Interview with former longtime Cincinnati Reds and now Houston Astros Hall of Famer (Class of 2023) play by play announcer Bill Brown. Brownie and I discuss the finer points of broadcasting, his broadcasting career and how his Faith in God guided him throughout, and his days with the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati and the Killer Bees in Houston.
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Listen to the full podcast by clicking the button below. Partial transcript follows:
GR: When you got there to the station in Cincinnati, it's 1972 and you work with a gentleman who is the radio voice of the Cincinnati Bengals, a gentleman named Phil Samp. Can you talk about how he influenced you and about his stopwatch technique?
BB: Yeah, he was great. Phil was the old school type of broadcaster who just assumed the first day that I was going to be able to handle this. We talked about the basics of it. He didn't try to tell me how to do the job or anything else. He just said, well, here's what you need to do. These are the times you need to do your radio and TV sportscasts.
These are the deadlines for you to get your scripts in. This is how you put your film together and your tape and all these things. Go get them. And he did the Bengals, so he was gone for six weeks, I think, in a training camp in Wilmington, Ohio. He just lived in the dorm up there with the Bengals.
So, I had to do his sportscasts for him during that time, which was great training for me. I got a lot of airtime on radio and TV. But, I did the general manager's show with Bob Howsam, the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, once a week. So, these were all great bits of exposure for me to life in a big-league city, which I'd never had before.
And I spent a lot of time at Riverfront watching games. And so, I took my little recorder down, and if I was doing the 6 and 11 o'clock TV sportscast, I'd go down for maybe an hour and a half in between those two sportscasts, and I'd take my little recorder, and I'd go in an empty booth and get the notes for the game and take a stab at doing two or three innings of play by play.
Because that's really what I wanted to do someday.
GR: Right.
BB: But, the sportscasting job there was, was fantastic. That was a huge break to be there, and of course the Reds were great at that point, and the Bengals were good, so it was a good time to be in Cincinnati.
GR: How did you know that play by play was on the horizon for you at that time?
BB: I really didn't. This job is so unpredictable. So many things happen that looking back, you shake your head and wonder, well, how was I so fortunate? You know, I mean, God was looking after me. There was no doubt about that because there were many people, you know, Phil Samp had a great voice and he was very natural on the air and I would watch him do that show and think, well, he's never going to leave here. I'm never going to get his job. But that really wasn't the job I wanted anyway, and I'd listen to the Reds, and the year I got there, Al Michaels was their play-by-play guy on radio. And I would think, well, I'm never gonna get his job. He is just absolutely the best I've heard. So, it would go like that, and then you'd look back now on it and say, well, you know, there were so many people, even who weren't doing those jobs, who were better than I was. I don't know how I'm so lucky, and the answer is that God looked after me. You know, I just had a lot of blessings always.
GR: Yes, sir. So, in the early 70s years, this show that you have, it's a pregame show before the Reds broadcast was called Reds Scene. And you got to work with Sparky Anderson. Can you talk about your relationship with him, your friendship with him, and then how he had a very keen. internal sense of timing to get, to get you the clip that you needed.
BB: Oh yeah, Sparky was the best. He reminded a lot of the national writers who wrote articles about him and books about the Reds of Casey Stengel because he loved the media. He knew how to manipulate, if you will, the media to get his message out. For instance, he loved being asked tough questions. So, he had his daily manager show on the pregame radio program, and he wanted Al Michaels or Marty Brennaman to ask him, why did you pinch hit for so and so in the 7th inning? And John McNamara, who succeeded him, did not even do a pregame radio show because he hated to be asked questions like that on his strategy.
But, it gave Sparky a chance to explain himself to the fans. So, I think it was very astute on his part to want to have that opportunity, but he was great with anybody. You know If you were a newspaper writer from Evansville in Illinois and you came to four games a year and you went to the PR director Jim Ferguson and said I'd like to sit down with Sparky, he'd sit down with him and 20 minutes or whatever and then the New York Times would have somebody coming in the next day and he’d give that guy 20 minutes So, he was very fair and equitable with his time, no matter your stature in the game.
