Frank Messer

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Wallace Frank Messer (1925 - 2001) was an American sportscaster, best known for his 18 seasons announcing New York Yankees baseball games.

Background

An Asheville, North Carolina native, Messer was a member of the Marines during World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he worked minor league baseball in the 1950s and got his major-league break when he joined the Baltimore Orioles and worked alongside their noted longtime voice, Chuck Thompson. In 1966 the year Bill O’Donnell also joined broadcast crew, the O’s won their first world championship.

Messer’s next major-league break came after the 1967 season, when Joe Garagiola left the Yankees broadcast crew to concentrate the network jobs he also had at NBC Sports and NBC News. Messer took Garagiola’s place for 1968, working with ex-Yankees Jerry Coleman and Phil Rizzuto. The Yankees’ longtime public-relations director Bob Fishel had urged team management to approve a traditional play-by-play sportscaster, which the Yanks had not had since the firing of Red Barber after the 1966 season.

Messer was acclaimed by critics and fans both for his straight-shooting play calling on radio and TV, and by the club for his effectiveness promoting team events. He was eventually given the gig of emceeing the Old-Timer’s Day ceremonies – an event in which he participated until the year before his death – and special events, such as the retirement of Mickey Mantle’s Number 7 jersey in June 1969. Messer’s steadiness and dry wit blended well with Rizzuto’s enthusiasm.

The Yankee broadcast crew gained its best known incarnation in 1971 when Messer and Rizzuto were joined by former St. Louis Cardinals infielder Bill White, a replacement for Bob Gamere (who’d been brought in when Coleman moved to the West Coast after the 1969 season). Messer, White and Rizzuto called Yankee games together until the end of the 1985 season.

While Messer was relegated to radio for his final year, the trio still provided the second-longest three-man combination in New York sports history, behind the New York Mets crew of Lindsey Nelson, Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy.

During that stretch, the trio was joined by Dom Valentino on radio for the 1975 season, Fran Healy on radio (and later, cable TV too) during the late 70s and early 80s, and by the ultimate Voice of the Yankees, Mel Allen, on cable in the 1970s and 80s.

One of his signature phrases at the end of his last inning before switching booths from radio to TV (or vice-versa) was "(Announcer) will carry you along the rest of the way. It’s been a pleasure." Another was his radio call of a home run from 1981 onward, when the Yankees’ radio home was WABC): "A-B-C you later!"

Besides Mickey Mantle Day, Messer’s great Yankee moments included his 1978 call of Bucky Dent’s dramatic three-run homer in the American League East Championship Game against the host Boston Red Sox; and his 1980 call of Reggie Jackson’s 400th home run("There she goes! Might be upper deck!"), both on WINS radio.

A star-spangled Fourth

Messer's most famous call may have been his description on WABC of the final out of Dave Righetti’s no-hitter at Yankee Stadium against the Red Sox, on July 4, 1983: As Righetti got Wade Boggs to swing at strike three, Messer intoned:

The kick, the pitch..he STRUCK HIM OUT! Righetti has piched a no-hitter! Dave Righetti has piched a no-hitter! He strikes out Boggs for the final out of the ball game, and the Yankees POUR onto the field to congratulate Dave Righetti!

Ironically, according to the book Sports on New York Radio by Westwood One media executive and former sportscaster David Halberstam, the call should have been made by partner White, who was to call that half-inning as part of the in-game rotation of announcers between radio and SportsChannel TV (now Fox Sports Net New York). While White did the whole game bouncing between WABC and SportsChannel, Messer and Rizzuto rotated between TV, radio and the Fan Appreciation Day giveaways between innings.

But according to Messer, after White saw him return to the booth, White insisted that Messer, the senior of the two, should call the ninth.

"It was a class act," Messer said of White’s gesture.

Later years

After the Yankees let Messer go following the 1985 season, Messer worked for the Chicago White Sox and called CBS Radio Network Game of the Week broadcasts. He continued to emcee Old-Timer’s Day ceremonies into the 1990s. One of his most poignant jobs was introducing Mickey Mantle at the 1994 event, just after Mantle had completed treatment for alcoholism.

Even after John Sterling and Michael Kay took over the introduction of players in the late 1990s, Messer was still the event "host," greeting the Stadium fans before turning over the rest of the show to his successors.

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