Curt Smith - Mercy!: A Celebration of Fenway Parks Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV

MERCY!

Also by Curt Smith

A Talk in the Park
Pull Up a Chair
The Voice
Voices of Summer
What Baseball Means to Me
Storied Stadiums
Our House
Of Mikes and Men
Windows on the White House
The Storytellers
A Fine Sense of the Ridiculous
Voices of The Game
Long Time Gone
Americas Dizzy Dean

A CELEBRATION
OF FENWAY PARKS
CENTENNIAL TOLD
THROUGH RED SOX
RADIO AND TV

CURT SMITH

Copyright 2012 Potomac Books, Inc.

Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Curt.

Mercy! : a celebration of Fenway Parks centennial told through Red Sox Radio and TV / Curt Smith. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59797-935-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-59797-936-8 (electronic)

1. Fenway Park (Boston, Mass.)Anecdotes. 2. Boston Red Sox (Baseball team)Anecdotes. 3. Radio broadcasting of sportsMassachusettsBostonAnecdotes. 4. Television broadcastingMassachusettsBostonAnecdotes. I. Title.

GV416.B674S548 2012

796.357640974461dc23

(alk. paper)

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

Potomac Books
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my mother

who introduced me
to the Red Sox

Mercy.... If that word has no meaning,
you havent had your Sox on.

Boston Globe columnist Jack Craig,
on Ned Martins signature phrase

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. A book beats on against deadline, borne back to its start. Many people pitched Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Parks Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV from spring training to final game. They were generous with their help and time, and I am grateful to them.

Narrating 1967s The Impossible Dream long-playing record, Ken Coleman hailed an affair twixt a town and a team. His voice will always be synonymous with that year. Other mikemen to thank, their Fenway suzerainty long or brief, include Oscar Baez, Uri Berenguer, Joe Castiglione, Glenn Geffner, Ken Harrelson, Sean McDonough, Jon Miller, Dave OBrien, Don Orsillo, Rico Petrocelli, Jerry Remy, Dick Stockton, Jerry Trupiano, and late Curt Gowdy, Ned Martin, Bob Murphy, Bob Starr, J. P. Villaman, and Jim Woods.

The Red Sox front office was especially helpful. I met current president and chief executive officer Larry Lucchino in the early 1990s, when he owned the Orioles, built Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and beat the Olde Towne Team more than was necessary. Red Sox Nation long ago forgave him: saving Fenway Park, taking a 2004 title, and encoring in 2007 helped. As at Baltimore, Lucchino has forged a staff adverse to bragging, gloating, or thinking they have it made.

Let me thank Sam Kennedy, executive vice president/chief operating officer: also Lawrence Cancro, senior VP/Fenway affairs; Sarah C. Coffin, photo archival assistant; Pam Ganley, manager of media relations; Susan Goodenow, senior VP/public affairs and marketing; Debbie Matson, director of publications; Dan Rea, coordinator, alumni and team archives; Fay Scheer, assistant to the president; and John Shestakofsky, media relations coordinator. Dick Bresciani, vice president/emeritus and team historian, is the Soxopedia from Don Aase to Al Zarilla. Jim Healy, former VP, broadcasting and technology, detailed the late-1990s plan for a new ballpark to replace John Updikes lyric little bandbox.

Many have covered Fenway long and well, including Nick Cafardo, Gordon Edes, Peter Gammons, Tony Massarotti, Martin Nolan, Bob Ryan, and Dan Shaughnessy. Mort Bloomberg profiled Jim Britt for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) biography project. Shaun L. Kellys boston.com article on Ned Martin etched a truly literate man. The late Jack Craig was baseballs first true radio/TV critic, his SporTView a Boston Globe, then The Sporting News, landmark. Jack was kind, thoughtful, and incorruptible. I hope he would have liked Mercy!as my generation admired him.

I am indebted to Tom Shaer, former WITS Boston radio reporter and talk host, now head, Chicagos Tom Shaer Media, for play-by-play, material about Ned Martins and Jim Woodss 1978 firing, and other invaluable behind-the-scenes archive. Archivist John Miley and WEEI Radio executive sports producer Jon Albanese contributed other play-by-play. I wish to also thank NBC TVs late Scotty Connal, Harry Coyle, and Carl Lindemannand longtime friend Ken Samelson, who reviewed the manuscript. George Mitrovich, chairman, The Great Fenway Park Writers Series, supplied insight and vignette.

National Radio Hall of Fame president Bruce DuMont officially endorsed the book. A statue of 6-foot-4 Ted Williamselegant as a stallion, long-limbed as a pelican, and jittery as a colt: to poet Donald Hall, turn[ing] on himself like a barbers pole in its shapely curvinggilds the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Its staff is as tall, including senior library associate Bill Francis; librarian Jim Gates; senior director, communications and education, Brad Horn; president Jeff Idelson; photo archivist Pat Kelly; manager, museum programs, Stephen Light; and communications director Greg Mudder.

Potomac Books Laura Briggs, Hilary Claggett, Elizabeth Demers, Sam Dorrance, Elizabeth Norris, and Kathryn Owens conceived this project. Also helpful were my agent Andrew Blauner and counselor Phil Hochberg. My wife, Sarah, a Houstonian, grasps the Red Sox Texas-sized sorcery. Having been to Fenway, our children, Olivia, 13, and Travis, 12, know that it is not wasted on the young.

I did 125 interviews, relived hundreds of broadcast hoursSlaughter scores! One of the greatest catches weve ever seen by Yastrzemski! Carlton Fisk... is the happiest guy in Massachusetts! In foul ground is Nettles! Ortiz has done it again!and physically or electronically visited the Baseball Hall, Library of Congress, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, BostonGlobe.com, and the Sports Museum in Boston: Rusty Sullivan, executive director, and Richard Johnson, curator.

I wrote where I am privileged to teach: the University of Rochester in Upstate New York. Students Steve Huber and Nate Mulberg were as diligent in research as in the classroom. I am pleased that my undergraduate alma mater, the State University of New York at Geneseo, will receive half of all royalties accrued from the sales of this book. Finally, let me thank the citizens of the Nationa term Boston Globe feature writer Nathan Cobb coined in 1986without whom the Red Sox would not be the Red Sox.

In 1971, former secretary of state Dean Acheson wrote a memoir, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. An army, not a diplomat, was present at this books creation, Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Parks Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV. Onward, Red Sox Nation, marching as to war.

In July 2009, I spoke at the Baltimore Sports Museum, then walked a short pop-up to the Hilton Harbor Hotel: in turn, a fly ball from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The OriolesRed Sox game was scheduled for 7:05 p.m. Suddenly, at 5 oclockgates opened at 5:30a battalion left nearby hotels to occupy the park.