COWBOY AT THE MIKE

Sportscaster for the Boston Red Sox since 1951, Gowdy is just as genial, more wide-ranging in coverage, but less witty than Backstage at the Mets (p. 334) by Lindsey Nelson and Al Hirshberg. Gowdy gives many serious evaluations of famous players, observations based upon their grasp of the game rather than the recordbook. Mainly, though, he sticks to his personal history and avoids a full-dress picture of the Red Sox. Gowdy is from Cheyenne, where he beganannouncing and sportswriting fairly young after his WWII medical discharge for a split disc. This injury has plagued him ever since and interrupted his career more than once. At school he was an unwilling honor student devoted to basketball. One of his best passages is his description of the old Liberty Network re-creations of baseball games, in which the game being played was described from Western Union symbols amplified against recordings of crowd noises; the announcer was not at the game itself. He movingly records the day he Mceed Ted Williams' retirement game and Ted retired on a home run. In Boston, when he was first hired by the Red Sox, New Englanders were amazed by his barbarisms of pronunciation (Wor-ses-ter) but have come to accept him... Mostly for fans.