- Al Helfer
Al Helfer was a
Major League Baseball radio announcer for 17 years. He was known by the nick name "Mr. Radio Baseball" [http://books.google.com/books?id=Uzh6vqrdzMIC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=al+helfer+baseball+biography&source=web&ots=kDO3EvjTrR&sig=MgqScPwHh9s3voHD3Oy_j8TseBs] He worked sixWorld Series , ten All-Star Games and regular broadcasts for several teams, among them theNew York Yankees , Brooklyn Dodgers andOakland Athletics . He worked the "Game of the Week" along withDizzy Dean in the early fifties, though they often argued and never got along [http://books.google.com/books?id=fZCJUI0UMDUC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=al+helfer&source=web&ots=-aFMOoNQQL&sig=CAYFPHZX5revbd8EBvO-yUTfAt8#PPA69,M1] . He also did the broadcast of theArmy-Navy Game during the 1940s and 1950s and several Rose Bowl games.Helfer played football and basketball at
Washington & Jefferson College inWashington, Pennsylvania and he took his first job as a sports reporter for thePittsburgh Post-Gazette after graduation, also working the football games of thePittsburgh Panthers team for radio stationWWSW . He started working on broadcasting recreations of baseball games in 1933 forPittsburgh Pirates games.He joined
Red Barber as the regular broadcast team of theCincinnati Reds in 1935. He left Cincinnati to joinCBS in 1937, working a few baseball games and a lot of football games. He was reunited with Barber on the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasts in 1939. They worked together until 1941, when Helfer joined the Navy duringWorld War II .When he returned the Dodgers job was no longer available, so he started doing the "Game of the Week" broadcasts. He did eventually rejoin the Dodgers for their last years in Brooklyn, calling their final home game and introducing the players to the crowd for the final time.
He worked a number of teams after that, including the Houston Colt 45s first season and the
Oakland Athletics first season on the west coast.He was married to a vaudeville performer known as "Ramona" [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0708485/bio] and remarried to a woman named Margret in Sacramento, California his last 3 years of his life. He retired around 1969 and died on
May 16 , 1975.Event Broadcast History
*
Major League Baseball All-Star Game (1939, 1950-1958)
*World Series (1950-1954, 1957)
*BroadcastCatfish Hunter 's 1968 perfect gameExternal links
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=fZCJUI0UMDUC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=al+helfer&source=web&ots=-aFMOoNQQL&sig=CAYFPHZX5revbd8EBvO-yUTfAt8#PPA69,M1 Excerpt from Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers book]
* [http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Al_Helfer Baseball Library bio]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=Uzh6vqrdzMIC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=al+helfer+baseball+biography&source=web&ots=kDO3EvjTrR&sig=MgqScPwHh9s3voHD3Oy_j8TseBs The Golden Voices of Baseball book]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.