I was just at the Baseball Hall of fame website and read that Curt Gowdy died today, or rather, yesterday as it's after Midnight. Gowdy was a real American original. He's considered one of the greatest of all sportscasters, particularly for baseball. He broadcast Yankee games for a couple of years in the late 1940s and early 1950s before becoming the Red Sox announcer for many years. He began broadcasting The Game of the Week for NBC around 1966. I began watching baseball in 1971 and his is the first voice I remember when I think of baseball broadcasters.
He was casual and friendly. In his later years, he would often mistake one player for another or commit some other minor error but he was never an intrusion on the game like so many of today's pompous sportscasters. I fondly recall his friendly banter with such baseball immortals as Dizzy Dean, Satchel Paige, and Ted Williams. For many of the years I was listening, he was partnered with former Yankee Tony Kubek. My brother Joe raised me to be a Yankee-hater but that never detracted from my fondness for the Gowdy/Kubek team.
Curt Gowdy knew his stuff, and knew it so well that he didn't feel the need to constantly remind you just how much he knew. Many of today's broadcasters could learn a great deal from listening to Gowdy or Vin Scully call a game. Gowdy's voice was truly a voice of my childhood, one that recalls happy summer days and the beginnings of my love for America's game. As a broadcaster, I wouldn't call Gowdy a home run hitter but, then again, I don't think he tried too often to swing for the fences. No, Curt Gowdy was a consistent .300 hitter, an always reliable player in a game where consistency was the most valuable attribute of a long season.
