urt Gowdy was in the booth in 1961 when the last All-Star Game was played at Fenway Park. With hitters like Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, and Maury Wills in the lineups, sportswriters were predicting the score would be in the high teens, considering the size of the park.
Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey didn't like all the talk about the high scoring and grumbled to Gowdy throughout the day that Fenway was not that easy of a park.
Yawkey was right. The game ended in a tie, 1-1, and maybe two players actually hit The Wall in left field. ''There was brilliant pitching and there was a wind coming up making the balls just hang up in the air,'' said Gowdy in a recent interview. ''And I remembered running into Mr. Yawkey in the dining room after the game. He raised a glass as a toast. `Here's to little ol' Fenway,' Yawkey said. `They didn't score all the runs they thought they would. We did pretty good today.'''
And so it was. All those great hitters licking their chops to knock one out only to receive pitches low and away, resulting in infield grounders.
Gowdy doesn't have any predictions for tonight's game. He remembers how difficult it was to call the 16 All-Star Games he worked before retiring. ''Those games were the toughest to call,'' Gowdy said. ''You had a lot of different players shuttling in and out. It was hard keeping track.''
Back then, NBC used only four cameras. And the network didn't have all the assistants and spotters to help the announcers in the booth. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Its game coverage was solid, largely because the announcers had personal relationships with the players.
Gowdy was particularly close to Ted Williams. ''We used to talk a lot when we were on the road together,'' Gowdy said. ''He would talk a lot about his elbow. One time, I saw him in his room and he was flexing his arm. `You know, Curt, my elbow has never been the same.'''
Williams was referring to an operation he received after the 1950 All-Star Game when he broke his elbow smashing into the wall at Comiskey Park trying to catch a Ralph Kiner fly ball. Gowdy said that Williams told him that he lost some snap in his swing and had to overcompensate and study more to remain a splendid hitter.
Gowdy told Williams: ''It doesn't look like your elbow is hurting you too much.''
Gowdy was the kind of announcer that allowed the game to come to him. He didn't use a lot of catch-phrases or create artificial excitement. ''My theory was that my job was to cover the game,'' Gowdy said. ''I was there because of the game. The game was not there because of me.''
That sort of thinking has not gone away. Joe Buck is calling tonight's game, and while he is one of the biggest baseball fans around, he said he doesn't plan to ''trample over'' the action on the field. ''I'm going to let the game breathe,'' Buck said. ''The game is more of a celebration and my task is to not overwhelm the viewers with a lot of overtalking. The game and the atmosphere around Fenway will carry our coverage. I'm just there to accent things.''
A slam for ESPN
Ken Griffey won the derby, but ESPN won the show. Its coverage of the Home Run Derby was excellent. Everything from the graphics to the super slow-mo cameras added drama to one of Major League Baseball's showcases.
Add Chris Berman to the technological polish, and last night's broadcast highlighted ESPN's star power.
ESPN coordinating producer Tim Scanlan said he tried to create a show that blended the old with the new. Last night, Fenway Park was just as much a star as Mark McGwire.
The aerial shots of the park were absolutely beautiful. The slow-mo shots of home runs by McGwire and Griffey traced the flight paths and were amazing. And the crowd shots of Lansdowne Street captured the mayhem of fans fighting for souvenir balls.
''Everything we tried to do was aimed at trying to capture the essence of Fenway in the context of the game,'' Scanlan said.
