[nfbwatlk] Mariners voice Dave Niehaus finally receives cherishedcall to Cooperstown

Sun Mar 9 00:49:55 CST 2008

Hi,
And he is a lot of what got me interested in baseball!  I was more of a 
football fan living in Nebraska, but when I heard Dave Niehaus and NY 
Vinnie, out here, baseball fever got me!
Thanks
Lauren
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Freeman" <k7uij at panix.com>
To: "NFB of Washington Talk" <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 6:43 AM
Subject: [nfbwatlk] Mariners voice Dave Niehaus finally receives 
cherishedcall to Cooperstown

> SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/351946_niehaus20.html
>
> Mariners voice Dave Niehaus finally receives cherished call to
> Cooperstown
> Last updated February 19, 2008 11:53 p.m. PT
>
> By JOHN HICKEY
> P-I REPORTER
>
> There's finally a spot in Cooperstown for a Mariners legend.
>
> And what can you say about that but "My, Oh, My!"
>
> Dave Niehaus, the voice and in many ways the face of the franchise,
> received the call Tuesday morning that many Northwest baseball fans felt
> was long overdue. He was named the 2008 winner of the Ford C. Frick
> Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting.
>
> That means he'll be inducted into the broadcasting wing of baseball's
> Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 27 as part of Hall of Fame
> Weekend.
>
> The Mariners' lead announcer in each of their 31 seasons, Niehaus has
> broadcast all but a handful of the team's games since 1977. His
> trademark call of "My, Oh, My!" is about as much a Seattle landmark as
> the Space Needle.
>
> "What a birthday present," said Niehaus, who turned 73 Tuesday. He said
> he was just stepping out of the shower in his Issaquah home at about 10
> a.m. when the call came from Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey.
>
> "It doesn't really hit you until you've won," he said. "The last several
> years, I knew I'd been a finalist, but this is humbling. It's the
> biggest thrill of my life. It is to us (broadcasters) our Oscar.
>
> "It's always been out there on the horizon. You think it just might be
> you, but you never really think it will be."
>
> After several years of knocking on the door, it is Niehaus' time. And no
> sooner had the announcement been made than he got a flood of calls from
> across the baseball spectrum.
>
> "Junior (Ken Griffey Jr.) called from Florida. (Former Mariners general
> manager) Pat Gillick called from Florida," Niehaus said. "Dick Williams
> called and said, 'We're going to overwhelm Cooperstown.' The phone just
> hasn't stopped ringing. It's very humbling."
>
> Williams, who managed the Mariners from 1986-88, and reliever Rich
> "Goose" Gossage, who played the last of his 22 major league seasons with
> the Mariners in 1994, also are being inducted into the Hall of Fame this
> year.
>
> Griffey was among the first to call. He and Niehaus have been close
> since Griffey broke in with the Mariners in 1989.
>
> "I've known Dave for a long time, and my family and I were excited to
> hear he'll be inducted into the broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame,"
> Griffey said. "We're very happy for him. No one is ever going to forget
> 'My, Oh, My.' "
>
> And in Seattle at least, no one will forget Griffey's mad dash from
> first base in the 11th inning to score on an Edgar Martinez double to
> beat the Yankees in the final game of the Mariners' first American
> League Division Series appearance in 1995.
>
> Niehaus recalls it as his most memorable moment behind the microphone.
>
> "That's probably the one that stands out," Niehaus said. "That's the one
> that sent us into our first AL Championship Series (against Cleveland).
> Sometimes you have to get lucky, and I did.
>
> "I had set up the play pretty well, and I got lucky on that play. That's
> the one call that has stood out because it's been replayed so much and
> because it was such an exciting time in Seattle."
>
> Speaking later Tuesday at a Safeco Field news conference, Niehaus
> recounted stories from his three decades with the Mariners, and said his
> favorite game was the inaugural game on April 6, 1977, at the Kingdome.
>
> "I feel like melted butter right now," he said.
>
> Twice he nearly lost control of his emotions, his eyes welling.
>
> The first came when he was asked about his parents, Jack and Delania,
> and what their reaction would be to Tuesday's announcement.
>
> "My dad was an amazing man," Niehaus, on the verge of tears, said. "He
> was an insurance man and a great baseball fan. I'd give anything for him
> to be here today."
>
> The other moment came when he was asked who he would have wanted to
> introduce him at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in July -- during
> what will be his first visit to Cooperstown.
>
> "The guy I would have wanted is dead," Niehaus said. "I would have
> wanted it to be (pitching great) Don Drysdale (another Hall of Famer).
> He was such a good friend."
>
> He seemed genuinely amazed that he would join the likes of Mel Allen,
> Red Barber, Vin Scully, Jack Buck and Harry Caray as Frick Award
> winners, and recounted his youth when he would listen to St. Louis
> Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds broadcasts on the front porch of his
> childhood home in Princeton, Ind.
>
> "Only in my very wildest dream could I have imagined this," Niehaus
> said. "But they had to be awfully wild."
>
> Niehaus joined the Mariners as their lead broadcaster after spending the
> 1969-76 seasons doing California Angels broadcasts. According to the
> club's calculations, he's called 4,817 of the 4,899 games the team has
> played.
>
> "We've had A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), Griffey, Edgar and Ichiro here,"
> Seattle manager John McLaren said. "But make no mistake about it, Dave
> Niehaus is The Man. His voice is Seattle baseball. That 1995 call still
> gives me chills.
>
> "It's a big moment for him and his family, but it's also a big moment
> for Seattle Mariner fans who have listened to him. He's such a huge part
> of what's happened here."
>
> Such a big part, in fact, that Niehaus was selected to throw out the
> first pitch when the Mariners moved into Safeco Field during the 1999
> season.
>
> Mariners reliever Eric O'Flaherty, who grew up in Walla Walla, had his
> early connection to the Mariners forged by listening to Niehaus on the
> broadcasts.
>
> "I remember listening to that voice for so many years," he said. "It was
> a big moment for me just to meet him for the first time when I got here
> and heard that voice. He's one of the faces of the franchise."
>
> Niehaus is the first to admit that he isn't the first person to use the
> phrase "My, Oh, My," but it's been his use of it to describe big and
> not-so-big moments in Mariners history that have made it almost his
> personal property.
>
> And he can still remember the first time he used what is now a signature
> call for a grand slam back in the Mariners' historic 1995 season.
>
> "My grand slam call, that I created," he said. "It was 1995 and Tino
> Martinez had hit a couple of grand slams. I think it was in Cleveland,
> and I got to thinking, I had always called a slam a 'salami.' Everyone
> did that. I got to thinking what goes well with salami. Rye bread and
> mustard does."
>
> What came out was: "Get out the rye bread and mustard, grandma! It's
> grand salami time!"
>
> "Ron Fairly, who was my partner at the time, thought I'd stepped over
> the line. But people up here went wild. It took on a life of its own."
>
> For almost two decades before the breakthrough 1995 season, Niehaus, who
> got into broadcasting after graduating from Indiana University, had to
> make mostly bad teams sound interesting and compelling.
>
> Some people give him almost as much credit as the Griffey-Edgar-Randy
> Johnson teams in making Seattle a place where the community and the
> government could find a way, despite opposition, to get a stadium built.
> The excitement generated by the 1995 team was directly responsible for
> Safeco Field being built, and Niehaus was the lightning rod of that
> excitement.
>
> "Every game tells a different story. I think that's the reason that
> people fall in love with baseball," Niehaus said. "I think of it as 162
> different stories. I've called 12 or 13 no-hitters, and not one of them
> was alike.
>
> "I love coming to the park, even in the middle of a losing streak,
> because it's always possible that day will be the start of a winning
> streak."
>
> Mariners pitching coach Norm Charlton has special reason to thank
> Niehaus. Charlton was one of the "Nasty Boys" of the Cincinnati bullpen
> in the early 1990s, but he didn't get his nickname, "The Sheriff," until
> 1995 when he came to Seattle and Niehaus described him.
>
> "I was in a pretty good groove, and he knew I was from Texas and wore
> hats and boots and all that," Charlton said Tuesday. "One day he
> described me coming out of the bullpen 'like (sheriff) Wyatt Earp
> walking down Main Street.' From that day on, I was 'The Sheriff.' "
>
> Niehaus said again Tuesday he hasn't given much thought to retiring. He
> takes a mid-season break every year, but for the most part he's with the
> club, calling not just 162 games during the season, but a month's worth
> of spring training games, too.
>
> "The travel gets tiring, and we don't have any short road trips," he
> said. "That does wear on you. But no real baseball fan gets tired. I've
> never thought about when I'm going to hang them up."
>
> That seems to be just fine with the Mariners.
>
> "There's no announcer more deserving of this honor than Dave," Mariners
> president Chuck Armstrong said. "His integrity and love of the game is
> unquestioned. It's terrific that the whole country will know what we
> have known in the Northwest for a long time: Dave has been a Hall of
> Famer his whole career."
>
> Now it's official.
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> P-I reporter Jon Naito contributed to this report. P-I reporter John
> Hickey can be reached at 206-448-8004 or johnhickey at seattlepi.com.
> Follow his Mariners blog at blog.seattlepi.com/baseball.
>
> © 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> _______________________________________________
> nfbwatlk mailing list
> nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbwatlk
>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.518 / Virus Database: 269.21.7/1319 - Release Date: 3/8/2008 
10:14 AM