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One year ago: Buddy Blattner

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Buddy Blattner, who played in the major leagues before and after serving in World War II, had a long career as a sportscaster, mainly in his native St. Louis. He was a radio announcer for the St. Loius Browns and St. Louis Cardinals baseball teams and the St. Louis Hawks NBA team. Paired with the distinctive Dizzy Dean, Blattner could also be heard in the 1950s on the Liberty and Mutual radio networks’ ‘Game of the Day’ and on ABC and CBS’ television broadcasts of the ‘Game of the Week.’

Author Curt Smith described the on-air team of Blattner and Dean, the Hall of Fame pitcher turned down-home announcer in his 2005 book ‘Voices of Summer’:

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‘Dean was, yes, Falstaffian. Bud Blattner liked fact and strategy. Diz shunned biography. ‘People liked him giving everything but the score’ -- fishing, hunting, thanking Grandma’s Biscuits for meals, said Bud -- ‘but wanted me to restore sanity.’ Some voices script a program. Diz was the program. ‘He created the audience before we said a word.’ ‘’

Baseball fans in Southern California remembered Blattner for his years calling Angel games in the KMPC radio booth with Don Wells. He was an Angels announcer from 1962 to 1968, when he left for a job with the Kansas City Royals and Dick Enberg replaced him in the booth.

Read more about Buddy Blattner, who died one year ago at age 89, in The Times’ obituary.

-- Claire Noland

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