When I was knee-high as a grasshopper in 1954, baseball was THE sport in America. It was not about football as it is now.
Every kid I knew made a fortune from the corner grocery store owner buying baseball cards. It was about getting a rookie card from Mickey Mantle. If you spent all the money you made mowing lawns and being a newspaper boy and still couldn’t get a Mickey card, you swallowed your guts and traded your next best dozen cards for Mickey.
It was about Mickey, and the gum, of course. There was nothing like gum on baseball cards. We tried to accumulate enough gum so that we could expel it on our cheek, like Nellie Fox, the Chicago White Sox second baseman with the biggest puff of tobacco you’ve ever seen.
The New York Yankees won 5 consecutive World Series from 1949-1953, and every kid knew it. If you didn’t know, you weren’t a kid and you didn’t play baseball. But all the kids in my neighborhood played baseball.
We lived on the wrong side of town. We played fastball down the street with a backup catcher, and yes, we did break a few windows, both in cars and houses. I know because I was the receiver.
I took off my glasses so as not to break them. I caught without a catcher’s mask because I couldn’t afford one. That might be why I got two fastball foul tips and a nasty curveball in the mouth.
I bled like a pig, and my upper front teeth looked like they were hit by a ’48 Chevy Coupe in a car accident. I think she was in shock because she wasn’t crying; I would get on my bike and go home, giving my poor mother a fit of rage when she saw me. When I got into organized baseball, they gave me a mask.
We thought we were tough as nails, and some of us had knocked out front teeth to prove it.
Fast forward 20 years to when I came to Seattle. At first, there was no baseball team. The Seattle Mariners launched in 1977 as a replacement for the former Seattle Pilots, a one-season wonder in 1969 that became the Milwaukee Brewers.
In 1977 the Seattle Mariners were born, and that was my introduction to Dave Niehaus. Niehaus called the Mariners into action for 34 seasons before his voice recently went silent.
Dozens upon dozens of baseball fans, players, coaches and friends patiently waited in line to extol the virtues and impact of Dave Niehaus on their lives, and it was all deserved.
If you were a baseball fan, you were as close to Dave Niehaus’s voice as he was to home plate on game day.
There will never be another Dave Niehaus again. His time and his generation have passed, and as he grew older, the world changed. The impact of play-by-play stations on radio has diminished with the advent of television, and more especially the Internet, and the technology that comes with the Internet.
And that is a sad fact.
But celebrating the life of Dave Niehaus will be a joy to those of us who adopt him as our uncle, father or grandfather, and appreciate his voice’s connection to our world of baseball.
A friend once told me that “Time and memories are eternal, memories come from time… but the time of memories, never.”
And that’s the way it is now with Dave Niehaus: we have wonderful memories, but his time is up.
With all the good things that have already been said about Dave Niehaus, and all of it being true, here is my takeaway:
What I most admire and identify with about Dave Neihaus was his gratitude.
Two quotes from Dave immediately come to mind:
“I love the game, the broadcast booth, seeing the diamond in every stadium we go to. It’s everything I ever wanted to do and had the opportunity to do for a long time. I’ve enjoyed every minute of I’m a lucky man.
And this line from his speech during his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame:
“I know there are several bigger names that have come before me to win this award. And there will be several bigger names after me to win this award. But no one will be more grateful.”
A man who lives his life with gratitude is a giant of a man. So how tall was Dave Niehaus? I’m glad you asked. Dave Neihaus was 20 feet tall and will continue to grow in height as the years go by.
Goodbye Dave. Thank you for the trip, and may God greet you when you arrive.
Copyright © 2010 Ed Bagley.