Jim Britt

Jim Britt (April 11, 1910 — December 31, 1980) was an American sportscaster who broadcast Major League Baseball games in Boston, Massachusetts, and Cleveland, Ohio, during the 1940s and 1950s.

On June 15, 1948, Britt was at the microphone on WBZ-TV for the first telecast of a major league baseball game in New England, as the Boston Braves defeated the Chicago Cubs, 6-3, at Braves Field.

From 1940 through 1950, with time out for United States Navy service in World War II, Britt was the voice of both the National League Braves and the American League Boston Red Sox, as the two teams broadcast home games only. Because the MLB schedules were then arranged so that the two Boston clubs were never home on the same date, there were no schedule conflicts. As such, Britt was the voice of two pennant-winning clubs, the 1946 Red Sox and the 1948 Braves. At the close of the 1950 season, that arrangement ended and each team decided to air a full schedule of 154 games. Britt chose to stay with the Braves, and the Red Sox were left to look for their own #1 announcer.

As fate would have it, the Sox would hire the second-banana for the New York Yankees — a Mel Allen protege named Curt Gowdy — who would be Voice of the Red Sox for 15 years before moving on to NBC's "Game of the Week" and a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Ford C. Frick Award winner. Meanwhile, the Braves' attendance fell disastrously in 1951 and 1952, and the club moved to Milwaukee during 1953 spring training.

Britt did not accompany the Braves to Wisconsin. Instead, he joined the TV announcing crew of the Cleveland Indians in 1954, working through 1957 with Ken Coleman, a native of the Boston area (and Gowdy's eventual successor, in 1966, as Voice of the Red Sox). The highlight of Britt's Cleveland tenure was the Indians' 1954 American League pennant, although they lost in four straight games to the New York Giants in the 1954 World Series.

Britt participated in both the 1948 and 1950 World Series radio broadcasts, and worked on television for the 1949 and 1951 World Series. He also announced the 1951 baseball All-Star game and the 1953 Sugar Bowl football game.

He returned to Boston in the late 1950s as a sports announcer for the city's ABC affiliate, then WHDH-TV, which also telecast Red Sox games. But Britt never regained his former role on Red Sox broadcasts. Instead, he initiated a popular candlepin bowling show that he would host until the late 1960s, and served as host of "Dateline: Boston", a predessor to many of the modern-day magazine-style television programs. Britt died in San Francisco, California, at age 70.