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Fridays with Red: A Radio Friendship
Sporting News, The, Nov 29, 1993 by Steve Gietschier
Red Barber was one of the sinews holding baseball's generations together. For almost 63 years, he practiced the craft of broadcast journalism, applying his considerable skills to baseball mostly and establishing along the way standards for excellence and principle that few others will even care to approach.
For the last 12 of his years, he broadcast a weekly commentary on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." Every Friday at 7:35 a.m. ET, he engaged in a four-minute conversation that challenged the program's host, Bob Edwards, and mesmerized an extraordinarily wide swath of the radio-listening public, who would stop whatever else they were doing at the words, "Commentator Red Barber joins us now from Tallahassee, Florida."
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Everyone who listened faithfully to these visits was aware of their fragility. Barber was, after all, 72 when he accepted sports producer Ketzel Levine's offer to become a regular contributor. That he would not continue forever was an implicit part of his work's appeal.
This book is neither a biography of Barber nor a history of his tenure on NPR. It is instead a remembrance, a keepsake, an appreciation of those precious moments that drew to a close in October 1992, when Barber's proud spirit took its leave. It is also an attempt by his radio friend to come to terms with the end of an interchange that was at once charming, evocative, surprising and educational.
Someday, no doubt, a biographer will come along to demythologize Red Barber, but not, one hopes, someday soon. Anyone who can and did illuminate the career of Elston Howard for a novice sports producer and then, without missing a beat, inform her that her name, Ketzel, means "kitten" in Yiddish should be treasured yet a while longer.
COPYRIGHT 1993 Sporting News Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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