The Booth

The sound of home.

Finding a good photo of Denny, Denny, and Fred together proved to be a near impossible task. So you get this collage from 1980. Al Wisk did not stick around long enough for me to ever hear him, but he looks like a good guy. Right?

Earlier this year, I wrote a two-part piece ranking my top five national announcers. It was a list of legends, and I think a pretty solid example of how a single voice or personality can bring us together across wide swathes of time and space.

But the true heartbeat of baseball is in the hometown booth. No sport is more regionalized than baseball, perhaps to its own detriment, but that’s what molds such a strong connection to our local broadcasters.

We grow up listening to their calls, and we live our lives with them providing part of the soundtrack. Whether on TV or the radio (or now, our phones), we drive around with them in the car while we run errands and relax with them at home. Sometimes it’s an intimate one-way conversation, and other times they’re just another voice in a crowd of friends.

We don’t care if they’re fair and impartial. In fact, we usually prefer them to be outright homers. They’re one of us. Sure, fans from other cities might have no clue that they even exist. But no matter where you are, if you run into someone else who knows their name, it’s like you know you’ve found one of your own.

For me, that hometown booth is in Kansas City, so I’m going to talk a little bit about the Royals announcers of my youth. Hopefully, my fellow Royals fans will pick up what I’m laying down, and if you’re not a Royals fan, I invite you to learn a little bit about them. Maybe it will even inspire you to share some thoughts about your hometown booth in the comments below.

If you’re not a first-time reader, you know that the purpose of this newsletter is to celebrate baseball in my youth, roughly from 1985-94. (And if you are a first-time reader, now you know. Welcome!) So I’m not going to spend any time on the current Royals broadcasting team. We’re going old school here.

When I first started watching baseball in 1985, the Royals were broadcast on both the radio and channel 4 in Kansas City. WDAF was an NBC affiliate back then, though it’s now a Fox channel, and most home games were blacked out on TV. So we only got to watch road games on TV, and we generally had to turn on the radio for games at Royals Stadium, which is what the K was called back then.

As such, the broadcast team generally crossed back and forth from one medium to the other. This is not an uncommon practice today, though they usually tend to divvy up assignments on a per game basis. Or at least that’s how the Royals do it. But back then, there was a lot more crossover within individual games themselves. That’s how I remember it anyway. Time and nostalgia sometimes have an exaggerating effect.

The Royals booth in 1985 was composed of three members: Denny Matthews, Denny Trease, and Fred White. It was easy enough to remember, what with the two Dennys. At the time, I thought they were as good as it gets. I still think highly of them.

Trease is kind of the forgotten guy of the trio. He worked exclusively on the TV side, and called Royals games for twelve years. His leading role on television is probably why I remember him so well. I didn’t have the same appreciation for a radio announcer’s craft that I do now, and I just figured that if he was “the man” on TV, that must mean he was the best of the bunch. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was also really good on the mic.

And then he just disappeared after the 1992 season. It’s hard to find a good explanation for his abrupt departure online. My first thought is always that it was about money, but considering the fact that he went home to Kentucky and hasn’t done much broadcasting since suggests that it may have been something else entirely. I may never know the truth.

Nevertheless, it was a jolt when he left. To me, Trease was simply part of the fabric of Royals baseball up to that point, though I had by then figured out that he was not actually the voice of the Royals. That title has always belonged to Denny Matthews.

Denny Matthews has been with the Royals for as long as the Royals have existed. He started calling games on the radio in 1969 with Buddy Blattner. Blattner was a great play-by-play guy and a perfect mentor for Matthews, but he was before my time, so for me there’s only ever been Denny.

A quick aside. Matthews almost didn’t become the voice of the Royals. In 1970, his second year, he was improvising an ad read for Guy’s Snacks. For you out-of-towners who might not know, Guy’s is a KC-based company that makes chips, pretzels, nuts, etc. That last one is the one that got him in trouble, when he spoke into the mic and suggested that the next time listeners went to the store they should “grab some Guy’s nuts.”

Blattner went pale in the booth beside him, and Denny thought he was a dead man walking. Fortunately, the people at Guy’s thought it was hilarious and Denny was safe. As he put it, “Here’s to a sense of humor. It can save careers.”

And Denny definitely has a sense of humor, though it’s very dry and can be an acquired taste. Fortunately, mine’s pretty similar, so I’ve never had an issue with it. That sense of humor feeds into his endless source of anecdotes that can fill the time enjoyably in even the worst blowouts or lost seasons.

I’ve listened to Denny’s voice my whole life. (It’s fun to imitate too, though my impression isn’t very good. Not my strong suit.) I’ve watched his hair gray, probably at a slower pace than my own. Hey, I started getting my first gray hairs in high school. Gimme a break. He’s the longest active-tenured announcer in all of baseball, and it’s hard for me to separate him from Royals baseball. I’m not looking forward to the fast-approaching day when that becomes the reality.

But the Royals’ booth has dealt with major departures before. Fred White is probably the best example of this. Part of my original broadcast trio, White was a true professional. If Denny is the undisputed number one announcer in Royals history, White has a solid case for 1A.

I don’t have any amusing stories about White, but I think that somewhat exemplifies him as a broadcaster. A true professional and perfect compliment to Denny, he was entertaining to listen to and always knew his stuff. Sadly, the Royals let him go after the 1997 season because they wanted to get younger in the booth and pay less. You know how the Royals are about their money.

White wasn’t very happy about his dismissal, and neither were fans. They took some time to adapt to his replacement, current Royals play-by-play man Ryan Lefebvre. Luckily for us KC fans, White continued to call Big 8/Big 12 basketball games.

Partnering with him on many of those games was another announcer I can’t fail to mention, former Royals pitcher, Paul Splittorf. Splitt has a case for being the best starting pitcher in Royals history, but he retired after the 1984 season, one season before I started watching and the Royals won their first World Series.

Like many Royals fans my age and younger, I knew Splitt better as a broadcaster than a player, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to post a pic of him in his playing prime in those sweet powder blues. Also, this pic is from 1980. Maybe Al Wisk was on the call? (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

He joined the Royals TV booth in 1988, and while I was familiar with his place in Royals history, I was initially leery of him because he was a change from the three-man team to which I’d grown accustomed. It also didn’t help my opinion of him that he had the poor timing of coming aboard to call the Royals’ gradual decline, as if he had anything to do with it.

That said, I was wrong. Splitt was a tireless worker who put the same kind of devotion into his broadcast work that he did with his playing career. Maybe he was a little rough at first, but it didn’t take him long to get really good and win me over. (He used the same work ethic to branch out to calling basketball as well, which I mentioned earlier.) Throw in his knowledge of the game, personal experience, and underrated sense of humor, and he quickly became an accepted part of the Royals’ soundtrack.

Unfortunately, Splitt passed away in 2011 after a battle with melanoma and oral cancer. Fans noticed he was having problems and slurring his voice in 2009, and he had no choice but to take some time off, though he did eventually return for a brief spell.

I remember his return as a cause of celebration in Kansas City. An icon of the franchise, a whole generation knew him more as a voice of the Royals than a great pitcher, and even if that voice didn’t sound quite the same, it was great to him back. Sadly, it couldn’t last forever.

But, of course, nothing lasts forever. Except maybe the connection of baseball fans to their hometown booth.

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Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. If you’re a Royals fan, let me hear your thoughts on the Royals booth and your favorite announcers. And if you’re not from Kansas City, tell me a little about your hometown booth in the comments.