Early years Barber was born in
Columbus, Mississippi. He was a distant relative of poet
Sidney Lanier and writer
Thomas Lanier Williams. The family moved to
Sanford, Florida in 1918, and at the age of 21, he hitchhiked to Gainesville and enrolled at the
University of Florida, majoring in education. During Barber's first year, he worked at various jobs including part-time janitor at the University Club. It was there in January 1930 that Barber got his start in broadcasting. An agriculture professor had been scheduled to appear on
WRUF, the university radio station, to read a scholarly paper over the air. When the professor's absence was discovered minutes before the broadcast was to begin, janitor Barber was called in as a substitute. It was thus that the future sportscaster's first gig was reading "Certain Aspects of
Bovine Obstetrics". After those few minutes in front of a microphone, Barber decided to switch careers. He became WRUF's director and chief announcer and covered
Florida Gators football games that autumn. Then he dropped out of school to focus on his radio work. After four more years at WRUF, he landed a job broadcasting the
Cincinnati Reds on
WLW and
WSAI when
Powel Crosley Jr. purchased the team in 1934. On Opening Day 1934 (April 17), Barber attended his first major league game and broadcast its play-by-play, as the Reds lost to the
Chicago Cubs, 6–0. He called games from the stands of
Cincinnati's renamed
Crosley Field for the next five seasons.
Brooklyn Dodgers Barber had been hired by
Larry MacPhail, then president of the Reds. MacPhail became president of the Dodgers in 1938, and in 1939, he brought the play-by-play man to the Dodgers. In
Brooklyn, Barber became an institution, widely admired for his folksy style. He was also appreciated by people concerned about Brooklyn's reputation as a land of
"dees" and "dems". Barber became famous for his signature
catchphrases, including these: • ''"They're tearin' up the pea patch"'' – used for a team on a winning streak. •
"The bases are F.O.B. (full of Brooklyns)" – indicating the Dodgers had loaded the bases. •
"Can of corn" – describing a softly hit, easily caught fly ball. •
"Rhubarb" – any kind of heated on-field dispute or altercation. • ''"
Sittin' in the catbird seat"'' – used when a player or team was performing exceptionally well. • ''"Walkin' in the tall cotton"'' – also used to describe success. •
"Slicker than boiled okra" – describing a ball that a fielder was unable to get a grip on. •
"Easy as a bank of fog" – describing the graceful movement of a fielder. •
"Tighter than a new pair of shoes on a rainy day" – describing a closely contested game. •
"Tied up in a croker sack" – describing a one-sided game where the outcome was all but decided. To further his image as a Southern gentleman, Barber would often identify players as "Mister", "big fella", or "old" (regardless of the player's age): •
"Now, Mister Reiser steps to the plate, batting at .344." • ''"Big fella
Hatten pitches, it's in there for strike one."'' •
"Old number 13, Ralph Branca, coming in to pitch." A number of play-by-play announcers including
Chris Berman have adopted his use of "back, back, back" to describe a long fly ball with potential to be a home run. Those other announcers are describing the flight of the ball but Barber was describing the outfielder in this famous call from Game 6 of the
1947 World Series.
Joe DiMaggio was the batter: • ''"Here's the pitch, swung on, belted ... it's a long one ... back goes
Gionfriddo, back, back, back, back, back, back ... heeee makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen! Oh, Doctor!"'' The phrase "Oh, Doctor" was also picked up by some later sportscasters, most notably
Jerry Coleman, who was a
New York Yankee infielder during the 1940s and 1950s and later worked alongside Barber in the Yankees' radio and TV booths. In Game 4 of that same 1947 Series, Barber memorably described
Cookie Lavagetto's ninth-inning hit to break up
Bill Bevens'
no-hitter and win the game at once: • ''"Wait a minute ...
Stanky is being called back from the plate and Lavagetto goes up to hit ... Gionfriddo walks off second ...
Miksis off first ... They're both ready to go on anything ... Two men out, last of the ninth ... the pitch ... swung on, there's a drive hit out toward the right field corner.
Henrich is going back. He can't get it! It's off the wall for a base hit! Here comes the tying run, and here comes the winning run! ... Friends, they're killin' Lavagetto... his own teammates... they're beatin' him to pieces and it's taking a police escort to get Lavagetto away from the Dodgers! ... Well, I'll be a suck-egg mule!"'' In 1939, Barber broadcast the first major-league game on television, on experimental
NBC station
W2XBS. In 1946, he added to his Brooklyn duties a job as sports director of the
CBS Radio Network, succeeding
Ted Husing and continuing through 1955. There, his greatest contribution was to conceive and host the
CBS Football Roundup, which switched listeners back and forth between broadcasts of different regional college games each week. Barber called Dodgers broadcasts over New York radio station
WHN (later WMGM) at 1050 on the AM dial, teaming with
Al Helfer from 1939 to 1941, followed by Alan Hale in 1942 and
Connie Desmond beginning in 1943. When he developed a severe bleeding
ulcer in 1948 and had to take a leave of absence from broadcasting for several weeks, Dodgers president
Branch Rickey arranged for
Ernie Harwell, the announcer for the minor-league
Atlanta Crackers, to be sent to Brooklyn as Barber's substitute; in exchange,
Cliff Dapper, the catcher for the Dodgers' farm team in
Montreal, was permitted to go to Atlanta to serve as the Crackers' new player-manager, thereby effecting the first player-for-announcer "trade" in major league history. Harwell would remain as a third man in the Dodgers' booth with Barber and Desmond through the 1949 season. While running CBS Sports, Barber became the mentor of another redheaded announcer. He recruited the
Fordham University graduate
Vin Scully for CBS football coverage, and eventually invited him into the Dodgers' broadcast booth to succeed Harwell in 1950 after the latter's departure for the crosstown
New York Giants. That same year, the Dodgers began airing regular television broadcasts over
WOR-TV, Channel 9 in New York, with the trio of Barber, Desmond, and Scully now alternating play-by-play for the team's games on both radio and TV. Barber was the first person outside the team's board of directors to be told by Branch Rickey that the Dodgers had begun the process of racial
desegregation in baseball, which led to signing
Jackie Robinson as the first black player in the major leagues after the 1880s. As a Southerner, having lived with
racial segregation as a fact of life written into law, Barber told Rickey that he was not sure he could broadcast the games. As was related in a biography of Branch Rickey by
Jimmy Breslin, Barber left the meeting with Rickey and walked for hours trying to decide his future. Having been raised in the racially segregated South, and having attended the
University of Florida, which, at the time of his attendance was limited to white male students, he had in his words, "been carefully taught", and the thought of broadcasting games played by a Negro player was simply too much for him to agree to. He arrived home and informed his wife of his decision to quit that very night. She, also being from the
Deep South, had become accustomed to a much better life in a toney neighborhood of Westchester County. She convinced him that there was no need to quit then, and a few martinis into the evening, he said he would try. After observing Robinson's skill on the field and the way Robinson held up to the vicious abuse from opposing fans, Barber became an ardent supporter of him and the black players who followed, including Dodger stars
Roy Campanella and
Don Newcombe. (This story is told in Barber's 1982 book,
1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball.) During this period, Barber also broadcast numerous
World Series for
Mutual radio and in 1948 and 1952 for
NBC television, frequently teaming with Yankees announcer
Mel Allen. He also called
New York Giants football from 1942 to 1946, as well as several professional and college football games on network radio and TV, including the
NFL Championship Game,
Army–Navy Game and
Orange Bowl.
New York Yankees Prior to the
1953 World Series, Barber was selected by
Gillette, which sponsored the Series broadcasts, to call the games on NBC along with
Mel Allen. Barber wanted a larger fee than was offered by Gillette, however, and when Dodgers owner
Walter O'Malley refused to back him, Barber declined to work the Series and Vin Scully partnered with Allen on the telecasts instead. As Barber later related in his 1968 autobiography,
Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat, he was rankled by O'Malley's lack of support, and this – along with a dispute over the renewal of Barber's $50,000 a year contract – led to his departure from the Dodgers' booth later that October. Soon afterward the crosstown Yankees hired Barber. Just before the start of the 1954 season, surgery resulted in permanent deafness in one ear. In 1955, he took his long-running television program ''Red Barber's Corner'' from CBS to NBC. It ran from 1949 until 1958. With the Yankees, Barber strove to adopt a strictly neutral, dispassionately reportorial broadcast style, avoiding not only partisanship but also any emotional surges that would match the excitement of the fans. He'd already had a reputation as a "fair" announcer while with the Dodgers, as opposed to a "homer" who openly rooted for his team from the booth. Some fans and critics found this later, more restrained Barber to be dull, especially in contrast with Mel Allen's dramatic, emotive style. Barber described the ways they covered long fly balls as one of the central differences between Allen and himself. Allen would watch the ball. Thus his signature call, "That ball is going, going, it is GONE!", sometimes turned into, "It is going ... to be caught!" or "It is going ... foul!" Barber would watch the outfielder, his movements and his eyes, and would thus be a better judge whether the ball would be caught. This is evident in his famous call of Gionfriddo's catch (quoted above). Many announcers say "back, back, back" describing the ball's flight. On the Gionfriddo call Barber is describing the action of the outfielder, not the ball.
Curt Smith, in his book
Voices of Summer, summarized the difference between Barber and Allen: "Barber was white wine, crepes suzette, and bluegrass music. Allen was hot dogs, beer, and the U.S. Marine Corps Band. Like
Millay, Barber was a poet. Like
Sinatra, Allen was a balladeer. Detached, Red reported. Involved, Mel roared." Under the ownership of
CBS in 1966, the Yankees finished tenth and last, their first time at the bottom of the standings since 1912 and after more than 40 years of dominating the American League. On September 22, a paid attendance of 413 was announced at the 65,000-seat
Yankee Stadium. Barber asked the TV cameras to pan the empty stands as he commented on the low attendance. WPIX refused to do so, on orders from the Yankees' head of media relations. Undeterred, Barber said, "I don't know what the paid attendance is today, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium, and this crowd is the story, not the game." In a case of exceptionally bad timing, that game was the first for CBS executive
Mike Burke as team president. A week later, Barber was invited to breakfast with Burke, who told him that his contract would not be renewed at the end of the season.
Later life After his dismissal by the Yankees in 1966, Barber retired from regular baseball broadcasting. He authored a number of books, including his
autobiography,
Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat; contributed to occasional sports documentary programs on radio and television, including
Ken Burns' documentary
Baseball; and from 1981 until his death made weekly contributions to
National Public Radio's
Morning Edition program. Each Friday Barber, speaking from his home in
Tallahassee, Florida, would talk with host
Bob Edwards, usually about sports but frequently about other topics, including the
flora around his home. Barber would address Edwards as "Colonel Bob", referring to the
Kentucky Colonel honorific given to Edwards by his native state. Red Barber died on October 22, 1992 at
Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center in
Tallahassee, Florida. based on his
Morning Edition segments with Barber, was published in 1993. ==Honors==