When Mel presided over Yankees’ broadcasts, from the late 1930s to 1964, the club won 14 World Series. No one can fight Mel’s numbers when baseball was a constant subject of conversation on the land. Many said and accurately so that in his heyday, Mel used his sepulchral tone to dominate baseball broadcasts. Only UCLA in college basketball and the Celtics of the NBA sparkled like the Bronxites. Through the next eleven years, the club went into a steep decline, the likes of which the baseball world couldn’t have imagined.

Mel Allen was driven from Yankee Stadium’s broadcast booth in 1964. He thought that only announcers belonged in the booth, not players. Red was particularly critical of the Yankees when they fired Jim Woods to bring up Rizzuto from the field. Barber and Allen both gave Phil Rizzuto a rough time when he began 1957. His rivalry with Mel and later Joe Garagiola got ugly and ended poorly. Barber also struggled with his own broadcast teammates. He was considered by many as simply disagreeable.

After the latter occurred, Barber ripped the ballclub on his way out out the door. They include Red’s separation from the Dodgers in 1953 and t hirteen years later in 1966, he was squeezed out by the Yankees. They were honored together with the Ford Frick Award in 1978 and honored in Cooperstown. These two pioneers were held in such high esteem by fellow broadcasters and baseball people that they were enshrined together, on the Hall of Fame’s first ever ballot. Mel Allen and his relationship with Red Barber + Halberstam

October 1964 by David Halberstam