Latest / Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History / 1953 • Sports Clip • The All-American Sports Show - Broadcaster Graham McNamee

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1953 • Sports Clip • The All-American Sports Show - Broadcaster Graham McNamee · Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History

• 0:00
  This is Retro Sports Radio. Visit RetroSeasons.com for more sports history.
• 0:07
  Tomorrow the curtain goes up on the 1953 college football season.
• 0:12
  And with it, NBC inaugurates its 26th year of broadcasting, the most colorful of these weekly games.
• 0:19
  Ordinarily, when we speak of the greats in the world of sports, we are referring to the athletes themselves.
• 0:25
  The men who could sock the hardest, run the fastest, hit a ball the farthest.
• 0:29
  The men, yes, and women who have become legends, unexcelled in their fields.
• 0:34
  The undisputed champions.
• 0:36
  Tonight we deviate a little to talk about a man who didn't actually participate in the game, but who was nonetheless a champ.
• 0:44
  A man who made an immeasurable contribution to the world of sports.
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  A man who, like the other greats of his era, has also become a legend.
• 0:52
  As famous as the events he described.
• 0:55
  A man and his unforgettable voice.
• 0:58
  What do you do, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience? This is Graham McNamee speaking.
• 1:02
  Yes, that's a voice we'll never forget.
• 1:05
  For years the most familiar, the most popular voice in radio.
• 1:10
  There's a younger generation today who can't remember Graham McNamee as the nation's pioneer sports announcer.
• 1:16
  But those among us who have hair that's thinning a little, or is touched with gray at the temples,
• 1:22
  remember full well what he meant to us in the days when radio was the miracle of the age.
• 1:27
  We look back with nostalgia to the turbulent 20s, perhaps the most colorful era in the history of sports.
• 1:34
  Those with the ears of the sports titans, the Goliaths and the Sampson's.
• 1:39
  It isn't my intention to detract from the deserved glory of those supermen,
• 1:43
  but I can't help wondering how much Graham McNamee must have contributed towards securing their position in the Hall of Fame.
• 1:50
  There was radio, and there was McNamee.
• 1:54
  With radio, the newest wonder, the public was for the first time brought into close touch with the game.
• 2:00
  There was a wondrous thrill in the roar of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the timekeeper's bell, the referee's whistle.
• 2:07
  And Graham McNamee's broadcasts were dynamic, colorful and picturesque.
• 2:12
  With his overwhelming enthusiasm, his vivid imagination and descriptive ability,
• 2:17
  he made it possible for the listener not only to hear, but actually to visualize the action taking place.
• 2:24
  And Graham McNamee became a radio tradition.
• 2:28
  His voice, his every inflection became known to millions.
• 2:32
  He was heard by more people than any voice the world has ever known.
• 2:37
  And so tonight, on the eve of this new football season, we'd like to look back,
• 2:43
  to recall some memories of the man who was the patron father of the sports announcers.
• 2:49
  Some men choose a profession. Others just seem to drift into one.
• 2:55
  But who can say that their steps aren't guided by destiny?
• 2:59
  Back in St. Paul, when Graham McNamee was just a youngster, his ambitious mother decided to fit him for a musical career.
• 3:07
  She had been a singer with a voice of delightful quality, and she longed to carry on her own career through him.
• 3:13
  She started him early at the piano, which like almost any normal healthy boy, he detested.
• 3:20
  No, no, baby. Now take it again from the beginning.
• 3:25
  Ah gee, Mom, isn't my hour up yet?
• 3:29
  No, you still have fifteen minutes. Come on, baby, take it once more.
• 3:34
  Now, this is the way it should go.
• 3:37
  Now, you see how it should be? It goes from A to F sharp.
• 3:42
  Here's what you're doing.
• 3:45
  You're going from A to F natural.
• 3:48
  There, now you try it.
• 3:51
  Ah, heck, who wants to learn how to play the old piano anyway?
• 3:55
  Now, baby, I want you to be a fine pianist, and if you're to become one, you've got to practice.
• 4:02
  Why, Pat, a rescue practice is as much as ten hours a day.
• 4:06
  Who cares? Golly, I'd rather be a baseball player.
• 4:11
  Baseball player? Now, what kind of profession is that for a man?
• 4:16
  Lots of baseball players make lots of money.
• 4:20
  And maybe I'll be a prize fighter.
• 4:22
  Prize fighter? Why, I never heard of such a thing.
• 4:26
  You're going to become a fine pianist, baby.
• 4:29
  Now, do as I ask, once more.
• 4:32
  All right.
• 4:35
  Yes, it was baby then, and Graham didn't mind so much where his mother was concerned.
• 4:41
  But when the gang one and all took up the cry, well, that was a different thing.
• 4:45
  Okay, gang, let's go.
• 4:47
  Put the old stuff on this one, Graham.
• 4:49
  Suck it in there, boys, suck it in.
• 4:52
  Here we go.
• 4:53
  Strike two.
• 4:54
  Atta boy, Graham. Lay this next one over the old plate now, come on.
• 4:58
  Yes, strike them out.
• 5:00
  Get that in number, Graham.
• 5:01
  Make them hit to me.
• 5:02
  Hey, who's coming second?
• 5:04
  Look out for hit and run.
• 5:06
  Baby.
• 5:08
  Hey, Graham, your mother's calling you.
• 5:11
  What?
• 5:12
  Baby, it's time for you to come in and practice.
• 5:16
  Aw, heck.
• 5:18
  Gee whiz, you can't quit now, Graham.
• 5:21
  Golly, we're still a run behind. Hold pitch for us.
• 5:23
  Yeah, hold pitch for us.
• 5:25
  Ask her if you can play a while longer.
• 5:27
  Yeah, go on, ask her.
• 5:29
  Aw, it won't do any good.
• 5:31
  You can't ask, can't you?
• 5:33
  I said it wouldn't do any good, didn't I?
• 5:35
  Well, Johnny, you can ask, can't you?
• 5:38
  Aw, let him go.
• 5:40
  Baby, it's time to practice.
• 5:44
  Hey, cut it out.
• 5:46
  Baby.
• 5:48
  Baby.
• 5:49
  I said cut it out.
• 5:51
  Unless somebody wants a sock in the jaw.
• 5:53
  Yeah, who's big enough to do it?
• 5:55
  I am.
• 5:56
  Yeah?
• 5:57
  Anybody that plays the pianos are sissy.
• 6:01
  Sissy, huh?
• 6:02
  I'll show you. You can't call me that.
• 6:05
  Hey, hey, look him. Hey, take your pinky there.
• 6:07
  You're gonna hurt his arm.
• 6:09
  He won't be able to pitch in you.
• 6:10
  Yes, that name started many a fight.
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  But even when the gang learned better and stopped the kidding,
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  he would leave the games unwilling.
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  And like Shakespeare's boy, creeped to the old piano
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  at the rate of about a mile a week,
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  digging his toes in the ground, kicking up dust,
• 6:27
  and shying all the rocks he could find at the kingbirds on the telegraph wires.
• 6:31
  But when he was 18, there came a change.
• 6:34
  He turned from the piano to singing and fairly ate it up.
• 6:38
  Mother McNamee, still ambitious for him, and with an eye on bigger things,
• 6:42
  decided the big town was the place to be.
• 6:45
  New York, the place where the big things happened.
• 6:49
  And this was the move that indirectly led him to radio.
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  The going was tough at first.
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  Their small savings dwindled rapidly,
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  but the young voice student from St. Paul managed to earn a few dollars singing here and there.
• 7:03
  And one day in the spring of 1923, he strolled up Broadway,
• 7:08
  noticed the sign of a radio station, W-E-A-F.
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  Curious about this strange new thing called radio, he went in to look around,
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  and the program director met him at the door.
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  Hello, my name's McNamee. I thought I'd have a look around if it's all right.
• 7:24
  Sure, always glad to have visitors.
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  But I'm afraid there's much to see right now. We're off the air.
• 7:30
  What are your broadcasting hours?
• 7:32
  From seven to ten in the evening.
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  You're welcome to come back any time when something's happening,
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  but while you're here, you might as well have a look at the studios.
• 7:40
  Oh, I like that.
• 7:41
  We have two, one over here and one across the way.
• 7:45
  The small room in between is the control booth.
• 7:48
  That's small.
• 7:49
  You're not in the business, are you?
• 7:51
  The broadcasting business? No, but I should imagine it's pretty interesting, huh?
• 7:55
  Believe me, there's nothing like it. It gets in your blood.
• 7:59
  Right now it's new, of course, but just listen to anyone who takes it seriously,
• 8:03
  anyone who knows what he's talking about, and he'll tell you it's the coming thing.
• 8:07
  Someday it's going to be big business.
• 8:10
  Maybe it would be a good thing to get into.
• 8:12
  Well, it's not so simple. There aren't so many jobs.
• 8:15
  You've got a pretty good voice, nice register.
• 8:19
  Maybe you could be an announcer. But even that isn't so easy.
• 8:22
  What's so hard about it? Just about all I've ever heard any of them do is announce a musical number.
• 8:27
  Well, even that may not be as easy as it seems.
• 8:31
  Sure, anyone can introduce. Yes, we have no bananas.
• 8:35
  But how about Stielernacht, Halliganacht, Le Regiment de Sambre Meuse,
• 8:40
  or all the difficult, hard-to-pronounce names of composers?
• 8:44
  Could you do it without stumbling all over the studio?
• 8:47
  I could manage. I'm a singer, so I'm pretty familiar with the correct pronunciations.
• 8:51
  A singer, huh? Where are you working?
• 8:54
  No place in particular right now. I've been doing some concert work.
• 8:58
  I managed to pick up a few jobs as a church soloist and an operetta and grand opera choruses.
• 9:03
  Is that so? You know, maybe we could use you.
• 9:08
  How would you like to give it a try?
• 9:10
  So Graham McNamee became a radio announcer at a time when announcers were little more than a breathing space between musical selections.
• 9:19
  Along with announcing and singing, he did a little of everything, answered telephones, escorted visitors around the studio,
• 9:26
  coached nervous performers in how to use the mic, and on occasions even used a broom.
• 9:32
  Not long after he joined WEAF, another announcer was hired,
• 9:37
  a man who went on to have quite a career himself as a sports broadcaster
• 9:41
  and who now is one of the top executives in the broadcasting industry.
• 9:45
  His name was Phillips Carlin, and he and Graham McNamee soon formed a working team in radio
• 9:50
  that was to last over the years in a solid friendship that would last an even longer time.
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  Their voices were said to be much alike, and their manner of handling a broadcast was identical.
• 10:02
  Each had personality plus, and they put it on the air with vibrant enthusiasm.
• 10:08
  Today, thinking about the new season of football ahead and recalling Graham McNamee's role as the pioneer of football broadcasts,
• 10:16
  I reminisced with Phillips Carlin about those early days in radio and his close association with Mac.
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  Many of the stories he told me were so interesting, I wanted to recreate them for you.
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  And thanks to Phillips Carlin, I'm able to.
• 10:30
  Where would you like to begin, Phil?
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  Well, Joe, you've already mentioned the physical setup of those old WEAF studios.
• 10:37
  Just two studios marked A and B with a little control booth between them, and that was it.
• 10:43
  When I look around at these magnificent NBC studios in the RCA building today,
• 10:49
  it's a little bewildering to remember that our little setup was the beginning of it all.
• 10:53
  I should think it would also give you quite a feeling of pride, Phil,
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  the realization that you helped to start it on its way.
• 11:00
  Yes, it does. But the physical setup wasn't the only thing different about those days.
• 11:05
  The whole operating procedure was different, as you can well imagine.
• 11:09
  For instance, many times we'd be broadcasting two programs simultaneously,
• 11:14
  a program from one studio going to WEAF and a program in the other studio going to, I believe it was WMAF.
• 11:22
  That was Colonel Green Station.
• 11:23
  And believe it or not, Mack and I would often go from one studio to the other announcing two programs at the same time.
• 11:30
  You know, it's a wonder that sometimes you didn't say the right thing on the wrong program,
• 11:34
  maybe the wrong thing on the right program.
• 11:36
  I don't think that ever happened, but sometimes we would get the switches mixed up
• 11:40
  and send the wrong program to each station.
• 11:43
  I want to tell you something about that little control booth, though.
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  That was where we had to stay most of the time,
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  and I do mean it was little, about four feet wide and seven feet long.
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  There was no ventilation.
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  The only openings were the two doors leading into the two studios.
• 11:58
  Of course, they had to be kept closed because the broadcasts had to be going on.
• 12:02
  Well, Mack and I rigged up our own cooling system.
• 12:05
  Every day we bought a hundred pound cake of ice, which we set in a big pan on a stool
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  and let an electric fan blow across it onto our legs.
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  It took the hundred pound cake about three hours to melt.
• 12:17
  In three hours, well, it was just about the length of your broadcasting day, wasn't it?
• 12:21
  Yes, we were on the air from seven till ten in the evening.
• 12:24
  Managed only to keep the booth bearable.
• 12:27
  But one day someone gave Mack a big fish,
• 12:30
  and he put it on top of the cake of ice to keep till he finished work.
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  The only trouble was when he left for home, he forgot it.
• 12:37
  I had opened up the next day.
• 12:40
  Well, you can imagine what that booth was like.
• 12:42
  The ice, of course, had melted hours before.
• 12:45
  It was hot as a blast furnace, and that dead fish.
• 12:48
  Maybe it was my imagination, but I don't think we ever got the smell out of the place.
• 12:52
  You sure it was the fish that was responsible, Phil?
• 12:55
  Couldn't have been the programs you were broadcasting in those days?
• 12:58
  You know, I never thought about that. Maybe you got something.
• 13:01
  I was kidding, of course.
• 13:03
  I remember, Phil, they called you and Mack the touchdown twins back in those days, didn't they?
• 13:08
  Yes, for two reasons, perhaps.
• 13:10
  For one, we worked so many broadcasts together.
• 13:12
  And secondly, there was quite a similarity in our voices, such a similarity,
• 13:16
  in fact, that listeners often made bets as to whether the announcer was Mack and me or Carlin.
• 13:21
  But the similarity worked to our advantage on some occasions.
• 13:24
  Well, how was that?
• 13:25
  Well, for example, Mack signed a contract to narrate the Universal Newsreel films.
• 13:29
  He was the first of the celebrities to be signed for such a job.
• 13:32
  And if you remember, it started to trend.
• 13:34
  Oh, yes.
• 13:35
  There'd be times when Mack wasn't available, and when he wasn't, Carlin did them,
• 13:39
  with no one actually being the wiser.
• 13:42
  I know this is a bit difficult to answer,
• 13:44
  because you and Mack worked so many big football broadcasts during the 20s.
• 13:48
  But what are some of the outstanding ones that you do remember?
• 13:52
  Well, that's something of a poser, Joe.
• 13:55
  Our football broadcasts were confined almost entirely to the Ivy League,
• 13:59
  Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Army, Navy games.
• 14:02
  The big intersectional games hadn't come into their own then.
• 14:05
  They came later along with the era of the sports specialist and statistician,
• 14:09
  and with them the stature of the sports broadcaster has grown.
• 14:13
  Till now it's a highly specialized and highly competitive profession.
• 14:17
  I do recall one game very vividly, though,
• 14:20
  not only because it was a great gridiron battle,
• 14:22
  but also because of an incident that happened.
• 14:25
  What game was that?
• 14:26
  The Harvard-Princeton game in 1925.
• 14:30
  It was a cold and frosty day,
• 14:32
  and I was handing Mack our thermos of hot coffee,
• 14:35
  just as Jake Slago cut loose for an 84-yard run.
• 14:39
  I got so excited I dropped the thermos through a crack in the stand.
• 14:43
  Later, Mack expressed his disgust in pretty strong terms,
• 14:46
  not with Jake's run, of course, but with mine losing our coffee.
• 14:49
  As a result of his somewhat pointed observations about it,
• 14:53
  we got an unexpectedly large response of mail.
• 14:57
  You mean the mic was open?
• 14:58
  Naturally.
• 14:59
  Wasn't it always in those days when you said something
• 15:01
  that wasn't supposed to go out over the air?
• 15:03
  Yes, I've heard rumors to that effect.
• 15:05
  Maybe you can tell us something about the pre-broadcast preparations
• 15:08
  back in those days.
• 15:10
  Well, frankly, there just wasn't any pre-broadcast preparation.
• 15:13
  We didn't approach the game the way the experts and statisticians do today,
• 15:17
  which I quickly admit enabled them to make a broadcast more interesting and accurate.
• 15:21
  Back in those days, we were lucky to have a list of the players
• 15:24
  and a couple of spotters.
• 15:26
  Everything was ad-lib, and in that department Mack was superb.
• 15:29
  He had great imagination and tremendous enthusiasm.
• 15:32
  In fact, his enthusiasm at times was so overwhelming, it got him in trouble.
• 15:35
  You mean when he had the wrong fighter taking a right cross to the jaw?
• 15:38
  Yes, or the fullback going through a right tackle when actually it was the quarterback.
• 15:43
  But it was that same enthusiasm that gave the listener the color,
• 15:46
  the feel of the crowd, the intensity of the atmosphere,
• 15:50
  the illusion of being present at the scene.
• 15:53
  Well, Joe, I know you're particularly interested in Mack's football broadcast tonight,
• 15:58
  but I would like to mention the sports event that started him on the road to sports broadcasting,
• 16:02
  the first one he did.
• 16:03
  Well, go ahead, Phil, we'd like to hear about it.
• 16:05
  Well, just a few months after Mack joined WEAF,
• 16:08
  it was decided as an experiment to broadcast the middleweight championship fight
• 16:11
  between Johnny Wilson and Harry Greb.
• 16:14
  Well, nobody knew exactly why, at least of all Mack, but he was given the assignment.
• 16:19
  Before the fight, he was a nervous wreck,
• 16:22
  more shaky than either of the fighters could possibly have been.
• 16:25
  He had gone to each of the training camps and made copious notes.
• 16:29
  The afternoon of the fight, he went to the polo grounds and made more notes.
• 16:33
  But that night, when the fight actually started, and they said,
• 16:36
  Mack, you're on the air, he tore up all the notes and got down to the business at hand,
• 16:41
  and he put all his wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm into his description.
• 16:45
  That was really the beginning of radio as a sports covering medium
• 16:49
  and Mack's beginning as a sports broadcaster.
• 16:52
  Must have been quite an experience for him, a novice stepping into a spot like that,
• 16:57
  which scared the pants off many a seasoned veteran today.
• 17:00
  Well, Mack didn't scare easily, and just a few weeks later,
• 17:03
  he was called on to broadcast the World Series between the Yankees and the Giants.
• 17:07
  I remember that. One game was held up 60 minutes by a downpour,
• 17:11
  but Mack draped his coat over the microphone to shield it from the rain,
• 17:15
  and he ad-libbed for the full hour.
• 17:17
  That's right. They didn't have any snug broadcasting booths then.
• 17:20
  And because he did such a great job of those broadcasts,
• 17:24
  they sent him out to do the first broadcast of the big football games,
• 17:28
  and from that time on, whenever something big and exciting happened or was scheduled to happen,
• 17:34
  whether a sports event or a political event, a catastrophe or a convention,
• 17:39
  an interview with a visiting potentate or the president, Mack was on the scene.
• 17:44
  In spite of the fact that he was called on so often to handle outstanding special events,
• 17:49
  sports broadcasting was his first love, wasn't it, Phil?
• 17:52
  Yes, Joe. Mack was the pioneer, the trailblazer in all the fields of radio announcing.
• 18:00
  But first and last, he loved sports best.
• 18:03
  I wonder when it was after that chance visit to the old WEAF studios
• 18:08
  that Mack began to realize he hadn't found just a spare time job, but an unusual profession.
• 18:14
  After that first World Series broadcast, I think.
• 18:18
  Until then, he still entertained ideas of returning to a singing career.
• 18:22
  But the WEAF program director was right. Radio gets into your blood. It certainly got into Mack's.
• 18:29
  Well, it couldn't have worked out better for both, Phil.
• 18:32
  No, because Mack became Mr. Radio himself.
• 18:35
  He's been called that, also the dean of broadcasters and the voice of radio.
• 18:41
  But the title doesn't matter so much. They all fit.
• 18:44
  Indeed they do. And our thanks to Phillips Carlin for these reminiscences,
• 18:49
  for helping us recall a man and his unforgettable voice.
• 18:53
  How do you do, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience? This is Graham McNamee speaking.
• 18:58
  Yes, the story of Graham McNamee is the story of radio.
• 19:02
  And the list of events he covered is the history of an era.
• 19:05
  He broadcast the first championship boxing match, the first national political convention,
• 19:10
  the first World Series, the first of the big football games.
• 19:14
  And since this is the eve of a new football season, there is still another first that we especially want to recall tonight.
• 19:20
  The Rose Bowl game, which he broadcast in 1927, which was also the very first coast-to-coast network broadcast.
• 19:28
  In 1941, he revisited the Rose Bowl.
• 19:33
  As in days of old, he sat in the broadcasting booth.
• 19:36
  And during the half, he recalls some of the great moments of the past with Ken Carpenter.
• 19:42
  Graham, what year was it that you first broadcast the Rose Bowl football game here in the Royal Seco?
• 19:48
  Well, Ken, it was January 1st, 1927, a long time ago.
• 19:52
  This is the 15th Rose Bowl game broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company.
• 19:57
  And I was fortunate enough to work in the first four games. And I sure enjoyed the privilege, Ken.
• 20:03
  The 1927 game was a mighty tough one for the coast.
• 20:07
  It was a tie game, 7-7, between the Indians of Stanford and the Crimson Tide of Alabama.
• 20:13
  Alabama blocked a Stanford kick on the Stanford 14-yard line and tied the score up in the last two minutes of play,
• 20:20
  after Stanford seemed to have the game on ice.
• 20:23
  It was a tough break for old Pop Warner, the Stanford coach,
• 20:26
  since his team had treated the Alabama boys pretty roughly all afternoon.
• 20:31
  In that game, Stanford sure showed three great backs in Hoffman, Hyland, and Vogue.
• 20:36
  In 1928, Stanford beat Pittsburgh 7-6, Hoffman's toe winning the game with his conversion after touchdown,
• 20:44
  after fumbles by each team had resulted in touchdowns for the other.
• 20:48
  Well, that 1929 game was a pretty wild one, wasn't it, Graham?
• 20:51
  Wild, Ken? Yes, that was a tough one.
• 20:55
  That was the game that produced the most talked-of play in football of all time.
• 20:59
  When the boys from Georgia Tech took the California team 8-7.
• 21:04
  Roy Regals, the California center, scooped up a Tech fumble deep in Tech territory.
• 21:10
  He got bumped around a bit, finally got squared away, and he saw a couple of goal posts and started for home.
• 21:16
  Unfortunately, it was his own home, Ken, and not the opposition's, and how he did go down that field.
• 21:23
  The crowd was simply stunned into utter silence.
• 21:26
  They were unable to believe the awful thing that their eyes told them, a man running the wrong way.
• 21:32
  Benny Lomb, that fast California back, took out after him, but Regals was an inspired runner for the moment,
• 21:39
  and Lomb couldn't stop him until he had reached his own two-yard line.
• 21:43
  Lomb tried to turn Regals around and start him in the right direction, but it was too late, Ken,
• 21:48
  and the ball was downed on California's one-yard line, with California forced to kick from deep in their own end zone.
• 21:56
  Regals passed Lomb from kick formation, missed fire, and after the ball had bounded around for what seemed an interminable time
• 22:04
  with 22 men in hot pursuit, the play was finally ruled a safety for Georgia Tech, and those two points won the game for Tech 8-7.
• 22:13
  Wasn't the 1927 game your first on the very important date in the physical history of broadcasting, Graham?
• 22:19
  Ken, it was mighty important, as it marked the first coast-to-coast radio hookup of the National Broadcasting Company,
• 22:26
  and believe me, there was plenty of worrying on the part of telephone and radio officials all the way from New York to Los Angeles.
• 22:35
  It was one of the most important milestones in radio broadcasting.
• 22:39
  Two wire channels were cleared across the country several days before the job, following very divergent routes,
• 22:46
  a regular channel and a spare to be used in case the regular went out for any reason, such as flood or fire or storm or anything of that kind.
• 22:55
  Much thought and a tremendous lot of labor were put into the routing of the two lines,
• 23:01
  and wire equalization tests were conducted for days and days until the engineers were satisfied that the lines were ready for the long strain.
• 23:10
  Why, even the night before the big day, our New York engineer, Gene Grossman, he's now an important sound man in the picture industry and I,
• 23:18
  were called over to the telephone company at Los Angeles and we spent the night there, testing for voice with New York
• 23:25
  and grabbing a few winks of sleep on desktops between tests.
• 23:30
  The nice thing, though, was the fact that on the day of the game, everything worked to perfection,
• 23:35
  and the first NBC coast-to-coast radio network was an accomplished fact.
• 23:41
  Yes, Graham McNamee played an important role in radio history, but he never cared much about fame, nor did he worry about his critics.
• 23:51
  There were few things he couldn't laugh off, but there was one thing he couldn't laugh off.
• 23:58
  Following a broadcast in the spring of 1942, he was stricken with a throat infection,
• 24:04
  and during the days that followed as he lay hospitalized, letters by the thousands poured in from listeners, from friends, and well-wishers.
• 24:15
  Meanwhile, a new organization called the Sports Broadcasters Association was formed, and Ted Husing was chosen to bring a membership pin to Mack,
• 24:24
  and Mack was very grateful. The following night, McNamee died.
• 24:32
  But can a legend die? Can you still immortality?
• 24:37
  Tomorrow, and on many another tomorrow, when the starting gun inaugurates another new season of football,
• 24:44
  old-timers sitting by their radios will again hear, at least in memory, that unforgettable voice.
• 24:51
  How do you do, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience? This is Graham McNamee speaking.
• 24:56
  And so each year, the Sports Broadcasters Association gives to the outstanding athlete the Graham McNamee Memorial Award,
• 25:07
  in honor of the man who was the true pioneer of sports broadcasting.
• 25:12
  Graham was loved by the men in his profession, as well as the millions who knew him only as a voice.
• 25:20
  And so ends our tribute to Graham McNamee, the sports announcer who became as famous as the events he described.
• 25:28
  Be with us next week when the All-American Sports Show salutes Casey Stengel of the New York Yankees, the first manager to win five straight pennants.