Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (43 page)

"The greatest thing to happen [to baseball] since Bat Day," the Philadelphia Inquirer called cable. Harry Caray, Skip Caray, and Tim McCarver
became its billboard. A soft-spoken Vermonter became its first star.

"He isn't a controversial broadcaster because he isn't a controversial person," a
columnist said of Ernie Johnson. "Easy-going and folksy, his manner is such that
the listener can sense he's that way off the air as on."The son of Swedes who met
in America, he signed with N.L. Boston, pitched in the Eastern League, entered
the Marines, and served in Okinawa. By 1945, returning to Brattleboro, Ernie,
21, asked a former cheerleader at his old high school for a date.

"What do you do?" Lois Denhard asked him.

"I play baseball."

"I know, but what do you do for a living?"They married on November
15, 1947.

In 1950, his living made the bigs. Annual Boston City Series: Ernie
curves The Kid. "Great decision. In seconds it's rolling to the Hotel Kenmore." Skipper Billy Southworth consoled the rookie. "Don't worry. He's hit
them off better pitchers than you."

In 1952, veteran Vern Bickford faced Ted in Bradenton. Williams made
out his first up. "Ted's up this inning,"Vern later said. "Let's see how far that
big donkey can hit one."

"What you gonna do?" said Johnson.

Vern: "Lay it in there 3/4 speed and see what happens."

Knowledge can spawn strain. "In batting practice," said Ernie, "if a guy
sees a lollypop he'll get antsy and screw up." Ted hit the right-center field
light tower.

"We're roaring as the inning ends. Bickford comes back, shakes his head,
and says, `I got my answer."'

The 1952 Braves hit .233. In 1953, they hit the road. "I'd pitched in Milwaukee
with the [ 1949 and 1951 Triple-A] Brewers," Johnson said. "A small town.
Fans wouldn't let a Brave pay for gas or milk." Daily he drove to County Stadium past the Allen Brady Tower Clock, hovering like a sun. The 1957-58
first-placers shot the moon.

Warren Spahn won more games than any other lefty (363), all but seven
for the Braves. Once he threw to first base, picking off the runner, umpire,
and fielder. "We'd kid his big nose. `When you move your head, your nose
hypnotizes the runner."' Spahn, said Ernie, once picked a runner off-and
the hatter swung.

In 1958-59, the Braves and Orioles, respectively, axed the career 40-23
starter/reliever. "Here's how bad I'd become. Del Crandall said to forget a
spitter because `It's so slow it's dry by the time it hits the plate.'"The Tribe
invited him to 1960 spring training. A warmup catcher was 18 years old. "Don't
worry, dad. Throw anything you want; I'll figure it out on the way down."

Retiring, dad hosted a Milwaukee TV talk show. In 1962, he became
Braves' WTMJ TV analyst and post-game host. "The Senators with Cox beat
theYankees," Ernie began one program. He never so wanted a power failure.
"People thought it hilarious that it would happen to this happy married, religious sort of guy."

In 1963-64, Johnson added Braves publicity. Next year he aired 17 and 53
games, respectively, on Atlanta WSBTV/radio"a tease for 1966 when the
Braves'd move."That fall, after 13 years-so few, they seem almost spectral-the team left for a region still asking a recount of Gettysburg.

"You think of thin air, the park's nickname [Launching Pad], Henry Aaron,"
mused Georgian Ernie Harwell of Atlanta. Unlike Babe Ruth, the moremarathoner-than-sprinter never hit 50 (lingers in a season. The Hammer did
nail 30 and 40, respectively, 15 and eight years.

1971: number 600. "Perry delivers to him. A fly ball, left field! Back goes
Henderson! It is gone!" said Johnson.

July 21, 1973: "A huge turnout in the left-field seats bringing nets hoping
to catch a home run! ... Drive-deep left field! . . . This ball is gone! Seven
hundred for Hank Aaron--only the second player in this great game ever to
do it!"

Next year, Hank's first swing attained the unattainable. "Gillingham
pitches. Swung on! Drive-deep left field! Back goes Rose! He's at the
track! This hall is going-and it is gone! 714! ... Over 50,000 on their feet!
And the whole team coming to home plate!"

Ernie aired each on radio, Hank whacking "in the third or seventh--my
only non-TV time. Marconi'd have loved him"-if not his club. Seven times
the seventies' Atlanta placed last or next-to-last, reminding the ex-pitcher of
a yarn. The first baseman whiffs in the first. A blowhard behind the dugout
starts yelling. He fans in the fifth. "You can't hit," says the man. "Go back to
the minors!"

Again K-ing, the hitter scales the dugout. "Just listen," he tells the
man. "As a boy I treated a jackass we had on the farm horribly. My dad'd
tell me, `Don't whip that jackass so bad. The way you're hitting him,
someday his spirit'11 come hack to haunt ya.' I never believed my daddy
until today."

In 1976, Ernie replaced lead announcer Milo Hamilton, invoking "pops that
bring rain," skippers "opening a can of pitchers," or "give that one a blue
star"-a paladin of a play. Skip Caray became No. 2. "Here with the play-byplay, the Voice of the Braves, Ernie Johnson." During break, Ernie said, "If you
don't mind, we're all the Voice of the Braves." Decent and deep-going, he
sketched the South's courtesies and codes.

'Eighty-two rewarded them. Atlanta won the N. L. West, next year wiling
a record 2,119,935. A letter to TSN thanked cable "for getting baseball back
in the hearts of rural America." Unchanged: the 1977, 1983, and 1986
Georgia Sportscaster of the Year, even as, retiring, he enjoyed Ernie Johnson
Night.

"We'd gotten awful," said Caray. "Last place, less than a million. Then
this"-X2,020, 1989's largest crowd, from Savannah and Swanee and Siler
City. Son Ernie Jr. joined TNT. Johnson Pere returned to launch Fox's
SportsSouth (Sports Net South). "People tell me, `I thought you'd retired!"'
dad laughed. "`What are you going to do? Give back all your gifts?"'

October invoked 1957-58: The nineties Braves made five World Series.
Only 1995's unfurled a title flag. Ernie's Crabapple, Georgia, home flew the
Marine Corps's "Next to family, there's nothing I'm prouder of"-from a
pole in the front yard.

In 1999, Johnson, 75, retired for good, his voice still falling lightly on the
ear. Dixie's paterfamilias would grandfather the entire region if he could.

ERNIB JOHNSON

Fred Hoey taught New England baseball. Jim Britt played English like a harp.
Ken Coleman was born 15 minutes from Fenway Park. Curt Gowdy became
a network flagship. More than any Red Sox Voice, why was Ned Martin
beloved?

My view is personal, not parochial. Much of Red Sox Nation, I suspect,
would cheer Martin's choice. In 1961, he arrived at Fenway. Fired in 1992,
Ned left a pre-2002 death void.

Quoting Hamlet, he mourned, "When sorrows come they come not [as]
single spies, but in battalions." Critics felt Martin goof-prone. Wiser, the
Nation prized him in a way too deep for applause.

"Mercy!" Ned would say. His quality, seldom strained, still droppeth
from memory today.

Raised 18 miles from Center City, Martin was fated not to be in Philadelphia.
He entered Duke University, joined the Marines, and stormed Iwo Jima. "I'm
not one of the guys that you see raising the flag." Courageous under pressure,
Ned grew up fast. Later he spurned talk of heroism --or war.

"It is always that way with the guys who saw the real bitter action," said
writer Clark Booth. "He never bragged, needed praise, and hated shtick and self promotion." Martin returned to Duke, a not-so-young man in a hurry, to major
in English, read Wolfe and Hemingway, and-what? For a while he didn't know.

In 1950, Ned worked on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, "hearing the Series as
the Whiz Kids lost." Next: advertising and publishing-"fabulously unsuccessful"
-before recalling college radio. "I'd worked at the station, where Bob Wolff
critiqued my tapes and became my hero," then helped his friend crack
Rockville, Maryland's country music-"then `hillbilluh"'-WIN X.

Martin began play-by-play in Athens, Georgia, moving to Triple-A
Charleston in 1956. The next five years were harder than Iwo Jima's ash and
stone. "I kept bothering people, sending tapes to big-league teams." In 1960,
Sox Voice Bill Crowley decided to head publicity. That summer, Boston visited the Potomac. Ned fled Charleston to call an inning and a half.

"We didn't call it an audition," said Curt Gowdy, "hut it was." Next January, Martin visited New England's bandbox bijou.

"The only time I'd even seen Fenway was film of the 1948 playoff." Ned left
the Kenmore Hotel, crossed railroad tracks, and saw "what looked from the
outside like a brickyard, not at all like a park."

Opening Day blared two rookies: Martin and CarlYastrzemski.Yaz hoped to
replaceTed Williams: Ned, cleanse the Katzenjammer Kids. First baseman Dick
Stuart got a standing 0 for picking up a wrapper. Some said shortstop Don
Buddin's license plate should read "E-6." Others felt he had no license to play.

In 1962, the team bus stopped in mid-Manhattan. Gene Conley and
Pumpsie Green got off, asked a restroom, and vanished. Three (lays later
Gene tried to buy a plane ticket to Israel. "If you can't find the promised land
here," said Ned, "go abroad."

Through 1966 Boston placed as low as ninth, but made history come
alive. "I got one good fastball,"Tracy Stallard told Ned October 1, 1961. "1
don't want to walk him, and I'll throw him the fastball. More power to him
if he hits it." Roger Maris did-No. 61.

In 1953, Martin saw a childhood hero perform in Washington. "That hesitation pitch was still getting people out." Satchel Paige last pitched in 1965:
one hit in three innings vs. Boston. Later they retrieved the past at a dinner.
"`If you think I'm gonna throw any place but the letters, shame on ya!' he'd
tell the hitters."

Edwin Martin, Jr.'s shame was the Phils: loving, he despaired of, them. In
September 1964, they led the N.L. by 6 1 / 2 games. Ned visited dad before the Red Sox' last trip. "He'd had two heart attacks, but I said good-bye": in
Detroit, learning of pop's death. Returning home, the son found a letter from
the crypt.

"Baseball had been our bond. When I last saw him, dad predicted the
Phillies' collapse [losing 10 straight games] that had now come to pass. He then
wrote this letter: `I don't see how they can win the pennant. They pitch Short
and Bunning on panic and no one else. I'm afraid they're going to crash."'

Distraught, Ned rejoined a team which already had. Baseball, Mike Bar-
nicle wrote, is not a matter of life and death in Boston. The Red Sox, he
added, were.

"Maybe '67," Martin laughed, "was God's way of making up for years before."
One August Sunday augured Oz-in-the-making. Boston led, 4-3: ninth inning,
one out. "Berry, a fast [Chicago] man at third," Ned said on WHDH Radio.
"Wyatt looks at him and throws. And there's a little looper to right field.
Tartabull coming on, has a weak arm. Here comes the throw to the plate. It
is-out at home! He is out! Tartabull has thrown the runner out at the plate,
and the ball game is over!" Before 1967, Jose would not have got Aunt Maude.

It ended vs. Minnesota. Yaz batted in the penultimate game: Sox, 3--2,
two on. "Deep toward right field! This may be gone! It's outta here! Home
run!" Next day, "Lonborg is within one out of his biggest victory ever, his
twenty-second of the year, and his first over the Twins. The pitch is looped
toward shortstop. Petrocelli's back, he's got it! The Red Sox win [the flag,
5-3]! And there's pandemonium on the field! Listen!"As the last out settled
in Rico Petrocelli's glove, students and working men and housewives on the
field became a wave, hundreds of bodies rocking, collectively and ecstatically.

Success didn't last. Interest did. "The garrison finish revived the franchise," said the man who read poetry like Alan Ginsberg's, had politics like
John Wayne's, and loved Richard Nixon. Milhous thrice lost Massachusetts:
it revered Ned, anyway. One moment he called the Splinter "Big Guy."The
next evoked the Bard: "Good night, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing
thee to thy rest."

Martin closed bars, haunted book shops, and treated Fenway's workforce
like royalty. "The complete package," Booth said, included disdain for radio
jack, sham, and fools.

Mercy! The '71 ers lost a doubleheader. Ned heard traveling secretary Jack
Rogers say, "Be on the bus in 40 minutes." He blurted, "Bullshit," unaware of an open mike. "It was outrageous to happen then," said Martin, nearly fired.
"Now it'd be a nursery rhyme." One memo knocked him for working sans
necktie-in 100-degree heat. Another told Coleman to bar Ned if "not
attired in accordance with company rules." Martin threatened to wear a tux.
"Given how many clowns he offended," Booth wrote, "it's a wonder he lasted
30 years."

In 1971, Coleman dealt wireless for TV. Martin become radio's big guy.
Partner Jim Woods arrived in 1974. Next July, Boston led second-place New
York, 1-0, at Shea. "Drive to left-center field. May be a gapper! Lynn is running, Lynn is going! He's got it in a great catch! Oh, mercy, what a catch by
Lynn! Red Sox fans are going ape out here! This is World Series time!" Ned
crashed the bigs at 37. In October 1975, age 51, he made a Classic. "Next
year, the new Series TV contract banned local guys. I snuck under the wire."