Review: Baseball Forever!: 50 Years of Radio Highlights Celebrating the History and Hijinks of America's Pastime

Baseball Forever!: 50 Years of Radio Highlights Celebrating the History and Hijinks of America's Pastime by Jason Turbow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this a somewhat enjoyable review of highlights of old-time radio broadcasts of baseball games. The choices were pleasingly varied, and focused on topics such as famous announcers, famous plays, interviews, and famous game endings. Many of the snippets of audio were chosen for historic significance of the events, such as three (!) versions of the play where “The Giants win the pennant!” from different radio networks, an interview with Roger Maris right after tying the home run record, and Carl Hubbell striking out 5 of the best hitters in history in the 1934 All Star Game. One weakness of the collection is that, due to the technology of the era, many of the pre-1960 game recordings are a bit hazy from static and can be difficult to listen to, and that covers a good percentage of the content in this collection. A highlight for me was hearing Harry Caray calling a Cardinals World Series game with owner Gussie Busch cheering like crazy right next to him in the broadcast booth. Comparing these older broadcasts to the current day, you understand the massive change in content provided by the analytic data now available. There also seems to be two eras before the current “analytic” era. The earliest recordings are just play-by-play announcing – nothing flowery, lots of silence and crowd noise, occasional emotion. The big change you notice in the 50s or so, with Red Barber, Vin Scully, Harry Caray, and the like, was that the announcers were more willing to “wax poetic” about the game. Seems like game calling has gone from reporting to literature to science. Makes you wonder what’s next.

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