clean-shaven Big Red Machine of the conservative heartland’s Cincinnati Reds. Critics and fans agreed that to date this had been the most entertaining Series since the New York Mets’ miraculous win over the Orioles in 1969. In the cutthroat, competitive world of network television, you couldn’t have overpaid some Hollywood hack to concoct a more perfect scenario.
And if the percentages played out, the Red Sox would win Game Six tonight—Simmons was comforted by knowing that a Series hadn’t ended in six games since 1959—and deliver the golden coin of sporting events, for both the executive and the fan in Chet Simmons: a Game Seven.
DICK STOCKTON needed a tie. Living out of a suitcase in the Lenox Hotel on Boylston for the last six months had wreaked havoc with his stylish wardrobe. The dapper and affable thirty-two-year-old had recently concluded his first effective season as the Red Sox television play-by-play announcer—alongside flamboyant former Red Sox outfielder Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson—and his clothes were hopelessly spread out between the hotel in Boston, his New York apartment, and two different dry cleaners. Only weeks earlier, during the final home stand of the regular season, just after the Red Sox clinched the American League’s Eastern Division title, Stockton had received a telegram that delivered the biggest break of his young career:
We are pleased to advise you of your nomination and approval to work with us during the 1975 World Series for the telecast of the first and sixth game. $500 a game. Please do not include the color blue in your wardrobe. Good luck. Chet Simmons, NBC Sports.
Bringing an announcer from each home team’s broadcast unit into the booth with NBC’s national two-man team, for both televisionand radio, had been just one of the network’s many innovations for the 1975 Series. The idea behind it: that their familiarity with the club they’d covered all year would add an informed local perspective to the broadcast. Stockton and Marty Brennaman—the Reds’ outstanding young play-by-play man, just finishing his second year with the team after replacing Al Michaels, who had moved on to the Giants—both immediately accepted Chet Simmons’s offer. Ten days earlier, Stockton had worked Game One from Fenway with his idol, NBC’s Curt Gowdy—a former Red Sox announcer himself, and for the last decade the network’s number one baseball voice—and Tony Kubek, the ex-Yankee shortstop, widely acknowledged as the game’s sharpest “color” commentator, and one of the most widely liked and admired human beings in the baseball universe. Both veterans did their gracious best to make Stockton feel at home, and the broadcast, by all accounts, had gone perfectly, with Stockton earning positive reviews. After traveling to Cincinnati to work Game Four for NBC Radio, Dick had flown home to New York and then back up to Boston for the scheduled broadcast of Game Six on Saturday. But after three days of rain he had burned through all the clothes he’d brought with him or had on hand.
Stockton had a deserved reputation to uphold as a clotheshorse and man about town and he rifled through the racks at Filene’s Department Store that afternoon, searching for a tie to complement his orange plaid sport coat, the height of fashion in ’75, improbable as it sounds today. He was slated to work tonight’s Game Six alongside Kubek and Joe Garagiola, NBC’s number two baseball play-by-play man, and was more than a little apprehensive about the prospect.
Joe Garagiola made it to the big leagues after World War II as a highly touted prospect, and in his rookie season helped lead his hometown St. Louis Cardinals to victory over the Red Sox in the 1946 World Series. That turned out to be his high-water mark as a player; he bounced around the league for the rest of his nine-year career as a journeyman backup catcher on three other teams. A fewyears after he retired, while working
And if the percentages played out, the Red Sox would win Game Six tonight—Simmons was comforted by knowing that a Series hadn’t ended in six games since 1959—and deliver the golden coin of sporting events, for both the executive and the fan in Chet Simmons: a Game Seven.
DICK STOCKTON needed a tie. Living out of a suitcase in the Lenox Hotel on Boylston for the last six months had wreaked havoc with his stylish wardrobe. The dapper and affable thirty-two-year-old had recently concluded his first effective season as the Red Sox television play-by-play announcer—alongside flamboyant former Red Sox outfielder Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson—and his clothes were hopelessly spread out between the hotel in Boston, his New York apartment, and two different dry cleaners. Only weeks earlier, during the final home stand of the regular season, just after the Red Sox clinched the American League’s Eastern Division title, Stockton had received a telegram that delivered the biggest break of his young career:
We are pleased to advise you of your nomination and approval to work with us during the 1975 World Series for the telecast of the first and sixth game. $500 a game. Please do not include the color blue in your wardrobe. Good luck. Chet Simmons, NBC Sports.
Bringing an announcer from each home team’s broadcast unit into the booth with NBC’s national two-man team, for both televisionand radio, had been just one of the network’s many innovations for the 1975 Series. The idea behind it: that their familiarity with the club they’d covered all year would add an informed local perspective to the broadcast. Stockton and Marty Brennaman—the Reds’ outstanding young play-by-play man, just finishing his second year with the team after replacing Al Michaels, who had moved on to the Giants—both immediately accepted Chet Simmons’s offer. Ten days earlier, Stockton had worked Game One from Fenway with his idol, NBC’s Curt Gowdy—a former Red Sox announcer himself, and for the last decade the network’s number one baseball voice—and Tony Kubek, the ex-Yankee shortstop, widely acknowledged as the game’s sharpest “color” commentator, and one of the most widely liked and admired human beings in the baseball universe. Both veterans did their gracious best to make Stockton feel at home, and the broadcast, by all accounts, had gone perfectly, with Stockton earning positive reviews. After traveling to Cincinnati to work Game Four for NBC Radio, Dick had flown home to New York and then back up to Boston for the scheduled broadcast of Game Six on Saturday. But after three days of rain he had burned through all the clothes he’d brought with him or had on hand.
Stockton had a deserved reputation to uphold as a clotheshorse and man about town and he rifled through the racks at Filene’s Department Store that afternoon, searching for a tie to complement his orange plaid sport coat, the height of fashion in ’75, improbable as it sounds today. He was slated to work tonight’s Game Six alongside Kubek and Joe Garagiola, NBC’s number two baseball play-by-play man, and was more than a little apprehensive about the prospect.
Joe Garagiola made it to the big leagues after World War II as a highly touted prospect, and in his rookie season helped lead his hometown St. Louis Cardinals to victory over the Red Sox in the 1946 World Series. That turned out to be his high-water mark as a player; he bounced around the league for the rest of his nine-year career as a journeyman backup catcher on three other teams. A fewyears after he retired, while working
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