If one were to ask a baseball fan who came of age in the late 1970s and the 1980s about Mel Allen that baseball fan would likely respond, This Week in Baseball.  I would put myself into that category.  This Week in Baseball aired on NBC on Saturday afternoon right before the NBC Game of the Week with Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek (later Garagiola would be joined by legendary Dodgers’ broadcaster Vin Scully).  Allen would narrate the highlights and lowlights of the week that was in Major League Baseball in his authoritative, yet friendly Southern voice exclaiming, “How About That!”

Of course, if one were to ask a baseball fan who came of age between the beginning of WWII through the early stages of the Vietnam War about Mel Allen, that baseball fan would likely respond, “Voice of the New York Yankees.”  Allen covered the Yankees first on radio and later on television during the most successful period in franchise history, during which the Yankees won nearly half of their 26 World Series titles.  In many ways, Allen would be as strongly identified with the success of the Yankees as Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle.

Although Mel Allen is amongst the very best to have ever called a baseball game, to label him as merely a baseball announcer does not do justice to his contributions to American culture, especially from the late 1930s into the mid 1960s.  Fortunately, Stephen Borelli has helped to cast light on Allen’s accomplishments in his biography of Allen titled How About That!: The Life of Mel Allen (published by Sports Publishing LLC).

To give one an idea of the impact Allen had on American culture, Borelli cites Allen’s profile in a late 1950s edition of Who’s Who in America.  Allen’s entry was six lines longer than that of one Dwight Eisenhower.  Yes, the same Dwight Eisenhower who as Supreme Allied Commander was the hero of D-Day and was at the time President of the United States.  To paraphrase Babe Ruth, I suppose Allen had a better year than Eisenhower.

Yet Allen was hardly preordained to his station in life.  Born Melvin Allen Israel on Valentine’s Day, 1913 in Birmingham, Alabama; he was the son of second generation Russian Jewish immigrants and the oldest of three children.  Being Jewish in the Deep South in the early 20th Century could be a rather precarious situation.  After all, it was in 1915 that Leo Frank was lynched in neighboring Georgia, falsely accused of murdering his employee, Mary Phagen, only months after Allen was born.  The Phagen murder created a firestorm of anti-Semitism and contributed to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, whose membership reached a peak of 3 million by the mid-1920s.  There were over 100,000 Klan members in Alabama alone.  Indeed, a political career was doomed to failure in the Deep South without the support of the Klan.

Despite the pervasiveness of the Klan, young Mel displayed extraordinary talents.  He could talk before he was a year old and started learning how to read the following year.  A voracious reader, Allen had an extraordinary academic record and an encyclopedic knowledge of many subjects, including sports.  The downside of this rapid academic advancement was that young Mel was substantially smaller than his classmates.  He had a virtual target on his back due to his intellect, diminutive size and religious persuasion, and was the subject of bullying.  He was often called “kike” or “Jew baby.”  However, Mel’s father told him he would have to stand up to bullies.  Young Mel was initially perplexed as his father had told him to never fight.  His father explained, “I always told you to never start a fight, but if someone starts a fight with you and there is no way of stopping it with dignity, then you fight back.”  The next time the bully bothered Mel he fought back and soon the taunting ceased.  Years later, Allen contacted the man who was living in Connecticut and asked if he wanted “another lickin’.”   Allen then took the man out to dinner.  How About That!

Allen’s intellect on certain subjects even won him respect with some of the Klan.  When a Klan lawyer came into the Allen’s store demanding to see Mel, his mother was petrified.  But the Klan lawyer assured Allen’s mother, “We just need him to settle a bet a friend and me have about what was Babe Ruth’s earned-run average in 1916.”  For the record, Ruth’s ERA was 1.75 while pitching for the Boston Red Sox and it led the American League.   Ruth finished ahead of Eddie Cicotte of Black Sox fame (1.78) and the Washington Senators’ legendary Walter Johnson (1.90).  To quote Casey Stengel, “You could look it up.”

However, the Klan initiated a boycott of the Allen’s store and that of other Jewish merchants.  Eventually, they had to close the store and moved to Greensboro, North Carolina.

After spending time in Greensboro and later Detroit, Allen returned to his home state to enroll at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa at the tender age of 15.  Despite his youth, Allen quickly adapted to campus life and began writing for the student newspaper.  Sports remained his biggest love and Allen became consumed with college football, especially the University of Alabama Crimson Tide team which won two Rose Bowls under head coach Wallace Wade.  Allen was devastated along with many of his college cohorts when Wade left Alabama to coach at Duke University in 1931.  However, that would be short lived as Wade’s successor, Frank Thomas, soon took Allen under his wing.

It was Thomas who recommended Allen for his first broadcasting job: announcing games for both the Crimson Tide and neighboring Auburn University.  So it was on September 28, 1935 that Allen broadcast his first game on radio as the Crimson Tide hosted Howard University.  The game finished with a 7-7 tie.  Allen broadcast college football in both 1935 and 1936 to great acclaim.   Yet broadcasting was the furthest thing from Allen’s mind.  Allen had obtained his Bachelor’s Degree and had entered the University of Alabama’s law school.  He was a few months away from finishing his law degree and he planned to go into practice.

However, Mel wanted to visit New York City.  Needless to say, neither the life of Mel Allen nor that of New York City would ever be the same.

Although Allen was paid $25 a game to cover Alabama and Auburn games, he could afford to do little in New York.  He decided to visit CBS on Fifth Avenue in hope of getting free tickets to radio shows.  Instead of getting free tickets, Allen got an audition with CBS based on his college football work.  Even in New York, Allen’s skills behind the microphone got him noticed.  He was offered a job on the spot.  Allen wanted to finish law school which CBS allowed him to do.    

From 1937 to 1943, Allen broadcast everything imaginable to the ears of America.  Allen hosted big band shows on the Saturday Night Swing Club, narrated soap operas, and was a member of the panel on the game show Truth or Consequences (think of an early version of Fear Factor -- only without the insects).   He also covered sports such as auto racing, college basketball, skiing, polo, track & field, golf, horse racing and tennis.  He occasionally did serious new stories.  Allen was the first the break the story of Hindenburg explosion in 1937.  He was the first person to interview Howard Hughes after he successfully flew around the world solo in 1938.  Allen even covered Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s third inauguration in January 1941.

It must be remembered that Major League Baseball strongly resisted radio coverage of its games.  The owners reasoned that if the games were covered on radio then nobody would come see them.  Larry McPhail bucked this trend when he hired another Southerner (and Allen’s eventual arch rival) Red Barber to broadcast Cincinnati Reds games in 1934.  When McPhail took over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939, he brought along Barber to cover Dodgers games.  Eventually other teams followed suit, if cautiously.

Allen very nearly became the voice of the Washington Senators but at the last minute the Senators’ owner, Clark Griffith, brought in Senators’ pitching legend Walter Johnson to cover the games.    Needless to say, this was not the first time that the second division Senators had erred in its judgment, and it would not be the last.

After initially being passed over, Allen was hired to cover both the New York Yankees and the New York Giants.  In Allen’s first few seasons with the Yankees and Giants, not every game was broadcast.  Allen generally covered their home games and on occasion recreated road games.  Despite the sporadic broadcasts, Allen was quickly developing a fan base.  As it turned out one of Allen’s biggest fans was Lou Gehrig.  Sadly, it was in 1939 that Gehrig became ill and was diagnosed with the disease that would bear his name.  In 1940, Gehrig visited Allen and told him, “Mel, I never got a chance to listen to your broadcasts before because I was playing every day.  But I want you to know that they’re the only thing that keeps me going.”  Allen was so moved that he had to leave Gehrig and burst into tears.  The Iron Horse would be dead the following year.

Allen’s broadcasting would be interrupted when he was conscripted into the U.S. Army in September 1943.  He wanted to join the Air Force and tour with the Glenn Miller Orchestra but his plans were jettisoned by an enraged Army General who sent Allen on a train to receive basic training.  Tragically, Miller’s plane would disappear over the English Channel the following year, never to be seen again.

It would not be long before Allen was in front of a microphone on the Armed Forces Radio Service.  He broadcast a five minute segment on NBC’s The Army Hour.  Allen also hosted a sports trivia show, recreated broadcasts of college football games and the 1944 World Series between the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals.  But recreations were not the same as being in Yankee Stadium.

Allen received his discharge in January 1946 and it was during that season that Allen broadcast baseball solely for the Yankees and on a full time basis.  Finally, Allen would travel with the team and cover its road games in person.  He was paired with Russ Hodges, who would later become the voice of New York Giants.  Hodges is most famous for calling Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” as the Giants upended the Dodgers for the National League pennant in 1951.  It was at this time that Allen also began narrating Fox Movietone News.  For nearly two decades, American moviegoers would hear Allen narrate short sports films (not unlike what he did many years later on This Week in Baseball) before the feature presentation began.

As if that were not enough Allen began covering the Rose Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and championship boxing, such as the third fight between Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano for the World Middleweight Championship.  But it was the New York Yankees with whom he was most closely identified.  If there was any one Yankee that Allen was most closely associated with it was Joe DiMaggio.

Indeed, Allen can credit DiMaggio for helping him to coin his two most famous catch phrases -- “Going, Going, Gone” and “How About That!”  Allen came up with the first in 1946 as DiMaggio and teammate Tommy Heinrich were chasing a fly ball that at first appeared would stay in the ballpark, until they lowered their gloves, realizing the futility of their endeavor.  The second came during the 1949 season.  DiMaggio missed most of the season due to a heel injury and would only play in 76 games that year.  But when DiMaggio returned to the team one weekend in Boston, he returned to old form, hitting 4 homeruns and driving in 9 runs in a three game sweep.  Allen was astonished that DiMaggio could perform so well after such a serious injury and could not help but say, “How About That!” again and again.  Not to outdo himself, Allen also coined DiMaggio’s nickname, “Joltin’ Joe,” because DiMaggio could influence the outcome of a game (and often did).   Allen ended up being one of the few people in whom the notoriously private DiMaggio could confide.  Although Allen was a world famous broadcaster he would never broadcast other people’s confidences.   

Mel Allen was also one heck of a pitcher.  One might ask how Allen could have been great pitcher when he never took the mound?  Allen pitched beer and cigars, not fastballs and curveballs.  No Yankee broadcast was complete without a few pitches for Ballantine Beer and White Owl Cigars.  Yankee homeruns were described as a “Ballantine blast” or a “White Owl wallop.”  Allen was an effective pitch man on both radio and television.

Allen adapted to the new medium easily and even made two significant innovations.  It was Allen who suggested that a camera be placed in center field so viewers could see batters.  Prior to that, viewers had to settle for an aerial view of the pitcher’s mound and home plate.  The second took placed when Allen was awed by a great catch.  He was so impressed by the catch that he asked one of the technicians if he could see it again.  The technician obliged and the instant replay was born.

Although Allen was considered amongst America’s most eligible bachelors and was enormously popular with women, he would never marry.  His mother lamented that he was married to baseball.  However, Allen took care of his parents and lived with them until their deaths.  He was also a doting uncle to his two nephews and two nieces.  In addition to baseball and the other sporting events he covered, Allen was amongst the country’s most sought after banquet speakers and raised money for many charities such as the Salvation Army, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and B’nai Brith, to name but a few.  He would also travel to Rome to show baseball films to the young seminarians.  A lifelong Democrat, Allen spoke out against the evils of Communism.   Although enormously successful, Allen feared that each success would be his last.  In 1957 he stated, “I have as much security in this business as a light switch going on and off.”  Within a decade, events would prove Allen correct.

The very qualities that endeared him to the American public in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were working against him by the early 1960s.  Attention spans were becoming shorter.  The narrative heavy description had begun to wear on listeners and viewers as well as sponsors and colleagues.  Of course, part of the loss in appeal was, well, the Yankees won every year.  Although many Boston Red Sox fans enjoyed Allen’s work, he was eventually resented as much as Mantle, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford.    Others thought that Allen just plain talked too much, whether it was in the broadcast booth or at a banquet.

Allen began to fall out of favor with Yankee management in 1961 when he referred Mantle to his general practitioner, Dr. Max Jacobson.  Mantle had been suffering a bad case of the flu and could not shake it.  Mantle visited Dr. Jacobson who gave Mantle a shot.  Not only did Mantle not recover from the flu he developed an abscess on his hip.  It effectively ended the rest of Mantle’s season.  In the mid-1970s, Jacobson would lose his medical license because his actions led to several fatalities.  Mantle finished the year with 54 homeruns and the New York media thought it was Mantle, not Roger Maris, who should have broken Babe Ruth’s single season record for homeruns.  For his part, Allen was one of the few members of the media who sympathized with Maris and was gentle in his treatment of him.

While broadcasting the 1963 World Series, where the Yankees were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Allen lost his voice.   New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young reported that Allen had an “emotional crackup” on the air.  Rather, Allen’s voice had simply become hoarse.  But the damage was done.  In time, Allen would no longer broadcast Fox Movietone News or the Rose Bowl.

At around the same time, sales of Ballantine beer were slumping.   New Yorkers now had access to beers like Miller and Coors, which sold for less.  But instead of adapting to the marketplace, Ballantine blamed its decline on Allen, who they perceived as being too long winded behind the mike and in his public appearances.  There were also those who believed that Allen was spending more time consuming Ballantine beers than selling them.  Allen’s performance on and off the field also grated Ralph Houk, who guided the Yankees to three straight World Series appearances between 1961 and 1963.  Houk was named General Manager in 1964 and did not like the fact that Allen was getting most of the attention.    

The Yankees would make two fatal errors after the 1964 season.   The first was to fire Yogi Berra as manager.  Berra took the Yankees to the 1964 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cardinals prevailed in seven games.  Berra was replaced by Johnny Keane, the man who had guided the Cardinals to their World Series title.  The second mistake was to unceremoniously fire Allen and replace him with St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster Joe Garagiola.   

In 1965, the Yankees fell to 6th place in the American League with a 77-85 record.  The Yankees would not return to the World Series until 1976.

For his part, Allen continued to work but less frequently.  He broadcast some games for the Braves during the final season in Milwaukee in 1965, as well as some games for the Cleveland Indians in 1968.  Allen had been offered a full time broadcasting job with the Oakland A’s for the ’68 season but Allen turned it down because he did not want to leave New York.  However, had Allen accepted the position he would have been reunited with Joe DiMaggio, who had returned to baseball in 1968 to accept a coaching position with the A’s.    

But as events would prove, Allen was too good a broadcaster not to have a second act.  Perhaps the public needed some time away from Allen in order to appreciate him.  Major League Baseball needed an equivalent to NFL Films and found its answer with This Week in Baseball, which made its debut on NBC during the middle of the 1977 season.  It was around this time that New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner extended Allen an olive branch and gave him unfettered access to the owners’ box during Yankee home games.  But more importantly, Steinbrenner gave Allen the opportunity to call half their home games every season between 1977 to 1985.  In 1978, Allen’s resurgence continued when he and  Red Barber were the first broadcasters to be recognized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award.  How About That!   

I have never witnessed a no-hitter (or even better a perfect game) from start to finish.  Before this writer leaves this mortal coil I would like to witness such an event.  I came close on two occasions.  The first time was in 1999 while I was living in Ottawa.  David Cone was warming up to face the Montreal Expos.  The game was televised on the French language version of the CBC.  For some now forgotten reason, I needed to go out to Carleton University.  Cone proceeded to throw a perfect game with both Don Larsen and Yogi Berra as witnesses.  In 2001, while watching ESPN Sunday Night Baseball I saw Mike Mussina come within one out of tossing a perfect game for the Yankees against the Red Sox (with David Cone pitching for the Red Sox) until the much maligned Carl Everett broke up the perfect game with a double.     

Mel Allen covered his first no-hitter in 1946 when legendary Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller no-hit the Yankees.  A decade later, Allen covered Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Allen would have to wait 27 years but in 1983 he broadcast Dave Righetti’s Fourth of July no-hitter against the Red Sox, striking out soon to be Hall of Famer Wade Boggs for the final out.  How About That!

Allen’s health declined significantly in the mid-1990s and he would not live to see the Yankees current run of success beginning with their World Series title in 1996.  On June 16th of that year (Father’s Day), he would pass away at the age of 83.  Known for his efforts to promote harmony between Jews and Catholics, Allen and his family once had an audience with Pope John XXIII.  His mother told the Archbishop of Rome, “Those were great seats.   Right in back of home plate.”  For his part, Allen referred to St. Patrick’s Cathedral as “the Yankee Stadium of churches.”  In November 1996, Cardinal John O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, honored Allen with a memorial at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.   A rare honor for a Jew.  How About That!

Anyway one looks at it, Mel Allen lived an extraordinary life.  His gifts were evident almost literally from the day he was born.    Despite the prejudice he and his family faced, his parents were of strong character and encouraged his talents.  His parents did not plan for him to become a sports broadcaster but when the opportunity presented itself, he took full advantage and made the most of it.  What also helped Allen was that he had people looking out for him who saw his talents and the joy he brought people in utilizing those talents.  In the 1950s, Variety magazine included Allen amongst a list of people who had the 25 most recognizable voices in the world.  He was the only sports broadcaster on the list.  Allen was included with such luminaries as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.  I cannot help but wonder how Allen would have covered Roosevelt and Churchill’s meeting with Stalin at Yalta?

Despite our achievements, only a precious few are remembered as time passes outside of one’s own family.  Seldom are people remembered generations after they have passed away.  Sometimes they are forgotten soon after they are buried.  At other times they are forgotten when the spotlight shines elsewhere even though they are still very much with us.  Given all the events of the previous century that Allen observed and brought home to Americans it is odd that so little has been written about Allen himself.  After all, Allen had a great deal to do with how we listen to the radio and watch television.  But since radio and television are so prevalent it is easy not to think about such things and not heed attention to those who helped make our way of life possible.  Thanks to Stephen Borelli, that oversight has begun to be addressed in earnest.  How About That!

How About That is available on Amazon.com.