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Okay, you get to Brooklyn, you're replacing Red Barber, a legend as well there with the
Dodgers.
And what about your first broadcast?
Well, the first broadcast was postponed by rain.
I got up there and they put me up at the Bosset Hotel on Montague Street in Brooklyn.
And I didn't know anybody in town, so I've got to wait for the game that night.
And doggone if it didn't rain it out, and I don't have anything to do until the next
night.
You know, I'm going bananas in this hotel room where I don't know anybody.
Well finally, the next day comes and in the late afternoon I get a subway out to Abbot's
Field.
I really didn't know how to get there, but I got there and I wandered into the ballpark.
I don't know anybody really and I haven't had spring training or anything.
I'm coming in absolutely cold.
The first people I saw were a couple of players from the Southern League, Paul Minner and
Russ Meyer.
They said hello, you know, and that made me feel a little bit better.
And then the Dodger players were very, very warm and cordial and friendly to me because
they knew I was coming into an unusual kind of a situation, replacing Red and just coming
in absolutely cold.
And they couldn't have been more hospitable.
They were great.
And I went up to the booth and worked with Connie Desmond, who was a terrific announcer.
He'd been Red's partner for several years, had a great voice and just a great guy.
And he was very warm and cordial to me too.
And in the first inning, Jackie Robinson steals home on a pitch by Muck Meyer.
And it's a very close play at the plate and he's called safe.
And Muck Meyer is sort of a very eccentric guy, probably best known for the fact that
some girl in the bar bit off his nose one time, the end of his nose.
But Muck goes bananas, you know, when Jackie Robinson's called safe at the plate and he
gets profane.
He gets obscene.
He begins to shout and rage and his words go over our broadcast.
The very first game I'm on and they're all over the broadcast and Meyer gets tossed out
of the game, which is very unusual for starting pitcher in the first inning to get ejected.
But the umpire tosses him out of the game.
He's fired and suspended.
And Jackie Robinson steals home.
The Dodgers finally win the game.
And that was my debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
That is almost.
I mean, the fact that your microphones would pick up a player on the field.
Well, what they did then they had what they call the parabolic microphones.
They'd have these mics that would have a little cone around them, you know, a little circle
around them and they direct them right to home plate.
So they could hear the crack of the bat and the pop of the mitt and so forth.
And it just happened they were on and I guess they should have cut them off at that time,
but nobody thought about that.
And there was no five second delay.
No, no delays in those days.
All right.
This stat with Brooklyn, you're there for a couple of weeks replacing Red.
What happens when he comes back?
He came back a little sooner than most people anticipated.
He was still very weak when he came back.
In fact, all the rest of the time I worked with him, his voice was weak and the engineers
had to put up again so he could project over the microphone.
But Red came back on a game at the Polo grounds.
The Dodgers were in to face their hated rivals.
The New York Giants, it was sort of a murky halfway rainy day.
It was a night game and it was Red's first time back.
So Connie Desmond and I both worked with Red that first game back.
And the Giants get a man on first and third with one out in the first inning.
It looks like Rex Barney is going to have a hard time.
You know, he was a very wild pitcher.
Dick Young once said Rex Barney would be in the Hall of Fame if the plate was high and
outside.
That's how wild he was.
He couldn't get the ball over.
He had a great arm.
And they were warming up a guy in the bullpen.
Well, the upshot is that Rex Barney pitches a no hitter.
So it was pretty much of a big occasion for me.
Absolutely.
Now, you mentioned Jackie Robinson.
Everybody has an opinion when that name is brought up.
What's the first thing you think of when I say Jackie Robinson?
The first thing I think of is a great player who broke the color line in the major leagues,
the most important event that's ever happened in sports history.
I think about a guy who had a wonderful personality, who was very intelligent ahead of everybody
else and made the very most of the ability that he had.
He was probably a lot better football, basketball, track star than he was a baseball player,
but he applied himself so much.
He had terrific drive, terrific ambition, and he was the most exciting player that I
think ever saw.
Speed, yes, but blinding speed, no.
But he had that certain knack.
He had the moves.
He knew when things were going to happen.
He did have that sense.
And he danced off the base and he would force the opposition into some kind of error.
They'd get him in a rundown and he'd generally be able to get out of it most of the time
because in the haste, the second baseman would shut up and throw the ball away and he'd go
onto the next base and be safe.
And he was a great exponent of the steel of home.
He could do that.
He had sort of an awkward swing.
He looked like he was tied up in his shoulders when he swung, but he could hit with power.
And he made some great clutch plays in the field.
He wasn't a great fielder, but he always came up with a big play.
So much has been written and recorded about Jackie and his trials and tribulations being
accepted number one by the Brooklyn Dodgers as a team.
And that wasn't the most popular move that Branch Rickey ever made.
How did the team react to Jackie as you saw it?
Well, the team reacted with mixed feelings at the beginning, but I think Jackie won just
about everybody over.
I went there in his second year of his breaking the color line and it was still a problem.
He was still getting abused by the fans, getting abused by the opposing players.
I think most of the players on his own team had come around by then.
In the early going, some of the players had said that they didn't want to play for the
Dodgers.
They wanted to be traded.
Branch Rickey traded several of them, mostly the Pittsburgh.
But by the time Jackie had proved that he was a great team man and a great team leader,
I think everybody had come around to support his cause.
There might've been a few recalcitrant players, but if they were, they kept their mouth shut
and I didn't know about it.
Well, Robinson was subjected to a lot of insults and a lot of other things during his entire
career, but it was especially bad in the early going.
And there was one incident in 1949, right after spring training, the Dodgers are headed
back north to start the season and they stop in Atlanta for a three game exhibition set
with the Atlanta Crackers.
And there was a very ugly scene involving the Ku Klux Klan there, wasn't there?
That's right, Bob.
It was quite intimidating.
The grand dragon of the KKK, Dr. Green, had called Earl Mann, the owner of the Atlanta
Crackers and said, I'm sending you a letter about this subject, but I want you to know
that if Jackie Robinson plays at Ponce de Leon Park during this series, he'll be shot
by the KKK.
And Earl Mann said, go to hell.
And then he called the police chief, Herbert Jenkins, and reported to him.
And they decided to go on with a three game series.
Well, the Dodgers got to Atlanta for the first game and Bert Schotten is the manager and
he reads the letter to his players and he says, you're going to take the field and you're
going to play.
After the threat, they needed a little comic relief.
Gene Hermansky, the good-humored outfielder said, why don't we all wear number 42, Jackie's
number and then they won't know which guy to shoot.
And when they got on the field, Pee Wee Reese, his Keystone partner told her, Jackie said,
move over a little to your right, Jackie.
This guy might be a bad shot and I don't want to get hit.
But it was a big cause, so never there in Atlanta.
And it made an impact on me because I was going back to my hometown and broadcasting
for the Brooklyn Dodgers and I was sort of in the middle of it.
But it went off without any untoward incident at all.
And they had a capacity crowd every one of the games.
And on the final game, they had a record crowd of 25,221.
Jackie Robinson played and he was not shot by the KKK.
I can still remember seeing that picture of Jackie crossing home plate after hitting a
home run.
And there is the captain of the Dodgers with his hand outstretched, shaking Jackie's hand
and slapping him on the back.
Was that the defining moment for Jackie that the white players on the team had accepted
because Pee Wee Reese was their captain?
I think so.
I think Pee Wee was admired by everybody and really loved by everybody.
He knew that he was going to be a teammate of Jackie Robinson.
He came around and was most cordial and warm to Jackie and they became good friends.
And of course, they were pretty much a Keystone combination there, although Jackie started
out at the first baseman in his first few days with the Dodgers.
But I think the friendship that he made with Pee Wee was sort of a defining moment for
Jackie.
Pee Wee wasn't just called the captain.
He was the captain of the Dodgers.
It was his team, wasn't it?
It was.
He was great.
He was a fine fielder, good clutch hitter, great base runner.
He didn't steal a lot of bases because in those times the stolen base wasn't a big factor
in baseball, but they very seldom catch him on an attempted steal.
But he could do everything and I think everybody looked up to Pee Wee.
Baseball fans, when the name Jackie is mentioned, when the name Pee Wee is mentioned, they know
who you're talking about.
But there are others in those boys of summer.
The Duke, Oisk, Schoonge, Big Nuke.
They did have great players and they got along well.
Billy Cox at third base, a lot of people think that he was even better than Brooks Robinson.
He was a little skinny guy, but he'd catch everything, hit down there, had a great arm.
Then you had Reese and Robinson.
Gil Hodges was one of the sweetest guys you ever met.
Mile-mannered, but he had wrists as big as most guys' thighs, you know.
Caponella was a great catcher.
Could hit the long ball and he had Bruce Edwards behind him.
And then they had Hermanski and Snyder.
Carl Ferillo, the Redding rifle in right field, a guy that Ricky bought the whole ball club
at Redding, PA, so he could get Ferillo.
And in those days, a minor league franchise wasn't as expensive as it is today.
But the Brooklyn team had a lot of characters on it.
The fans were great.
And I was very fortunate to be able to break into the major leagues at Brooklyn.
I couldn't believe how nice they were to me, the fans and the listeners, because I had
come up under tough circumstances and I think they realized that and they were great to
me.
As you saw Robinson's perception, was it different from the media than it was from
the teammates and the Brooklyn fans?
I think the media was pretty good with Jackie.
I think they might have been hard on him every now and then in New York because the New York
writers more or less called it as it was.
But they were fair to Jackie, I think.
And in those days, you had more of a fraternal feeling between the media and the team.
Guys played cards together on the train and you ate together in the dining room and you
didn't have the gap that you have now between the media and the players where they're pretty
well separated all the time.
So it was more of a feeling of friendship in the traveling group than we have today.
Tell me about the train rides.
Train ride was great.
You know, they were a lot longer in a way.
It was better to go on the plane and get there right after the game.
But generally speaking, you'd have a day game in a certain city and go out and eat dinner
somewhere with some of the players and to get on the train around 10, 30, 11.
Most of the time we would have an overnight trip and get up the next day.
Sometimes have breakfast on the train, sometimes get off and go to the hotel immediately and
have breakfast there and then take a little rest and go to the ballpark.
And the long trips would be Boston to St. Louis.
That would take you a day and a half.
Generally the trips were fairly short and enjoyable and a lot of card playing, a lot
of sitting in the observation car and just talking about baseball and whatever came to
mind.
And the guys seemed to have a lot better feeling about the media, as I said, than they do now.
Who was the best hearts player on the team?
Peewee was really good.
I played with him a lot and I played with Jackie a lot.
And Cappy, I played with him a good bit too.
You sort of divided up as you play.
Different guys played with different people and it just happened that way.
The Greek ball club had sort of a different card game.
It was blackjack when I went to the Giants, but it was hearts when I was with the Dodgers.
But it was fun and we didn't play for much money.
You know, if you lost 10 or 15 dollars, you thought it was pretty much of a disaster.
What made the boys of summer special?
Well, I think the boys of summer were special.
Number one, they had great ability and number two, you had some wonderful personalities
on the team, plus the fact that they were the underdogs all the time and most of America
roots for the underdogs.
And either the Yankees or the Giants were their hated rivals.
And you had a situation in New York where there were three great baseball teams.
And I think for a span of 10 years, somebody pointed out that at least one of the teams
was in a World Series just about every year, except maybe one.
Usually it was the Yankees.
Sometimes the Giants would make it.
The Dodgers would make it more than Giants would.
But somebody would be there and the rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers was so
intense that it spilled over from year to year, no matter what the personnel was.
And when you'd go to the polo grounds, that would be about the only time the Giants would
draw a crowd.
They'd draw six or seven hundred thousand for the year and about two thirds of that
would be when they played the Dodgers.
All right.
You had the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Giants.
What was that like to have three of the premier franchises in baseball all located in that
close proximity?
Well, it was fantastic for the fans.
And from an announcer standpoint, it was a great learning process because when you announced
for the Dodgers, the Giants fans would tune in and they hated the Dodgers and the Yankee
fans would tune in and they hated the Dodgers.
So you had to talk to one group that liked you and the other group that wanted you to
lose.
So you had to pretty much be down the middle, I'd say.
That's the way most of us played it.
You mentioned being down the middle.
When you were in Atlanta doing play by play, were you down the middle pretty much or were
you a cracker fan on the air?
I was down the middle even from the beginning.
I felt like I had to make up my mind one way or the other.
You can either root for the team on the air or you don't.
And it was my choice, whether right or wrong, to not root for the team.
I felt like that was a prerogative of the fan and let him have it and not say we or
we've got to go or come on guys, let's get some runs.
And I felt like I just wanted to be a reporter most of all and let the chips fall where they
may.
Jackie broke the color barrier, but very quickly there was an influx, especially on the Dodgers,
not only with Campanella, but with Don Newcomb, with Joe Black and later on Junior Gillian,
Sandy Amorus.
The list goes on.
Was it easier for those guys that followed Jackie?
Once Jackie had broken the color line, it was a much easier trip for everybody.
But Jackie was a pioneer and a lot of credit is due to him and of course Branch Rickey
who conceived the idea and along with Jackie made it happen.
The old story about Jackie going to Branch Rickey when they first signed is absolutely
true because Branch said you've got to be able to turn the other cheek to make this
experiment a success.
And Jackie said you mean you want a guy without guts enough to fight back?
And he said no, I want a guy with guts enough not to fight back.
You've got to swallow your pride a little bit and make it a success by holding off.
And for two years, Jackie followed that regimen.
He held his temper and he did have a tough temper.
And I remember when he finally broke loose, it was a game in Pittsburgh at Forbes Field.
He blew his stack about a call and from then on he was just a guy playing baseball.
He was carrying this load for 17 million people and that he had to come under, come to tall
we call it, act thus and so, turn the other cheek was the thing that we discussed at that
first meeting of length.
You mentioned Roy Campanella, a great talent whose career and ultimately life was cut way
too short.
Well, Roy was a happy-go-lucky guy.
Jackie Robinson was pretty serious, you know.
Jackie had a cause and he stuck with it.
Roy was just sort of a laissez-faire, whatever happens, don't worry about it.
I'm going to go out there and do my best and get my base hit, throw a guy out at second.
Great guy to be around and always had a big smile.
He was a smart baseball man.
He'd grown up in the Negro leagues.
He'd caught when he was 14 or 15 years old, caught double-headers in those leagues and
he had a tragic end when he skidded on the freeway outside of New York City and was paralyzed.
Lived a very tough life from then on.
He was on our veterans committee later and it was so sad.
He was in a wheelchair all the time and he could communicate, but it was tough for him
and he wasn't the same old Roy that we knew when he was catching.
I mentioned Don Newcomb, big, tall, strong, hard-thrower.
What was he like?
I liked Don.
He was a good guy.
He had an alcoholic problem later on, something I certainly didn't know about in my early
days because he came up my second year.
They had a great year in 49 and pitched them to the pennant.
He could throw the ball hard.
He was a great fastball pitcher and he was such a big, strong-looking guy.
He was intimidating on the mound.
I think that was part of his success.
Guys didn't want to dig in at the plate against the old Newk and his caponella used to say
he could really throw that express at his fastball.
One of the most special guys of that group is the Duke of Flatbush, Duke Snyder.
The Duke was quite a player.
When he first came up, he was a left-hand hitter, so he got to see a lot of right-handers
at Ebbets Field, which was good.
He struck out a lot at first, but he really found himself and made himself a great outfielder.
He was a terrific fielder and a good hitter.
He could hit the long ball.
He was a great clutch hitter, very personable, and a really top-notch person.
Layler made quite a career out of broadcasting.
I was very proud of the Duke, the way he adjusted to broadcasting after he got through a great
baseball career.
Why did the Dodgers win only one world championship in Brooklyn?
I don't know.
A lot of guys in Brooklyn have asked that for years, and I sure don't know the answer.
I think we could say one word, the Yankees, maybe.
Brooklyn was a special place to live, to be a fan in, and to go to the ballpark at, because
not only was it an unusual ballpark, but it had its cast of characters, shall we say,
led by one Miss Hilda Chester?
Oh, Hilda, yeah.
Hilda was a great gal.
She worked for H.M. Stevens, which was a concessionaire.
She was a filler of peanut bags, but she was a great Dodger fan, and she loved Leo DeRosia.
Anything that Leo did was all right with her, and she had this cowbell.
That was her trademark.
When the Dodgers did something, even if they didn't, she'd be ringing the cowbell, and
it almost killed her when Leo left the Dodgers and went across the river to the hated Giants
and became the manager of the New York Giants.
But we also had the Brooklyn Symphony, led by Shorty Larice, and the Symphony was three
or four guys who thought they could play instruments.
I think you had a drum and a trumpet and a couple other things.
They were at every game.
They made a lot of noise.
It wasn't too musical most of the time, but when an opposing batter, for instance, would
strike out, they would give him a little musical accompaniment back to the bench.
Bump, da bump, bump, da bump, you know, that little tune.
And when he sat down, they'd say, boom.
And the opposing player sometimes would try to fool him with a fake sit down, you know,
where they'd play the music and he wouldn't sit down.
And it was a lot of fun for everybody.
And they had a PA announcer named Tex Rickard, same name as the old boxing promoter.
And Tex, on the hottest day in Brooklyn, he had this heavy white sweater with Brooklyn
Dodgers in blue letters across it, the Brooklyn script.
And every time a guy hit a home run, Tex would run out at home plate and shake his hand.
And you'd see the back page of the Daily News in the mirror.
They'd have Hodges crossing the plate and Tex Rickard is in every picture.
And we had a deal at Ebbets Field.
When a guy hit a home run, he got a carton of old goals.
He did a home run and one of the announcers would put the carton of old goals on the screen
back of the plate and roll it down.
Tex Rickard would grab it, take it and give it to the hitter.
Another old goal.
You know, that was pretty minor league, but it went over in Brooklyn.
It worked.
As far as they would say in Brooklyn, it worked.
Yeah, it worked.
One target that the symphony really loved was during the World Series when Casey Stingle
would head the mound to talk to a pitcher.
Oh yeah, they loved Casey because he was such a character, you know.
Casey should have been an actor really.
He should have been on Broadway.
He was just a natural and I guess whatever he did, the symphony would love it.
You finished in Brooklyn.
You go, as did Leo, across the river to the polo grounds.
Why?
I went to the Giants because, number one, they were going to pay me more money.
And number two, instead of working with two other guys in the booth, I worked with only
one.
And the Giants had come to me the year before, even in 1948 after my first time with Brooklyn.
They wanted me to come and I felt like I hadn't been there long enough.
I didn't want to move.
And this time I decided I'd go to the polo grounds and work for the New York Giants.
Well, Ernie Hilda Chester was crushed when Leo DeRoscher left the Bums for the hated
Giants and then at the end of the season she gets slammed again because Ernie crosses over
to the polo grounds.
Now, which hurt her the most, Ernie?
You leaving or DeRoscher?
I don't think there's any doubt about that.
It was Leo the Lip that caused all the hurt.
I don't think Hilda cared one way or the other whether I left or not.
But anyway, I did leave and I went to the Giants.