The Voice of God Is Stilled
The attempt to manufacture excitement is an unfortunate trend in major league baseball. In big league ballparks, monstrous electronic scoreboards suddenly light up and instruct fans to
MAKE NOISE!!!!!
as though we’re all a bunch or morons with no clue as to what’s happening on the field. In many ballparks, especially in Anaheim, ovine fans do as they’re told and begin clapping, while looking around to figure out why. There’s none of that insulting nonsense at Fenway Park in Boston. Red Sox fans would rebel if the team’s management ever tried it.
As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I can rarely find anything good to say about the New York Yankees. Today, however, I must give them credit for having the good sense to keep Bob Sheppard as their public address announcer for a great many years. Sheppard died yesterday at the age of 99 and had been the Yankees’ P.A. announcer for more than 55 years.
To his everlasting credit, Bob Sheppard refused to perform as a Yankee cheerleader. Most of his colleagues in other big league ballparks around the country introduce home team players with a feverish excitement regardless of the circumstance of the moment, bellowing out the name as though Babe Ruth himself had come back from the grave and was stepping to the plate. (The San Francisco Giants employ a female P.A. announcer and her high-pitched screeching is literally painful.)
Not Bob Sheppard. He introduced both Yankee and visiting players in a dignified tone, and with a deep resonant voice that earned him the sobriquet, The Voice of God. Many a ball player has said he never really felt he’d made it to “the show” until Bob Sheppard spoke his name and he heard it echoing throughout Yankee Stadium.
The Red Sox public address announcer, Carl Beane, is also of the Bob Sheppard School of Announcing: you enunciate the name carefully, speaking clearly and calmly … then you shut up.
But Bob Sheppard was the best of them all, and he will be missed by generations of baseball fans. Yes, even by Red Sox fans.
I will concede you have an arguable point if you’re taking issue with the italics. But surely not because I note that the announcer is a female. In fact, it is to the Giants’ credit that they chose to hire a female P.A. announcer. But her overly emthusiastic player introductions are painful because of the higher pitch to her voice … and her voice is pitched higher because she is a female.
“(The San Francisco Giants employ a female P.A. announcer and her high-pitched screeching is literally painful.)”
Come,now. That the Giants’ P.A. announcer’s voice is “painful” is (perhaps) a valid complaint. That the announcer is a woman (emphasized by your use of italics) is not a valid complaint.