One of the most vivid memories I have of my childhood is the way the New York Yankees dominated baseball. Yogi, Mickey, Whitey, Moose, and company were awesome. In grammar school, guys who were Yankee fans walked with a swagger that was born out of their allegiance to the best team in baseball. The Yankees were truly a dynasty. While I remember the heroics on the field, mostly I remember the voice of the man who chronicled it all.
Mel Allen was an original. Only the most vehement Yankee hater, and there were many of them, would not admit he was a true treasure of the national pastime. Mel was there through it all. He was announcing Yankee games at the end of Babe Ruth’s career. He was the on field master of ceremonies, when Lou Gehrig gave his famous “Luckiest Man.” speech. I remember him calling Don Larson’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series like it happened yesterday. Mel was part of all our lives.
If you were a kid playing stick ball in New York City, there was always someone in the game doing a running commentary, a play by play if you will. That commentary always included the Allen signatures: “How about that?” and “Going, going, gone!” New York had three major league teams back then and they had some great announcers. Red Barber, who was inducted years later into the Baseball Hall of Fame with Mel, had left the Dodgers to broadcast for the Yankees. He had a smooth southern gentleman’s delivery. In response to a great play, Barber would shout, “Oh doctor!” The Giants had Russ Hodges, best known for his call of Bobby Thompson's “Shot heard ‘round the world”, which gave the Giants the 1951 pennant in a one game playoff with the Dodgers. Hodges was famous for “Bye bye baby!” when a home run was hit. But because of Bobby Thompson, he will always be remembered for shrieking, “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant!”
The man behind the mike for the Dodgers, as he still is, was Vin Scully. A graduate of New York’s Fordham University, Scully began working with Barber for the Dodgers and ultimately became the lead announcer. His style has often been imitated but never duplicated. “Two balls, two strikes, two out, the deuces are wild”, he would say. If the tying run was on, the batter walked, putting the go ahead run on base, Scully would say, “The plot thickens.” Scully bridges the gap from Bedford Avenue to Chavez Ravine and the Dodgers are richer for it. He is not a mural on the outfield fence of some long ago hero who never played in Los Angeles. He is the man who has seen it all, from Billy Cox to Adrian Beltre, with no lapses in between.
But, for me, the king of them all was Mel Allen. You got the feeling listening to Mel that he really loved the game. I was convinced he would be there, whether or not he got paid. Things would occur to him and he would say them with no filter. Once, with the Yankees beating the Tigers by eleven runs in the second game of a double header, Mel said he would sometimes, when the action was slow, make rhymes out of players names. From that point on, he demonstrated that skill. Don Mossi on the mound for the Tigers and Mel gave us “Mossi tossi”. When third baseman Eddie Yost stepped in the batters’ box he became “Yost that you post”. Each rhyme was followed by an embarrassed little chuckle.
He was also a great spokesman for baseball. Listening to him tie in stories of the greats he had known to the people playing the game now, gave a sense of continuity that only baseball can have. Years after the Yankees unceremoniously dropped him, looking to fill the broadcast booth with ex-players, I got to meet Mel Allen. He was working with my friend Bill Rooney. Rooney was a Vice President with a major soft drink company and Mel would go around meeting and greeting new accounts. He loved meeting people and talking baseball. One story would lead to another and Mel constantly lost track of time. What was great was that he didn’t care about schedules; he just liked to talk with folks.
After being let go by the Yankees in 1964, Mel took a few years off and resurfaced as the voice of the weekly highlight show “This Week In Baseball”. A whole new generation of lucky fans got to hear the best that baseball broadcasting will ever know.
Before the National Hockey League expanded rosters to allow two goaltenders per team to suit up for each game, there were some interesting ways used to solve the loss of a goalie to injury. Every arena had a “house goalie”. These were guys who would be dressed and ready to play in the game for either side, at a moments notice.
Madison Square Garden’s house goalie was Joe Schaeffer. Each game night, Joe would be suited up, with the exception of a jersey. If, and when the call came, he would simply pull on the game sweater of the injured goalie’s team and head for the ice. On those nights when Joe wasn’t available, Arnie Nocks was the house goalie. Arnie was best known as the Ranger practice goalie. He was also the producer of The Soupy Sales television show. In the New York City of the 50's and 60's, you could not be more of a celebrity than that.Two goalie injuries in the same game made things very interesting. Sometimes things got so bad that there were actually public address announcements asking if there were any college hockey players in attendance. Twice I was at games where a total unknown played goal. They, of course played in a manner that ensured their forever being unknowns.
The most amazing story involving substitute goaltenders involves one of the most famous names in hockey history. Lester Patrick, a charter member of the National Hockey League was the head of the most famous family in hockey history. The playoff system, the farm system and the draft were all designed principally by Patrick. The trophy presented each year to the individual determined to have best served the game of hockey bears Lester Patrick’s name and likeness.
He worked in professional hockey as a player, a coach and ultimately an owner. He coached the New York Rangers for sixteen years. In that time the team failed to make the playoffs only once. The best remembered story about a Lester Patrick coached team in the playoffs involves an injury to a goalie and the need for an immediate replacement.
The year was 1928, seven years after Lester Patrick had retired as a player. He was coaching the New York Rangers against the Montreal Maroons in the Stanley Cup Finals. It was the second game of the series. Montreal had won the first game. Game two was a tight contest. Suddenly, New York’s fortunes took a downward swing, when a shot by Stewart of the Maroons hit Ranger goalie Lorne Chabot in the eye. Patrick retreated to the locker room to decide how he was going to avoid forfeiting the game. The solution he found amazed everyone.
He emerged from the locker room in full goaltender gear. He skated onto the ice to the shocked disbelief of the Rangers and their fans. Patrick was eight years removed from having played the game. In fact, when he was an active player he played defense. He had never played a minute of his professional career as a goalie. He was 44 years old and he was taking matters into his own hands. How did he do? Was there a Hollywood ending? Patrick took his place in goal and proceeded to stop 17 of the 18 shots that Montreal took at him. He held the Maroons off and took the game into overtime. Frank Boucher scored the winning goal in overtime. The rest, as they say is history.
A Ranger farmhand was brought up to play goal the rest of the way. The Rangers won two of the next three games and won their first Stanley Cup.
I went to my first hockey game in 1954, the New York Rangers against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Rangers snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, as they frequently did back then. They blew a three-goal lead in the third period to lose by a goal. The winning goal, in fact, was scored with two seconds left in the game. Some scars never heal.
That aside, my recollections of the New York Rangers of my youth were happy ones. We didn’t win a lot. Actually, it was forty years after I first attended a game that I saw the Rangers win the Stanley Cup. It was a simpler time back then, and I was younger and carefree for sure, but it went way beyond that. Hockey players, like players in every other sport, all had second jobs. Their sport’s salaries weren’t enough to support them and their families. That is an amazing thing to contemplate. NHL players loaded trucks, tended bar, or sold insurance.
One of the pioneers in turning things around was Doug Harvey. He helped organize the NHL Players’ Association. Harvey was the premier defenseman in the National Hockey League. His name appears on the Stanley Cup six times as a member of the Montreal Canadiens. He also won the Norris Trophy (given to the NHL’s best defenseman) seven times. He was a first team all star eleven times. This resume meant nothing to a union fearful management at Montreal and Doug was sent to the New York Rangers in 1961. Shortly after his arrival, the Rangers played with a confident air that I had never seen in my lifetime. He was a class act out there. And he was a class act off the ice too.
In those days you could, if you knew the way, walk right up to the Ranger locker room. Fans would assemble between periods and wait for the team to head back onto the ice. Patting the occasional player on the shoulder and letting the team know we supported them. It was a way for a kid to feel a connection with the team. In this day and age of satellite dishes and super stadiums that connection has been lost. Players are reduced to tiny doll-like millionaires all wearing the same uniform.
Dollar signs are attached to everything a player does. There are stories of players changing equipment every period, autographing the old jersey, helmet, etc and having it sold for him. In contrast, there were the likes of Doug Harvey. Guys from rural Canada, playing a game they loved, for very little money. When I was a kid, the players emerged after the game, from the dressing room exit on 49th Street. They would stop, talk and, yes, sign autographs. Imagine, they did all this for no compensation. I am sure that in the eBay culture of today they would be considered foolish. Considered foolish too, I guess, are those of us who took those autographs home and kept them in our dresser drawer.
The last man on 49th Street after every game, making sure everyone who wanted one got an autograph was Doug Harvey. Often in the rain or snow, he would stand there signing and asking us how we liked the game. A pleasant smile and a real interest in these New York kids made Doug Harvey someone I would never forget.
It was two days after Christmas in 1989, when I was riding the subway into Manhattan. I was on my way to work. As I rode I opened the Daily News to the sports pages and read of the death of Doug Harvey. I felt like I had lost a family member. When I got to work I received calls from Bobby, Augie and the Herl. They were all guys I grew up with. They were all kids in that crowd of autograph seekers who waited for Doug Harvey. And, they were all feeling a sense of loss having read of his death.
I miss the old Garden, I miss the six-team league and the Wednesday-Sunday home and home games. But mostly I miss Doug Harvey.
