By Marty Appel, November 10, 2016<\/p>\n
Before there was an MLB Network, before there was ESPN\u2019s Baseball Tonight<\/em>, before local stations were able to run highlights from around the Major Leagues, there was the scrappy and much beloved This Week in Baseball<\/em>.<\/p>\n The highlights and bloopers program was weekly, often running as a pregame show for Saturday afternoon local telecasts on the local station.<\/p>\n It ran from 1977 to 2011 (missing 1999) and accomplished two big things: it brought video of all teams into local markets, so that fans could now see more than just their hometown teams, and it revived the career of Mel Allen so that new generations knew him as more than the \u201cVoice of the Yankees.\u201d<\/p>\n And it did so much more! With skilled professionals tackling the production and editing, it made the \u201cblooper\u201d a fun part of the game; it showcased defensive plays as never before, and it gave fans the up-close-and-personal look at players that was previously reserved for only their local heroes. It truly played a big part in making the game more national\u2014and more entertaining\u2014than ever before.<\/p>\n Baseball people had talked of doing such a show for some time. NFL Films had created the concept, but they had just a few games a week to work with and a whole week in which to gather their material and produce it. Baseball was played daily to the tune of some 70 games a week. Videotape was in its early stages, and the process of getting such a show made was much more daunting.<\/p>\n Joe Podesta was fairly new to Major League Baseball Promotion Corporation as executive director and hadn\u2019t yet established trusted relationships with baseball people. But he knew this was something he wanted to do. It was a matter of convincing people.<\/p>\n Clark Griffith of the Minnesota Twins was chairman of the corporation. \u201cI thought it was very important to sell baseball via this kind of programming,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of this was new to baseball, so there was a certain political peril at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s the hidden secret of the birth of the show,\u201d says Podesta. \u201cI used to drive a 16-year-old kid named Bruce Schecter into New York City. He ran audio-visual equipment at East Brunswick (NJ) High School. He figured out how we could get it done without spending $250,000 per team on two-inch recording tape equipment. At $250,000 per team, we were never going to get off the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we did,\u201d recalls Geoff Belinfante, who was the show\u2019s first line producer (with Larry Parker as executive producer and Jody Shapiro as creative producer), \u201cwas invest in SONY \u00be inch tape machines\u2014 this was before there was Beta tape\u2014and we hired a kid in each of the 26 cities to record the games, changing tapes every hour, and then sending their three tapes to us by Emery Air Freight. So we would have our 70 games a week arriving in three tapes (210 tapes in total), and from that, we\u2019d get to work, using young screeners to pick up bloopers, highlights and special moments. A team and a concept was forming.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Part of the production team for This Week in Baseball in its first season, 1977 – seated (l-r) Geoff Belinfante, who would eventually become the Executive Producer, and sound mixer Vin Gizzi.\u00a0 Back row (l-r), Juan Vene, who narrated the Spanish-language version of the program, and Mel Allen, the program\u2019s host. Writer Mark Durand recalls all-nighters on Tuesday, with recordings with Mel Allen on Wednesday so that \u201cthe big two inch tapes could be flown around the country to air on the weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe first asked the NFL if they wanted to produce it for us, and they said no,\u201d says Podesta. \u201cI think they felt it was too much to take on.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Landau of Landau Associates was another early backer, having produced the 1975 All-Star Game film, and having run MLB\u2019s Pitch, Hit and Run promotion.<\/p>\n With 1977 as the target for the launch, This Week in Baseball<\/em> hired Mel Allen as the principal narrator of the show. Mel was well known to baseball fans for his World Series work, but it had been 14 years since he\u2019d done a Series, and 13 years since he\u2019d stood atop his profession with his long Yankee career that went back to 1939.<\/p>\n Dropped by the Yankees after 1964, he wandered in the desert of baseball with something here, something there, and a fading national reputation. He was now 64 years old, and baseball was very conscious that it needed to appeal to younger fans. (Juan Vene hosted the Spanish-language version; Ozzie Smith was also on for the 1997\u201398 seasons after Mel passed away.)<\/p>\n Still, he was Mel Allen . . .<\/p>\n Joe Reichler, the former AP baseball columnist who knew everyone in the game and was special assistant to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, was the one who secured Allen.<\/p>\n Mike Kostel, a driving force for the show, who was vice president of baseball programming for MLB, recalled, \u201cI saw his 1976 audition tape and he looked 15 years older and sounded worse. But something happened when he was hired to be the voice of TWIB. He was reborn, rejuvenated and rediscovered by the fans for another 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Mel Allen would host the show until he died in 1996. Few realized they were listening to an 83-year-old man. He was baseball, and he came alive working with the young crew and basking in the adulation of new generations.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the people working at TWIB were pretty young and he kind of adopted us all,\u201d said Kostel. Indeed, Mel never married and had no children, and suddenly the TWIB team was family.<\/p>\n \n One of the greatest sports broadcasters of all time, Mel Allen\u2014with his instantly recognizable voice\u2014 narrated \u201cThis Week In Baseball\u201d for nearly two decades. Among the family were George Roy, Steve Stern, Willie Weinbaum, David Israel, Mike Tollin, Ouisie Shapiro, Bob Bodziner, Helen Maier, Jody Shapiro, Rich Domich, John Bacchia, and Jeff Scott, who carved out long careers in broadcasting out of this gig.<\/p>\n Another was Warner Fusselle, Mel\u2019s \u201cbackup\u201d and successor, and, like Mel, he had an easy delivery with a tinge of a southern accent that always seems to work well with baseball. (Fusselle died in 2012 after a long stint as PA announcer for the Brooklyn Cyclones).<\/p>\n So people out of New York, who are now in their 40s and 50s, discovered Mel anew, without ties to his Yankee days. We asked for remembrances of Mel and the show on Facebook, and were overwhelmed with responses.<\/p>\n \u201cMel\u2019s intro and that distinctive opening (\u201cJet Set\u201d) and closing music (\u201cGathering Crowds\u201d) make me think even now of Sundays,\u201d recalls Sweeny Murti, now a New York sportscaster. \u201cThe highlight of the show was the highlights, the best plays that you now see seconds after they are made. What we saw was a week old, but it felt fresh and new to me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMel was a crucial link to those out of market images we rarely got to see before cable,\u201d says Evan Rapp of Grenada Hills, California. \u201cHe had easy charm, a nice manner, and it all seemed to fit when he was behind the mic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKids began to stop him in the street and say, \u2018hey Mel Allen, what\u2019s this week\u2019s Gillette Special?\u2019 and he realized he had a whole new generation of followers,\u201d says Durand.<\/p>\n \u201cNow it\u2019s time for TWIB notes,\u201d many recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved the way he said \u2018base-baaal\u2019\u201d added Julie Anne.<\/p>\n \u201cMel struck the perfect balance combining enthusiasm and newsworthiness,\u201d said Bob Komoroski of Chicago.<\/p>\n Former Texas Ranger infielder Billy Sample remembered, \u201cAnd that\u2019s a sample Sample of [Doug] Rader Rangers\u2019 baseball. How about that!\u201d (The players often watched the show in their clubhouse in the half hour leading up to game time).<\/p>\n \n Recalls sports journalist Len Hochberg of Brooklyn, \u201cI get a good feeling just thinking about the show, beginning with the bouncy, uplifting music and then hearing Mel\u2019s voice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI still have his voice in my head,\u201d says super Mets fan Mary Estacion of Queens. \u201cIt was the precursor to Sportscenter. It brings me back to the days when the Mets were truly the Mutts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWith his amazing voice, Allen was like a news reel for baseball highlights of that era,\u201d says Dan Holmes of Michigan. \u201cHe was a treasure and every time I see an old clip of TWIB, I feel like I\u2019m eight years old again.\u201d<\/p>\n The show premiered in June 1977, and as luck would have it, they had a classic blooper in the very first show\u2014outfielder Pat Kelly closing his glove and the ball slipping over the fence for a home run. He had a terribly sad look.<\/p>\n In 2000, after missing one season in syndication, and now produced by MLB Productions, it returned on Fox Television, and ran through 2011. By then, of course, the daily cable programs had pretty much upended the need for This Week in Baseball<\/em>.<\/p>\n But for a very long run, what a part of baseball it was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Marty Appel, November 10, 2016 Before there was an MLB Network, before there was ESPN\u2019s Baseball Tonight, before local stations were able to run highlights from around the Major Leagues, there was the scrappy and much beloved This Week… Continue Reading
\nSource: Geoffrey Belinfante<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nSource: The Trading Card Database<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n