NRR Project: World Series, Game 4, Yankees v. Dodgers (Oct. 5, 1941)

 

NRR Project: World Series, Game 4, Yankees v. Dodgers

Recorded Oct. 5, 1941

3 hours, 17 min.

Boy, is this a fun listen. Go to the expert essay by J.P. Hoornstra for a comprehensive discussion of the game and its impact. After that . . .

We are two weeks away from pitchers and catchers. Those of us with baseball fever will welcome the opportunity to play a classic game out in our heads as we listen to this archived broadcast. Hearing this historic game being called is a window into the past, but it also demonstrates baseball’s continuity.

It preserves forever an unseasonably hot October day, in front of more than 33,000 fans at Ebbets Field. The greats are playing – DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Medwick, Reese. It’s a well-fought game of inches, eventually trading the lead to Brooklyn.

Bottom of the ninth, two out, nobody on. Third strike on Tommy Heinrch, catcher Owen drops the ball. Heinrich goes to first. The Yankees rack up four more runs. Brooklyn strikes out. And just like that, the series is 3-1 for the Yanks instead of 2-2. It was a fatal moment in Dodger history.

What is remarkable for us listening today is the perfect clarity with which the announcers call the game. It is still understandable, the game has retained its integrity over the last century. The Dodgers announcer Red Barber teamed up with Bob Elson to broadcast the game.

Barber is eloquence himself. He delivers his observations calmly and flatly, without the Southern lilt he displayed alter in life when he became a frequent correspondent with National Public Radio. At one point, Barber describes a pitcher and batter going at it “like Hector and Achilles.” An announcer who can make an offhand, and apt, figure of speech dependent on the listeners’ knowledge of Homer’s “The Iliiad” is a wonder to behold.

Dispassionately and fair, he and Elson broadcast serenely above the clamor of the Dodgers crowd, one of baseball’s rowdiest. It is Elson’s heartbreaking task to describe Owens’ flub, and to wind up the game as the Dodgers pitching goes south and the Yanks win 7-4. The next day, the Yankees win the Series.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Roosevelt addresses Congress, Dec. 8, 1941.