Peanuts and Crackerjacks fans are fretting because the baseball moguls can’t get the major-league game started this month. Not to worry. I know an ‘Old Scotchman’ solution.
His name was Gordon McClendon. He operated an Oak Cliff radio station. Oak Cliff exists between a one-time flooded Monkey Ward building in Fort Worth and Neiman Markup in Big-D Dallas. Over the air the Old Scotchman recreated his announcement of games by conjuring up baseball diamond descriptions. All the information he had was a bare-bones telegraph message that gave player’s last name and a short note on how the batter fared.
If Western Union sent “Elam singles,” Gordon told you how the pitcher “wound up and delivered.” Then McClendon would hold his wooden ruler close to the mike, strike the wood with his pencil, and tell you where his conjured baseball landed.
Remember when our Abilene announcer re-created our Blue Sox playing in Albuquerque from a telegraph report. I joined him in the radio announcer’s booth, also read the wire report and created a box-score for the newspaper to print.
When the Scotchman went national, my Austin college roommate Fred Barbee and I often listened. Especially when his Red Sox were playing my Yankees.
If you are fretting because you have no baseball radio broadcast, just give me a box-score reprint, a microphone, and a wooden ruler and I will take you out to a ballgame. Don’t know how to conjure a baseball game for television.
Photo by Steshka Willems from Pexels
