombers play. 


But from 1939 to 1953, his years as the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Barber became a citywide celebrity. 


He invented an entirely new vocabulary that was nevertheless almost instantly familiar to anyone who listened to his broadcasts for more than a few minutes. 


To Barber, the baseball diamond was “the pea patch.” 


An argument was “a rhubarb.” A sure-thing game was “tied up in the crocus sack” and a team that had a game well in hand was “sitting in the catbird seat.” 


Everyone who heard Barber say that the bases were “FOB” knew he meant that they were full of Brooklyn players; likewise, listeners knew that a player who was “assuming the ballistic burden” was coming in to relieve the pitcher.

Want to enjoy something?  Go to the library or internet and check out anything by Red Barber.

P.S. Click here for my chat with Bill Katz about Red Barber:

————————————
Tags: Remembering Red Barber, the voice of The Brooklyn Dodgers  To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!