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| The Peninsula Times Tribune, 18-March-1949 |
I remember Don Klein as announcer for Stanford and the 49ers. Despite his rough start as a broadcaster for the PCL San Francisco Seals, he became a well-respected broadcaster. The Seals beat the major league Saint Louis Browns 7-5 in an exhibition game.
Dink Templeton
Fagan of Seals was afraid 'Aunt Maggie' lingo
would offend some of his Hillborough chums
Jack McDonald of the Call-Bulletin gave the Seals' new broadcaster Don Klein a big hand on the voicing of the first baseball telecast Wednesday, and I am happy to report that Klein wasn't doing it because the guy was pretty bad, failing for innings at a time to identify the batters, who certainly couldn't' be identified from what you saw on the screen.
Klein is a nice lad who has been imported from Honolulu to step into about as tough a setup as I can think of -- replacing the crack announcer Jack MacDonald who was the Voice of Baseball to many thousands of Bay Area baseball fans. Jack was summarily fired by Paul Fagan at the end of last season after building up tremendous gobs of goodwill for the Seals over 10 years.
"There it goes right out Aunt Maggie's window -- broken glass all over the place," Jack would holler when someone belted a homer, and the cultured Mr. Fagan would shudder at such colorful language, feeling that some of his Hillsborough chums might be looking down their long noses in disdain.
Jack got his degree from the University of California and naturally couldn't be expected to drip with culture (say that and duck quick, Templeton). I don't know where Mr. Fagan picked up his degrees, but he had made it tough for young Don Klein. It's bad enough to have the sponsor telling you how you have to broadcast. On top of that you expect the club owner to have rules you can't break on the air, such as at Seals Stadium when the wind
is blowing a gale you can't mention that, and if it's cold enough to freeze your gullet, that is not a topic to be discussed. But when the club owner also dictates the tone and inflection of the voice, the idioms, similes and nicknames which must not be used, and sets a temperature gauge on the among of excitement allowed, the sportscaster is apt to have a very difficult time keeping his fans from going to sleep or turning him off, because cultured diction is something not one out of a carload of baseball fans gives a damn about.
Pressure on new diamond announcer is 'terrific'
The pressure on Don Klein is terrific and I find myself pulling for him hard but on top that he draws the assignment of telecasting the two games a week along with his regular radio broadcast. The two just do not fit together. When you see the action it's hard to take the entire description necessary for a radio broadcast. Don Leibendorfer, doing his regular public address job, would be just about perfect for television, but Don Klein, even if he is good as the old Walnut Famer on the radio job, certainly can't well fit that to television at the same time.
Bucky Walters of the News quoted the KPIX studio folk as saying the cameras were located down the third base line, which was typical of what was the matter with the telecast. Of course they were really located down the first base line, but it seemed no one handling the assignment knew anything about baseball. Once the ball was hit the camera would invariably be trained on the wrong place to pick up any part of the play. With men on first and second, the batter bunts down the third base line. The camera swings to first. The announcer gives the play at third, calling Dillinger out and protesting all over the lot. The camera never does get over to third base, so it comes as a surprise when, after the first pitch to the next batter the announcer suddenly wakes up and says "they called him safe at third, and the bases are loaded."
It seems to me that a camera behind the plate is an absolute necessity for showing a ball game, so that you could see the pitcher throw, the ball coming up to the plate and the hitter all at once, though Seals Stadium, with its glass backstop, makes that quite a problem to figure out. Certainly if all of the action is taken from the side, a much wider lensed camera is needed. The KPIX camera, when focused on the hitter, only took in the area about halfway to the pitcher's box.
After seeing that first one I can only fell more certain than ever that television will never keep fans away from the ballpark and will create more interest to bring new ones out than anything ever known before. I felt that was after the first ice hockey telecast, and Walter Mails tells me that television increased the SF Shamrocks attendance 50 per cent, even with a losing team.
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Gene Valla, a longtime Yankees farmhand and son of San Francisco Seal Eugene Valla, has passed away. He was an infielder. His father was an outfielder. Gene was a World War II vet who owned the Blue Gum Restaurant and Motel in Willows. He was a good friend of one of my grandfather's partners.
