bradshaw2ben wrote:
My uncle and brother worked for the Pirates back in those days... they liked Prince.
As for listening, there will never be ANYTHING to replace the Gunner calling a baseball game. I dig Harwell and old man Buck and those dudes... but Bob Prince *was* baseball announcing. The criticism he got was exactly what squares have done since the beginning of time to bland out everything... I mean, look where we are now? What Prince did was create an identity for himself and the broadcasts and the team. He personalized games in a way that made them matter more than anything else going on that day/night. I really, truly miss that. Milo Hamilton is a Hall of Famer who just plain blew chunks trying to follow the Gunner. He sounded like what he was: an import from some other place where they just don't get it.
I never really enjoyed Fleming... give me Hillgrove and Cope any day and twice on Sunday.
B2B, great post, and perfectly captured how I feel about the Gunner and Pirates Baseball broadcasting, particularly the portion of your post that I made bold.
I feel badly for fans who only started listening to Buccos broadcasts in the middle 70s or later. Other than brief recordings they'll never really fully get how much The Gunner meant to those of us who grew up with him in the 50s, 60s and early 70s.
About Myron, I liked Fleming better, but Hillgrove and Myron were very good as well. I actually liked The Possum, Jim Woods, a bit better than Nellie King, but I warmed right up to King as well when he took over for Woods in the late 60s. Because it was The Gunner that made those broadcasts. Just as Myron made those he was part of. The other guy almost didn't matter that much.
I warmed up to Lanny for his duration with the club and he was a bit of a homer in his own right and developed some of his own catch phrases and had some nicknames for some players once in a while. He made himself distinctive, when I first saw him as cookie cutter, and I eventually came to respect him for that. He wasn't the one who fired the Gunner.
The current crew is pretty bad. Blass, Rock and Walker are the only guys I like even a bit, and only because they used to play the game and have some relevant insights at times. And anyone who watches now, am I the only one who thinks that Blass only thinly veils his disdain for Greg Brown?
The Gunner was one of a kind, though in his generation there were many who were individualists like him, but there was only one Gunner.
