Two voices from the past

The Nationals and their fans are fortunate to have four excellent broadcasters: Bob Carpenter and Hall of Famer Don Sutton on TV, Charlie Slowes and Dave Jageler on radio. And it’s fitting that two Hall of Fame predecessors here haven’t been forgotten.

Outside the spacious rooms for announcers on the top floor of the Nationals Park press box are photos of Arch McDonald and Bob Wolff, who spent 10 years together as “voices” of the original Senators franchise in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The best baseball broadcasters are the ones we grew up listening to on radio, and for many of us hereabouts who are senior citizens or on the verge, nobody else will quite equal Arch and Bob.

Full disclosure: Wolff hired me as his first executive assistant (i.e. gofer) when I was a scrawny high school senior and has been a friend and mentor for more than 50 years, so I’m not exactly objective where he’s concerned. But then, McDonald was a curmudgeonly sort who never spoke to me, and I remember his microphone magic just as vividly.

In those days, with relatively few games on TV, the radio play-by-play men seemed like family members who were present nearly every day from April to October. Every team had fan favorites like Mel Allen for the Yankees, Red Barber and Vin Scully for the Dodgers, Jack Brickhouse for the Cubs and White Sox, Harry Caray for the Cardinals, Curt Gowdy for the Red Sox, et al.

Naturally, we thought our guys were better than their guys — a necessity in Washington since the Senators themselves seldom were better than anybody else. Wolff once described this sad situation very well: “All you had to do was give the score — people just assumed the Senators were losing.”

The contrast between McDonald and Wolff was a plus, too. No one wants two broadcasters who sound too much alike, no matter how talented. When Jon Miller and Joe Angel were doing the Orioles some years ago, it often was difficult to tell them apart.

McDonald, who worked Senators games from 1934 to 1956 with time out for one unsuccessful season in New York, was laid-back and avuncular. He spoke ponderously, mixing in Southern expressions like “the ducks are on the pond” (runners were on base) and “the count is one-and-one-dah.” (I don’t recall what that meant, but it was pure Arch, and we loved it.)

Wolff was brisk, accurate and knowledgeable with a touch of humor tossed in. Once between games of a doubleheader in the late 1950s, he interviewed “a fan from California” who worked for the federal government and attended games whenever his busy schedule permitted. Only at the end did listeners discover the fan was Richard Nixon, then vice president of the United States.

The Nationals Park picture of McDonald shows him “broadcasting a Senators game in 1939,” but that’s not the whole story. Instead of sitting at Griffith Stadium, Arch was “recreating” a road game from a Washington studio — meaning he would be handed a terse telegraphic message relaying the action (“S1S” for strike one swinging, “FF3” for a popup to the first baseman) and then supply whatever details and color his mind could summon up. Most major league clubs reported games away from home this way until the 1950s.

The photo also shows Arch with hammer in hand over an xylophone, which surely must baffle most onlookers. That was because another McDonald schtick was to rap the instrument once for a single, twice for a double, etc. When you heard this signature call — “there it goes, Mrs. Murphy! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!” — you knew somebody had gone deep.

The Wolff photo on display captures Bob yowling away with a group of Washington ballplayers known as the Singing Senators. I don’t recall that these harmonizers drove the Four Aces, Four Lads or Four Tops out of business, but they were good enough to appear live on an early version of NBC’s “Today.”

McDonald died of a heart attack in 1960 while returning via rail from a Redskins game in New York, but Wolff at 86 is still doing commentaries for a cable TV station on Long Island. Bob has been a New Yorker for nearly five decades, but he remembers Washington fondly as the city where he got his start.

“I feel I was very much a part of baseball in Washington when I did the play-by-play and all the TV and radio pregame and postgame shows there,” Wolff said. “I suppose by now few people remember me and fewer care, but I’m honored to have my picture in the new ballpark. Very honored.”