07/13/2015
If you have a love for baseball and, specifically, broadcasting, this book is for you. It’s an opportunity to get first-hand insight from many of the game’s top voices on some of their fondest memories behind the mic, while also capturing some of the pristine details of the ballparks each of them have called home. Baseball is a beautiful game and that beauty shines through each page.
Baseball broadcasters usually have longer careers than those of the players whose games they call. It’s that unique perspective that gives their recollections a compelling context…. [T]here is plenty of rich baseball lore here, and it comes straight from the mouths of those who have been there.
Kirk McKnight has done all baseball fans a great service. He’s bought you a ticket and takes you along with him right into the ballparks and right into the game. If you love baseball, you’ll love this read!
In The Voices of Baseball, Kirk McKnight serves up a detailed and unique cross-section of baseball history. This history is told by baseball’s broadcasters, using the sport’s ballparks as the backdrop. Each chapter is focused on a different MLB franchise, and McKnight immerses us in that team’s ballpark—its stories, eccentricities, top players, and games—through quotes from the team’s play-by-play voices. McKnight’s latest work is a gem for baseball fans of all ages—either to relive memories or to take a plunge into baseball’s past.
President Bill Clinton's appearance on the Baltimore Orioles' broadcast of Cal Ripken's record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game is one of the many stories that brings McKnight's book to life. The Baltimore chapter is one of the book's best, thanks to the storytelling ability of announcer Jon Miller, who now works in San Francisco. Miller talks about his call of Ripken's fourth-inning home run being drowned by Clinton's reaction. Other behind-the-scenes tales include how Ripken was dealing with a fever that week, amid the stress of approaching the record, and how he didn't want any kind of ceremony once the game became official in the fifth. Teammates practically shoved him out of the dugout to do a victory lap. The stories behind Ripken's record is an example of how McKnight went far beyond his original plan to describe the ballparks.
Whenever there’s a picture of Vin Scully, I smile and listen in my mind even though he’s no longer talking. Kirk McKnight has awakened that audio, and with it the audio of many of the other baseball broadcasters of our era. What a grand way to visit all our ballparks.
There are baseball books about ballparks, and ones about broadcasters. What author Kirk McKnight has done here is to fuse the two, getting broadcasters who know the parks well to describe them and the players and dramas that have enlivened all 30 current major-league stadiums, as well as some from the past.
The Christian Science Monitor
The Voices of Baseball takes you through all the teams and all the ballparks in a fascinating, storytelling way from some of baseball's most spellbinding oral historians. Kirk McKnight sends you on a journey from Safeco Field in the Pacific Northwest to Marlins Park in South Florida, spinning accounts of historic games from students of baseball history. You'll be entertained by the descriptions and accounts of some of your favorite voices.
It's one of the oldest expressions in the history of man: "If only these walls could talk!" In the case of Kirk McKnight's informative and entertaining The Voices of Baseball, the walls do talk—or certainly they come alive in the words of some of the most prominent broadcasters in the game's history. What an idea Kirk had. Let's face it, I would buy a book to hear Vin Scully's tales alone, but Kirk also spoke with Frick Award recipients like Jon Miller and Eric Nadel—just to name a couple of the announcers whose recollections grace the book. If you are a fan of baseball and a fan of broadcasting (and Kirk does as good a job as anyone has ever done blending the two), I highly recommend The Voices of Baseball. Baseball is a sport for storytellers. If you close your eyes and use your imagination, the walls talk in his book.
Players may come and go, but the connection for many baseball fans to their favorite team remains constant thanks to the voices that describe the games. Kirk McKnight does a wonderful job profiling the people whose passion for the game in their accounts, win or lose, maintains that love affair for fans.
Voices of Baseball is a great read. Kirk McKnight gets a knock with his ground-level look into baseball’s historic ballparks and iconic plays that make them special venues. The moments and memories that make each stadium unique is perfectly captured by the home team radio and television broadcasters that paint the pictures and tell the tales in brilliant fashion. A well written baseball book for the ages.
Whenever there’s a picture of Vin Scully, I smile and listen in my mind even though he’s no longer talking. Kirk McKnight has awakened that audio, and with it the audio of many of the other baseball broadcasters of our era. What a grand way to visit all our ballparks. - Marc Katz, retired sportswriter, Dayton Daily News
Baseball broadcasters usually have longer careers than those of the players whose games they call. It’s that unique perspective that gives their recollections a compelling context. This volume combines the memories of 33 broadcasters with capsule histories of the various ballparks that have housed Major League teams through the years. Thus, the announcers reflect not only on what happened on the field but also on the nature of the field itself. For example, current Cubs TV broadcaster Len Kasper offers insight into the one-of-a-kind ground rules related to Wrigley Field’s ivy-covered walls and the anomalies created by Chicago’s ever-changing weather conditions. Like many of the other interviewees, Kasper includes anecdotes about his predecessors behind the mike, which extends the reach of the book to such announcing icons as Harry Caray and Red Barber. Although the emphasis on stadium histories seems somewhat of an unwieldy organizational strategy, there is plenty of rich baseball lore here, and it comes straight from the mouths of those who have been there.
