“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

So said General Douglas MacArthur after he was relieved of his command (fired) by President Harry Truman because the two had differing opinions on how to pursue the “police action” in Korea.
So the man immortalized in song as “Fighting Doug MacArthur” came home, testified before Congress and the ditty was amended to “Old soldiers never die, they just testify.”

All of which has nothing to do with what I am about to tell you. It is a shameless takeoff on the original song, which is (in my words), “Old sportscasters never die, they just...”
They just do whatever it is that they do. They either fade away, or live forever in the memories of their loyal followers.

I have had more than enough to say recently about announcers on the Cleveland sporting scene, particularly those reporting on the doings of the Indians and the Browns, but I keep getting mail from readers asking why I didn’t mention so and so.

So today I will make one last desperate attempt to mention the other so and sos.
But first I would like to take note of a nice letter I got from Matt Underwood, one of the two superb broadcasters who bring us commentary on televised Indians game.

His partner, of course, is Rick Manning. But you already knew that.

Matt had some very nice things to say about that previous column. So naturally I will reciprocate by saying something additionally about him and Rick.

Here goes: They are both very competent sportscasters as well as being exceptionally nice guys. And well dressed. And they are far superior to all the other guys who broadcast both baseball and football.
I cannot address the subject of basketball because I do not watch basketball. The reason is simple. I do not understand basketball. It is too complicated for me.

When you think of something as basic as grown men bouncing a ball on a wooden floor and then tossing it up, hoping it goes through a hoop, I think to myself: “Self, I must be missing something here. People would not pay to watch anything so simple as a playground game engaged in by exceptionally tall people the only point of which is to bounce a ball on the floor (or the ground) and toss it through a hoop. How is this different from bean bag toss? What is it that I am missing?”

So I have decided to forget about basketball and concentrate on baseball and football, because I understand both of those games. So let’s move on.

Much has been written in the past few days about the horrific East Ohio Gas fire in a respectable, nice Slovenian neighborhood on Cleveland’s East Side that killed so many people and burned to the ground so many homes.

What does that have to do with football? you ask. Just this. The fire was the night Willoughby Union High School played Wickliffe in football at Lincoln School field in Willoughby.
As we looked to the  west, we could see the flames lighting up the entire skyline. It maybe a point of reference that would not occur to anyone else, but for me it is a searing memory of a tragic event that changed the lives of so many fine people and devastated such a large portion of a nicely manicured neighborhood.
Do you know where you were that night in 1944? I know where I was, and I will never forget it.

But I digress.

Larry Reichard of North Perry Village wanted to know why I didn’t mention Jimmy Dudley in any of my previous columns about sports announcers. Well, I should have. And Bob Neal, too. They shared the same microphone, but they hated each other and didn’t speak for many years.
Larry also said his daughter and her husband bought a 1962 Corvette that was once owned by a member of the Neal family.

This I do know, Larry. If that car was owned by Bob Neal, he never gave Jimmy Dudley a ride home in it, even if it was pouring down rain.

Which brings us to Bud Boylan (Shaw, Class of 1945) and Ray Skopar (Collinwood, Class of 1946).
(I am beginning to run out of space. I will have to make this a brief, as they say in law school.)
Both Bud and Ray have fond memories of those old time radio broadcasts, especially the ones that arrived on Western Union ticker tape, which were recreated by Jack Graney and Pinkey Hunter.

When Graney would say, “It’s a hot shot, through the box, out over second base for a single,” one of them would yell, “Foul Ball.”
I think it was Ray. But I am not certain, because I wasn’t there.

To leave a comment on this column, go to JimCollinsEditorsNotebook.Blogspot.com

JCollins@News-Herald.com

I have often observed that I don’t need announcers to enjoy a baseball game, a football game or a track meet on television.

I can figure out what’s happening simply by watching carefully and paying attention as the action unfolds.

But good announcers, and I mean really good announcers, measurably add a lot to the proceedings.

And of course, really bad announcers can make viewing painful.

For Exhibit A of bad announcers, I give you the two guys on ESPN who were doing commentary a week ago on an Indians game.

Our regular announcers, Rick Manning and Matt Underwood, had been set aside for the day so the ESPN team could do the talking on national TV. What a mistake!

I was already familiar with one of the ESPN guys. He was a former ballplayer. Throughout the game, the two of them told me nothing I didn’t already know. When they divulged that Masterson and Cabrera no longer played for Cleveland, the volume of useless information began to rise.

Virtually everything they said was already household information for an Indians fan – and I presume for anyone who has even a scintilla of knowledge of baseball.

What they achieved was to underscore my appreciation for Manning and Underwood, who have developed into two of the finest sportscasters to ever grace a microphone on the Cleveland scene.

Also underscored was my long-standing disappointment that Gavi’s Restaurant in Willoughby is no longer open. The lady of the house and I went there virtually every Tuesday for dinner, and on many occasions Rick Manning was there with his wife.

Quite often we sat and talked. Rick could talk baseball 24 hours a day. And the conversation never got dull or boring. I looked forward to seeing him and challenging him on baseball trivia, which was not really a challenge because he knew his subject matter so well. Alas, those days are gone. But I digress.

I don’t know if people around here are aware of what a treasure Rick and Matt are, but I have been listening to the Tribe on radio and later on TV since about 1936, and they are at the top of the electronic heap.

They can make a good game exciting, and even a dull game interesting. That is because they pull no punches.

If a player messes up, they don’t hesitate to point it out. And they give plenty of credit when our heroes do themselves proud.

I would hesitate to list all the Indians’ announcers who have helped shape my understanding of the game. I can’t recall all of them and I would surely leave some out.

But who could forget Jack Graney and Pinkey Hunter of the old, old days? Or, as they sometimes referred to each other, John Gladstone Graney and Cartwright Maxwell Hunter.

They were simply great. If I close my eyes, I can still hear Jack Graney saying, “It’s a hot shot, through the box, out over second base for a single.”

Or: “And it’s a fast double play, Boudreau to Mack to Troskey.”

I liked Mike Hegan a lot, and I still miss Herb Score. Many others were superb at the mike.

But on the subject of announcers, let me get this off my chest. It’s about football.

I was extremely annoyed, and still am, that Bernie Kosar was taken off the air during the Browns’ pre-season, or as they used to call them, “exhibition” games.

Jim Donovan is OK as the play-by-play guy, but replacing Bernie with Soloman Wilcots is like replacing fresh creamery butter with day-old lard.

If two quarterbacks as talented as Brian Hoyer and Johnny Manziel are fighting for the starting job, does any football fan in his right mind think there is an analyst in the booth who can come as close to assessing their capabilities as Bernie?

That is a self-answering question, but I will answer it anyway. Nobody could match Bernie’s skill in pointing out the abilities of a quarterback.

Taking Bernie off the broadcasts was a terrible loss that was inflicted on the fans.

We will never know what he might have had to say this past pre-season, unless there is some magical medium I don’t know about. Lacking that, it is just one more example of the disdain the team has for the fans, and one more reason why I think the owners deserve nothing quite so much as another 4-12 season.