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Chicago's Harry Caray to crow "Holy Cow!"

I thought Phil Rizzuto was the originator of "Holy Cow." What's the story on this?

Harry Caray began using the phrase in his broadcasts in the early 1950s; Phil Rizzuto didn't become a broadcaster until after he was retired as a player - he joined the Yankee team (Mel Allen, Red Barber) in 1958.

The first voice I remember hearing was Mel Allen, while listening to the 1961 World Series at my grandparents' kitchen table. The Mets were created the next year and Lindsey (The Human Ground Rule*) Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner were the broadcast team until Nelson left in 1979 (he moved to San Francisco to be closer to a daughter and did the Giants for a few years). I was buzzed hearing Bob Murphy's induction speech into the broadcast wing of the Hall of Fame in 1994 (I still have a tape of the speech).

Oddly enough, I listened to Yankee games in the mid-1960s just to hear Red Barber - I was never a fan of Mel Allen as a play-by-play man, but I later came to love This Week In Baseball and his handling of that - about whom I'd heard enough regarding his years with the Dodgers. For a few years until his rather disgraceful canning (he tried getting the camera crews to pan the near-empty Yankee Stadium at the end of 1966, the first year the Yankees ever finished in last place, and it led to his firing), I actually enjoyed a Yankee game if the Mets weren't on - just to hear Red Barber.

And now it occurs to me that, with Ernie Harwell retiring after this season (so he says, again), it would leave only Vin Scully left from among The Voices. One of the pleasures I have had since coming to Southern Cal in 1999 is listening to Vin Scully all summer long. On radio, though, he goes for the first three innings and it's simulcast to his television work; he's on television all game long. So help me God, when I went to Dodger Stadium for a couple of games this season, there were people bringing tiny battery-op television sets and turning off the picture so they could listen to him all game long. They can see the game for themselves, but they want to hear it from Vin. What a surprise. One of the worst among many mistakes made by baseball's mandarins was screwing up the network Game of the Week concept and depriving the nation of one of its greatest gifts come World Series time.

My favourite Scully gem: After bantering with analyst Joe Gariagiola, 1986 World Series Game Seven, eighth inning, Mets pitcher Jesse Orosco up in a likely bunt situation, Ray Knight running on second and Rafael Santana on first, and the Red Sox showing the so-called wheel play (first and third basemen charge the lines to home; shortstop moves toward third, second baseman toward first - also known as the rotation play, and both the Red Sox and the Mets were effective with the play that season), Garagiola held that Orosco (who'd almost never batted in his career to date, being a late-inning relief pitcher) "I'd bet the house on it...he's got to bunt," while Scully pondered whether the Mets might take the bunt off. Then came the pitch, with the Red Sox putting on the wheel play, and here was Scully's call...

Swinging! and a ground ball into left centerfield...in comes Knight, it is eight to five, Mets, and Joe, you just lost your house!

* - Broadcasting a Met game in 1965 at the Astrodome, Lindsey Nelson actually arranged to do the play-by-play (he did three innings) from the gondola that hung from the top center of the dome. Because a ball hitting the gondola and bouncing back into fair territory was ruled a double under stadium ground rules, it prompted Met manager Casey Stengel to crack, "My man Nelson's a ground rule now."

I grew up not far from Wrigley Field, went to literally hundreds of Cubs' games, and saw hundreds more on WGN-TV (when WGN was only local, free, and they broadcast almost all the games, home and away).

To me, the Voice of the Cubs will always be the late, great Jack Brickhouse, the voice I grew up with. To me, Harry Caray was the Voice of the Enemy :-) , i.e., the Cardinals and, later, the White Sox. It's a shame that more people now associate the Cubs with Caray than with Brickhouse.