Baseball Voices<\/em> series<\/a> revives the Prince that older Buc fans remember fondly, and the one many younger fans wish they had known.\u00c2\u00a0 This paean to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Gunner,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d produced by Chicago Cubs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 announcer Pat Hughes, tells the story of an outrageous and controversial figure, equally capable of making fans curse his name, laugh uproariously, or shout in jubilation.<\/p>\nHughes is our guide through Prince\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, adding valuable context about the broadcaster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upbringing, personality, and place in Pirate history.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But the star of the CD is Prince\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s craggy baritone voice, which was lightly drizzled with a sweet Middle America twang and then, it seems, thoroughly scoured with a wire brush.<\/p>\n
Like a lot of broadcasters, Prince was a master storyteller.\u00c2\u00a0 Hughes has included hilarious clips of Prince explaining the origin of his nickname \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a sordid tale of whiskey, women, and weaponry \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and describing the time in St. Louis when, on a dare, he stripped down to his skivvies and launched himself from a third floor window into a hotel pool.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 On a more serious note, Prince contributes a touching vignette that sheds light on his close and unlikely friendship with Roberto Clemente.<\/p>\n
The bulk of the 58-minute CD, though, features Prince working at his craft.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps the most instructive track is an edited nine-minute segment from a September 22, 1975 game against the Philadelphia Phillies, which offers a taste of what it must have been like to listen to Prince on daily basis.\u00c2\u00a0 The Pirates won the game to clinch their fifth National League East title in six years, but, like most games throughout the course of a season, this one was not particularly dramatic.\u00c2\u00a0 The final score was 11-3.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only that, but the Bucs had an insurmountable lead in the standings; even if they hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t clinched on this night, they would have clinched the next day, or the next.<\/p>\n
There is an art to keeping an audience engaged during a lopsided clunker like this one.\u00c2\u00a0 Prince perfected that art. \u00c2\u00a0Whenever the action on the field dragged, listeners usually could count on him to liven up the proceedings with an entertaining digression or a spontaneous flight of lunacy.<\/p>\n
On this evening, the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 color man, Nellie King, was ill so Prince was going solo.\u00c2\u00a0 He begins by reviewing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153their lineup\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153our lineup.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0Then throughout the broadcast, he keeps the atmosphere loose with his colorful, homespun lexicon, encouraging fans to waive their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153babushkas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d after one clutch hit, and sighing with relief when a Mike Schmidt drive curves foul \u00e2\u20ac\u0153by a gnat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyelash.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Before long, things veer wildly off course.\u00c2\u00a0 With the game well in hand, Prince, with no warning and for no apparent reason, leaves the booth in the middle of an inning.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So, uhhh, you do a little thinkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be right back.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He returns moments later and explains cryptically, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The doctor just gave me an inoculation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 In the seventh inning, during a pitching change, Prince admits, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m running out of things to talk about,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d before asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you mind if I call time and go to the little boys\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 room?\u00c2\u00a0 You can listen to the organ music.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here by myself and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m holding in everything!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 And with that, he abandons his post once again.<\/p>\n
Prince often resembled a carnival barker, clad in eye-lacerating sports coats, bellowing goofy catchphrases, conjuring up hexes on opposing pitchers, and rambling about nonsense.\u00c2\u00a0 But when matters got serious, he played it straight and delivered a tight, stirring account of what was unfolding on the field.\u00c2\u00a0 The CD includes several clips from the historic 1959 game in which Harvey Haddix retired 36 consecutive Milwaukee Braves before losing in the 13th<\/sup> inning.\u00c2\u00a0 Here, Prince is brilliant.\u00c2\u00a0 He paints a riveting word picture, using his voice like a musical instrument to convey both the tension of the game and his own emotions without succumbing to overwrought verbosity or contrived screaming.<\/p>\nPrince clashed constantly with the higher-ups at Westinghouse Broadcasting, which owned the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 flagship radio station, KDKA.\u00c2\u00a0 Following the 1975 season, Westinghouse stunned the city of Pittsburgh, replacing the beloved Prince and King with Milo Hamilton and Lanny Frattare.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The new duo was exactly what the executives were looking for \u00e2\u20ac\u201c professional, accurate, extremely well-prepared.\u00c2\u00a0 They also were as dramatic as a tuna sandwich.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0A devastated Prince filled out the rest of his career with a hodgepodge of assignments, including stints with the Houston Astros and the NHL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n
In scanning the roster of the Baseball Voices<\/em> collection<\/a>, it is striking how all these legends had such divergent styles \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the urbane and literate Red Barber; Harry Caray\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Joe Fan shtick; Harry Kalas, who could make a sacrifice bunt sound like the Book of Revelation; and Prince with his delightful weirdness. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0For broadcasting aficionados, the series is a treasure.\u00c2\u00a0 For Pirate fans, the Prince CD is a chance to get swept away in a time when a skinny loudmouth in a plaid jacket helped make rooting for the Pirates feel like fun rather than a penance.<\/p>\nJames Forr\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book, <\/em>Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography (co-authored with David Proctor) is a finalist for the 2010 Casey Award.\u00c2\u00a0 He also was the 2005 winner of the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1985, a decade after his short-sighted and hard-headed bosses flung him to the curb, legendary broadcaster Bob Prince made a poignant return to the Pittsburgh Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 booth.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 For younger fans who were hearing the 68-year-old Prince for the first time, it was hard to figure what all the fuss was about.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Cancer surgery and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>In 1985, a decade after his short-sighted and hard-headed bosses flung him to the curb, legendary broadcaster Bob Prince made a poignant return to the Pittsburgh Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 booth.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 For younger fans who were hearing the 68-year-old Prince for the first time, it was hard to figure what all the fuss was about.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Cancer surgery and radiation treatments had left him frail and languid.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0His voice was weak, he slurred his words, and he barely could keep up with the action.\u00c2\u00a0 A month later he was dead.<\/p>\n