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All right, the Atlanta Crackers, you're going to get your first chance to do play-by-play.
What did you do to get ready for your first broadcast?
Well, to begin with, the problem with my first broadcast, I didn't know whether they'd ever
be one or not because when I was in the Marines, I'd done maybe one or two games for Earl Mann,
the owner of the team.
He'd asked me to maybe fill in, they couldn't find an announcer, and I said, well, I don't
really want to do it in uniform, but if you clear it with a colonel, I'll do it and I'll
give my check to the Red Cross.
I didn't feel like I should do it, but I went ahead and did it anyway, and he told me then,
he said, if you ever get out of the service, I want you to be my announcer.
So I was sort of basing my future on that promise to some degree, although I know a
lot of things can happen.
Well, what happened was that Wheaties bought the games on the radio station.
The radio station had a good sports announcer named Stan Raymond, and they wanted to use
him because, number one, he was established as their announcer on their staff, and number
two, they wouldn't have to pay anything extra.
I told Earl Mann about the problem and he said, well, Wheaties and WATL, they probably
want to use Stan Raymond, but I tell you what, I'm going to give them a battle because I
made you this promise and I'm going to give you a battle.
So the thing went back and forth for a long, long time, and a month or so before the season
starts I still don't know.
Now we get up to a couple of weeks before I still don't know.
Now the last week before the opening game I don't know, and now we finally get up to
the day before the opening game, and Earl Mann calls and says, I'm going to hold out
for you as much as I can.
Well, I figured, you know, in most cases in that situation in radio, the guy would say,
well, Ernie, I did my best and I'm sorry, but we couldn't do it any better.
Earl Mann hung on and he finally called me the morning of opening day.
And he says, come on down, you're going to be my announcer.
So I really didn't have much time to get ready.
But I love baseball so much, it was sort of natural for me.
And I never had any real problems doing play by play.
I did the best I could.
And my idea was I'm going to tell these people what I would like to hear if I were a listener.
And I just did it that way.
And it seemed to work okay.
The first walk out Tommy Thompson, put a man on first, nobody down, and Hal Jeffco, who
has a single in one trip, is a batter.
He had the first hit off Thompson, a bouncing ball over the hill in the first inning.
Jeffco hitting 366.
He's a pitch, fast ball, strike one call, right down the middle about felt high.
No balls and one strike on Hal Jeffco.
45 RBI to this fellow during the season.
I'll feel deep to left.
He's a pitch, fast ball, slam down to first base.
Ducola sketches and touches the bag.
Double play.
That one rocketed off the bat of Hal Jeffco and direct into the hands of Vic Ducola at
first base.
Vic smacked the ball.
It was just a matter of reflex and stepped on the bag for the double play.
And that is the 60th double play for the crackers this season.
Radio advertising and sponsorships and television has changed so much over the years because
when you started doing those Atlanta crackers games, Wheaties was the entire sponsor.
They had it in its entirety.
Wheaties was the sponsor, no question about that.
They sponsored, I'd say, 90 different broadcasts, some of minor leagues and some of them in
the major leagues.
And they even had a little trade paper about broadcasting and they would bring in the broadcasters
to a convention once a year, talk about the techniques of announcing how to do the commercials.
And during the first season that I worked for Wheaties, the company made us write our
own commercials for one week.
We had to do a commercial every half inning and we had to write a different commercial
for each half inning.
So they made us do a lot of things that were a little bit extra from just announcing.
But it was a great outfit.
General Mills had an idea about marketing that was excellent and also they had a good
product and it was wonderful to work for Wheaties.
So not only did you have to do the games, you also had to read the commercials that
you yourself had written.
Did you have to get that copy approved by General Mills?
No, you didn't.
You just did it and they trusted you and you winged it.
All right, let's go back to the cracker games.
You got that first one under your belt.
Did you have a feeling of accomplishment or a rival?
I've done it now, I are one.
I think Bob, what happened was I had done a game and I was glad the first one was over.
And I think I got through it okay.
It seemed to be all right.
The reaction was favorable, but I knew that I was going to have to get better and I made
an intense study about what I wanted to do and I began to collect anecdotes that I could
use, put them down on the index cards and I used that throughout my broadcasting career.
I also had the idea that I would get the information about each player.
And in the Southern League in 1946, there was no such thing as a PR man.
You didn't even get a roster from the teams.
You had to get the stats that you did get out of the Sunday paper, which went through
the Thursday games.
So I would get them out of the Sunday paper, then I'd bring them up to date as the games
went on and to get information about a player, I'd go down to the hotel and as the players
would come into the lobby, I'd collar them and we'd sit down there and I'd take out my
index cards and I'd say, how tall are you?
What are your weigh?
Where do you live and what do you do in the off season?
And also where did you play last year and where did you start?
Now they give you these books and all that stuff is automatic so you don't have to worry
about it.
But in those days, you had to dig for every fact that you got.
Wow, you had to be not only your play by play man, you had to be an advertising man, a copywriter,
a public relations director for both teams, a statistician.
When did you have time to sleep?
At the same time I was doing the cracker games, I was doing a major league game of the week
on WAGA.
We get a telegraphic report, maybe the Cub Cardinal game in St. Louis.
I'd be in a studio at WAGA in Atlanta and I'd recreate the game that afternoon.
I might go out to Ponce de Leon Park that night and do a double head of live.
But you didn't mind that, you enjoyed it, you know, it's part of the business and you
love what you were doing.
Now you mentioned the word recreation.
There may be a lot of people who have absolutely no idea what it means to recreate a ball
game.
Take me through it.
That was a fairly common process back until I'd say in the major leagues recreation went
out around 1952 or 3.
Pittsburgh Pirates were the last broadcast team to do recreation.
But basically what an announcer did in a recreation went this way.
Let's say the Atlanta Crackers were playing the Birmingham Barons in Birmingham.
I'd be in a studio in Atlanta with a telegrapher.
He'd have his telegraphic machine and he'd have a typewriter.
He'd have a cohort from Western Union in the press box in Birmingham who'd have the same
equipment and he'd send the dot dashes to my guy in the studio.
He would write it down on a typewriter and he'd write down the play by play of the game.
Now generally the announcer when he did a recreation he'd stay maybe an inning or an
inning and a half behind because a lot of things would happen.
You'd lose a line or something would happen that you couldn't continue and you'd have
to fill.
So you wanted a little bit of a cushion to fill with.
But what would happen, my telegrapher, he would write out say Jones up for Atlanta.
He's leading off for Atlanta.
He'd say Jones up.
B1W that's ball one wide.
S1C strike one call.
F-L-O-G-S fouled over the grandstand.
And then he'd say Jones out short to first.
One out.
That's all you'd get.
So the announcer would say Smith's out there on the mound.
He's looking into Brown to get the sign now.
The infield's in a little bit.
The outfield's around toward left.
Now wait a minute.
Jones is going to step out and go back for the Rossen bag.
Now he's back in the batter's box.
Now so-and-so looks in, gets the sign.
Here's the wind up.
Here's the pitch.
Ball one outside or curveball just missed the outside corner.
Ball one to count on him and then you go through the other pitches and foul one over the grandstand
and so forth.
And then you'd say here's the pitch.
Ground ball hits you short.
He's back.
He has it long.
Throw the first base to Smith and he's out by a step and a half.
Now all you got was out the shortstop.
But you had to sort of be an actor more than you were the announcer.
And if you had a lull like Ronald Reagan told a story at the White House about this.
He said he fouled off 17 pitches.
You know they lost their line.
The guy fouled off 17 pitches.
Or you'd have a dog run on the field.
Dog would run on the field.
They'd have to call time.
Or sometimes you'd get a sprinkle that really didn't happen.
And the guys had come back from the road trip and their wives say what about that dog.
Oh no that wasn't a dog.
What are you talking about?
And another thing that would happen.
You'd get down to the ninth inning and the announcer wanted to go home.
Now he was an inning and a half behind so he'd catch up in a hurry.
And usually in the ninth inning the batter went zam zam zam.
They hit the first pitch whether they really did or not.
But it was a lot of fun and you know there were some guys could do a real good recreation
and couldn't broadcast a live game.
And there were others that could do a game live very well but they couldn't do a good
recreation.
You can actually do a better broadcast knowing what has already happened.
But did you use sound effects with it?
The only sound effect we had we took up from the guy who preceded me because people were
used to it.
When a guy got a hit we would hit a gong like the NBC gong.
Bong.
He got a single we'd give him one.
Bong-bong would be a double.
And that would create an interest for people that weren't quite listening.
You know they'd hear this and this.
There was something happening.
But the only thing I had other than that was just slap a ruler on the table and that was
a ball hitting the bat.
But some guys had very intricate crowd noise and press box PA.
And I know when I worked with Red Barber in Brooklyn we did some recreations in 1948 and
49 and he didn't use anything.
He just gave it as it happened.
And there were guys in bars you know who could interpret those dots and dashes that you hear
in the background and they'd bet say hey this guy's going to hit a home run.
Give me some odds and make a little bar money.
Now he didn't succeed you in Brooklyn but there was a company later in Brooklyn in the
50s because that's how I grew up a Brooklyn fan who did the recreation with the soundtrack
with the xylophone hammer on a block of wood for a hit.
And I wondered why I always heard about every four minutes attaboy Duke.
Whether Schneider was at the plate or anything.
That's your recording and Nat Albright was that guy wasn't it.
Yeah that did a good job.
He had a network down there toward your home in Carolina.
Absolutely.
But now you did not travel with the team at all with Atlanta.
No not at all.
And all the home games live but the recreation on the road.
We did one road game.
It was in 1948.
We went to Birmingham and I thought that was really a big shot going on the train with
the team and getting over there to Birmingham and doing the broadcast direct from Birmingham
live.
But that's the only time I ever did one.
Everything else I had a picture of the ballpark.
I'd say it hit the Coca-Cola sign in right field something like that.
But I'd never seen those parks.
You actually turned down the first major league broadcasting job that you had offered to you
didn't you?
I didn't really turn it down but I was unable to accept it.
I had signed a contract with Old Gold to do the Atlanta Cracker games in 47.
And really I thought I was a big shot now.
Finally signed a contract.
I've never even seen a contract before but I signed.
I felt real good.
I'm going to do the games.
They're going to pay me X number of dollars and that's great.
And then the Giants had an interest in me the New York Giants and they sent a guy down
and said that they'd like for me to come and broadcast the giant games with Frank Frisch.
Big had been doing the color with a guy named Ellis and they wanted to replace him.
So I said wow I'm going to the big leagues this is great.
But I did have a contract with Old Gold.
However they had agreed not in writing but they had agreed that if I got a big league
offer I would be released and I could get out of my contract.
So I was very anxious to go and I found out that they weren't going to let me out of my
contract and I talked to Earl Mann my patron saint there the owner of the crackers and
he said well I'm going to do everything I can.
I don't want to lose you but I want you to get to the big leagues.
And he said we'll try to fight this and I'll talk to him and see if they'll release you
although it's not written into the contract.
Well they wouldn't budge.
They said no.
So it was very disappointing that I had to stay at least another year and do the cracker
games.
I didn't get a chance to go to the big leagues and that's when Brooklyn came down and scouted
me and got me and then I did go to Brooklyn and work for Old Gold.
You mentioned the Dodgers.
They came looking at you.
Branch Rickey who owned the team was the guy who pulled all the strings.
He was an innovator to the nth degree.
Give me your recollections of Branch Rickey.
Branch Rickey was about the smartest man I ever saw in baseball.
He was ahead of everybody.
He was a man who really brought the farm system to fulfillment.
He was a guy that first really put paddings on the walls around the ballpark.
He was the first executive that insisted that the players wear batting helmets.
A lot of things that now we take for granted were innovations brought into the game by
Branch Rickey.
He was also the best man as they say of putting a dollar sign on a muscle.
He could look at a guy as a prospect and figure out better than anybody else whether this
guy would develop into a true major leaguer.
He had success wherever he went.
He was probably the most brilliant baseball man that ever ran a front office.
He did have an eye for talent and it wasn't always on the field.
Sometimes it was in the broadcast booth.
Unbeknownst to you, he had some of his scouts listening to you do the Atlanta Crackers games.
That's true and it was quite a surprise to me.
I think what happened in relation to Mr. Rickey and me was that first of all there was a sports
writer named Kyle Crichton, sports editor to the Cuyahs magazine.
He's the father of Michael Crichton, the famous novelist.
He came down to do an interview for Cuyahs with Frankie Sinkwitz, a great Georgia football
player and in the process I guess he heard me broadcast.
He went back and told Mr. Rickey about it and Branch Rickey I found out just recently
also sent Buzzy Bavasi who had been the general manager at Montreal, later became the GM at
Brooklyn, a lot of other places.
He sent him down and he listened to me.
He talked to the cab drivers and the fans and the ball players and people like that
and he sent a report back.
And then he had another guy named Arthur Mann who was sort of an advisor on public relations
and media relations and he came down and talked to me.
So I was really surprised that Branch Rickey took that kind of an interest in me.
But he did scout me quite thoroughly.
If anything Branch Rickey kept things close to the best.
He didn't want anybody knowing what he was doing, nobody messing in his business.
That also involved you in your first scheduled meeting didn't it?
Oh it sure did.
I was contacted by Arthur Mann, the man that I mentioned and he said Mr. Rickey wants to
meet you at the battle house in Mobile.
He gave me a certain date.
He said can you make it?
And I said yeah I'll be there.
So I was in spring training in Gainesville with the crackers.
I caught a little puddle jumper, went through a storm, got to the battle house early in
the morning and we were going to meet about four or five o'clock in the afternoon.
I was ready.
I waited.
And Branch Rickey didn't show up.
I waited, I waited.
Five o'clock's gone, six o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock.
And I finally got in touch with Arthur Mann.
He said well Mr. Rickey couldn't get away.
He's sorry but he'll see you sometime probably in Atlanta.
So I was very disappointed and that waiting almost killed me but I figured something good
is going to happen.
I got back to Atlanta and I played sound that ball for a little guy who was a hunchback
named Rach Bell and he'd been sort of a bird dog scout for Branch Rickey.
And one morning at my home in Atlanta I got this phone call and the voice said I'm not
going to tell you who this is but somebody wants to see you at the Anthly Hotel.
You'll be in the coffee shop at 8 a.m.
Be there.
So I had heard all these stories about Branch Rickey, you know, how hard he wants to talk
to and so forth and what a tough guy he was and negotiating and things like that.
I went down to the Anthly Hotel and I got to the coffee shop and he was there and we
sat there and he said you know I've got a plane to catch.
I've got to get out of here pretty quick but we'll get to the point.
Well we stayed there about an hour and a half I guess and he did all the talking and I was
enthralled by him.
I was hypnotized almost and he told me then that he wanted me to come up to Brooklyn and
the theory at that time was that Red Barber, the chief announcer, was going to have to
do the Olympics for CBS Radio.
The Olympics that year were in London and Red was going to have to be gone for maybe
a month or three weeks and they would bring me up and I would take his place while he
was gone.
Well later on they decided they'd do it another way that they'd have guest announcers come
on and be the announcer they wouldn't need me.
In the meantime in late July Red Barber got stricken by a bleeding ulcer in Pittsburgh
and I guess that's another story.
But then you ended up going to Brooklyn?
Mm-hmm.
What happened was Branch Rickey called Earl Mann, my boss in Atlanta, and said I'd like
to have Ernie come up and replace Red Barber as my announcer.
And Earl Mann said well Mr. Rickey that's fine but I've got Ernie under contract and
if you're serious about that if you really want him you're going to have to make a deal
with me.
You send me your catcher Cliff Dapper from Montreal and you can have Ernie Harwell to
announce your game.
So I was traded for minor league catcher.
That has never happened before nor since.
No I think that's the only time as far as anybody knows.
You go to Brooklyn to do your first game.
Was this your first major league ball game to see?
No I'd seen a game before in Chicago back in 1934.
My Uncle Lauren who lived in Evanston wanted me to come up because he knew I was a great
baseball fan.
I had started working with the sporting news but I never seen a big league ball game.
So he brought me up and the first game that we were scheduled to go see was rained out.
And I was so anxious to see a game I was going crazy.
It kept raining and it rained again the next day.
And he said don't worry about it.
I know you got a ticket to go home but we're going to change that ticket and you're going
to stay here.
I don't care how long it rains.
You're going to stay here and you're going to see a big league ball game.
So finally we went out to Old Comiskey Park.
The Yankees were in town.
They were playing the White Sox.
Red Ruffing against Ted Lyons two great Hall of Fame pitchers.
And the Yankees had Babe Ruth playing left field.
He made a great running catch in left field.
It was his final America League game in Chicago.
Lou Gehrig was in the lineup.
Lou Gehrig got two doubles that afternoon and he did something I've never seen in my
whole broadcasting career.
He ducked a pitch.
It ricocheted off his bat over the third baseman's head for two bagger and he did it again the
next time up.
Two straight times he got a double the same way.
Trying to get out of the way.
And the Yankees won that game.
The crowd was probably about two or three thousand people on that September afternoon.
But do you remember it well?
Oh absolutely.
Yeah.
Good paper.