Radio: The Big Noise

Even after the final game of the season, U.S. baseball fans did not know who would play in the World Series (see SPORT). But there was never any doubt who would be on hand to tell them about it. For the tenth year, Martene Windsor (“Bill”) Corum, Hearst’s stump-shaped sports columnist, got ready last week for radio’s biggest sports event.

As usual, Bill Corum will pitch the pregame dope and color, the highlights and summary after the last out. As usual, he will leave the Mutual play-by-play to professional announcers. The two men who will describe the action this year are comparative newcomers to a coast-to-coast audience, but familiar voices in the East.

Big (230 Ibs.), sleepy-voiced Arch McDonald has been announcing baseball for 15 years, is so well known around Washington that he easily won the Democratic nomination for Congress (from Maryland) last June. His partner will be James Joseph (“Jimmy”) Britt, a hustling 36-year-old who announces all Boston Red Sox and Braves home games in a fluid but spicy manner. Fans consider Arch and Jimmy among the best in the business, but they still like to hear the Corum drawl.

To Corum, broadcasting baseball is old hat, but his favorite. He has followed the game since he was seven, got his first job writing baseball for the New York Times 27 years ago. Arthur Brisbane liked a story Bill wrote about Walter Johnson, lured him over to Hearst’s Journal-American, where he has been ever since. He travels with the clubs, knows most of the major-league players, was an old favorite of John (“The Great”) McGraw and Miller Huggins. He also is a favorite of other journalists. Wrote Westbrook Pegler: “There is never any night where Our Will is.”

Hit or Error. Baseball-savvy Corum calls the game as he sees it, ignores official scorers and managers (he has been an official scorer himself). Last year, when the scorers charged Hank Greenberg with a twelfth-inning error in the sixth game, Corum calmly said the play was a base hit for Stan Hack. “I told ’em that I could see the play better than anyone else—our broadcasting booth was in left field—and I saw the ball bounce over Hank’s head; he never got a glove on it.” At 10 o’clock that night, the official scorers decided that Bill was right, scratched the error from Hank’s record.

But the biggest worry to a series commentator is the reaction of the fans away from the ballpark. “They don’t know the park and can’t visualize exactly what’s happening,” says Corum, in his gin-croak voice. “Like last year, when the ball got away from the outfielders and was lost in the shrubs. I said: ‘This is like town lot baseball; they’ve even lost the ball in the weeds.’ And then I annoyed ’em when I told again what lousy baseball they were playing. I think I said ‘We’ve had everything but a wedding at home plate.’ I don’t think they liked that.”