"HOW ABOUT THAT?" or "GOING, GOING, GONE?" Anyone who does not recognize those sayings does not know baseball broadcasting history. It is the voice of a true legend: Mel Allen.
I missed his years as broadcaster for the NY Yankees from 1939-1964. I did not know that fact until I was a teen ager growing up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1980's. I always thought he was just the voice of my favorite weekly program on Saturday afternoons "This Week In Baseball" which I saw every episode from 1977 to 1996, when Allen passed away.
But I would like to share the definitive biography of Mel Allen with the group: How About That! The Life of Mel Allen by Stephen Borelli.
Let's start with this: "There's a fly ball out to right field...that ball is going, going...it is gone!" The voice was unmistakable. From the 1930s until his death in 1996, Mel Allen riveted generations of sports fans with his resonant Southern tones on radio and television. His signature calls of "How about that!" (after a spectacular play) and "Going... going... gone!" (to frame a home run) made him an American icon.
How About That! The Life of Mel Allen is the first biography on perhaps the most famous sports broadcaster. Author Stephen Borelli, who, like his father and grandfather, attentively followed Allen's on-air accounts, traces the announcer from tiny towns in Alabama to the glares of Yankee Stadium and the Rose Bowl. You brush shoulders with legendary college football coach Bear Bryant, famous radio host Ralph Edwards, and a lineup of New York Yankees legends that includes Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel. Allen had a fan following as frantic as theirs, including legions of female admirers. You experience baseball's glorious radio days, when announcers like Allen and his Brooklyn rival Red Barber gave listeners sight and sound and their depictions made ballplayers seem larger than life. Through Allen's folksy words, you follow a Yankees dynasty at its height, from the intensity on the field during a feverish 1949 pennant race with the Boston Red Sox and numerous "Subway Series" to the camaraderie in the clubhouse and on overnight train rides. You learn about Allen's fade from the national eye after the Yankees mysteriously dismissed him in 1964 and his second broadcasting life in the late 1970s through mid-1990s as host of the groundbreaking television show This Week in Baseball. During this period, a unique friendship with George Steinbrenner allowed Allen to call one last no-hitter as he became the voice of baseball again.
How About That! is the story of the American dream. A boy raised by Russian Jewish immigrants who face Ku Klux Klan persecution and Depression-era hardship rises to national fame with a magical voice and a touch of chance. He stays on top with a relentless drive to succeed that leaves him a lifelong bachelor, though always a devoted family man.
“Mel was bigger than the Yankees,” former Yankee second baseman and broadcaster Jerry Coleman tells me from his home in San Diego. “To me, he was the best baseball broadcaster ever.” One day in the ’50s, “the best broadcaster ever” got a phone call from a young man in the Midwest who was entertaining the idea of becoming a broadcaster and wanted some tips.
Mel patiently talked with him for nearly an hour. The young man eventually opted to follow another career path.
“Mel always had time for people; that’s why he never had any time for himself,” Larry Allen, Mel’s brother, says from Montgomery, Ala., offering a hint of the same comforting voice that made Mel Allen so popular for decades with Yankee fans and as host of “This Week In Baseball” for 19 years, the “Baseball Tonight” of its time.
In 1964, after 25 years as a Yankee broadcaster, Allen was unceremoniously fired. Years later, he was re-hired and became a confidant of the man who once called him for those tips – George Steinbrenner.
In conclusion, this book is a real treat for those of us who grew up listening to Mel Allen call Yankee games on the radio. For those less fortunate youngsters (like myself) who never heard Mel, it is a meticulously researched history of sports broadcasting and a three-dimensional view of the greatest radio voice. Mel's game imagery remains unmatched. Steve Borelli's book is filled with details gleaned from people and sources that are fast vanishing. Mr. Borelli' book illustrates what many of us already knew: Mel loved and respected his listening audience--feelings that I find scarce by today's standards.
I missed his years as broadcaster for the NY Yankees from 1939-1964. I did not know that fact until I was a teen ager growing up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1980's. I always thought he was just the voice of my favorite weekly program on Saturday afternoons "This Week In Baseball" which I saw every episode from 1977 to 1996, when Allen passed away.
But I would like to share the definitive biography of Mel Allen with the group: How About That! The Life of Mel Allen by Stephen Borelli.
Let's start with this: "There's a fly ball out to right field...that ball is going, going...it is gone!" The voice was unmistakable. From the 1930s until his death in 1996, Mel Allen riveted generations of sports fans with his resonant Southern tones on radio and television. His signature calls of "How about that!" (after a spectacular play) and "Going... going... gone!" (to frame a home run) made him an American icon.
How About That! The Life of Mel Allen is the first biography on perhaps the most famous sports broadcaster. Author Stephen Borelli, who, like his father and grandfather, attentively followed Allen's on-air accounts, traces the announcer from tiny towns in Alabama to the glares of Yankee Stadium and the Rose Bowl. You brush shoulders with legendary college football coach Bear Bryant, famous radio host Ralph Edwards, and a lineup of New York Yankees legends that includes Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel. Allen had a fan following as frantic as theirs, including legions of female admirers. You experience baseball's glorious radio days, when announcers like Allen and his Brooklyn rival Red Barber gave listeners sight and sound and their depictions made ballplayers seem larger than life. Through Allen's folksy words, you follow a Yankees dynasty at its height, from the intensity on the field during a feverish 1949 pennant race with the Boston Red Sox and numerous "Subway Series" to the camaraderie in the clubhouse and on overnight train rides. You learn about Allen's fade from the national eye after the Yankees mysteriously dismissed him in 1964 and his second broadcasting life in the late 1970s through mid-1990s as host of the groundbreaking television show This Week in Baseball. During this period, a unique friendship with George Steinbrenner allowed Allen to call one last no-hitter as he became the voice of baseball again.
How About That! is the story of the American dream. A boy raised by Russian Jewish immigrants who face Ku Klux Klan persecution and Depression-era hardship rises to national fame with a magical voice and a touch of chance. He stays on top with a relentless drive to succeed that leaves him a lifelong bachelor, though always a devoted family man.
“Mel was bigger than the Yankees,” former Yankee second baseman and broadcaster Jerry Coleman tells me from his home in San Diego. “To me, he was the best baseball broadcaster ever.” One day in the ’50s, “the best broadcaster ever” got a phone call from a young man in the Midwest who was entertaining the idea of becoming a broadcaster and wanted some tips.
Mel patiently talked with him for nearly an hour. The young man eventually opted to follow another career path.
“Mel always had time for people; that’s why he never had any time for himself,” Larry Allen, Mel’s brother, says from Montgomery, Ala., offering a hint of the same comforting voice that made Mel Allen so popular for decades with Yankee fans and as host of “This Week In Baseball” for 19 years, the “Baseball Tonight” of its time.
In 1964, after 25 years as a Yankee broadcaster, Allen was unceremoniously fired. Years later, he was re-hired and became a confidant of the man who once called him for those tips – George Steinbrenner.
In conclusion, this book is a real treat for those of us who grew up listening to Mel Allen call Yankee games on the radio. For those less fortunate youngsters (like myself) who never heard Mel, it is a meticulously researched history of sports broadcasting and a three-dimensional view of the greatest radio voice. Mel's game imagery remains unmatched. Steve Borelli's book is filled with details gleaned from people and sources that are fast vanishing. Mr. Borelli' book illustrates what many of us already knew: Mel loved and respected his listening audience--feelings that I find scarce by today's standards.