Graham mcnamee author biography sample

Graham McNamee:
The Inventor of Play-by-Play

by Bill McCurdy

“The father of us all.” That’s how renowned sports broadcaster Dick Enberg described Graham McNamee, the man who invented play-by-play broadcasting as e know it today.

Deservedly, McNamee stood out as one the first class inductees when the American Sportscasters Association (ASA) formed and created their Hall of Fame in 1984. The other members of that tribute to high standards in sports broadcasting included Red Barber, Don Dunphy, Ted Husing, and Bill Stern.

Only Barber was strictly baseball, but none did baseball earlier, or contributed anything more basic to the performing art than Graham McNamee. Yet, when the National Baseball Hall of Fame organized its own annual Ford C. Frick Award in 1978 for contributions to baseball broadcasting it chose Mel Allen and Red Barber, plus a hot of others since, but never Graham McNamee for his most essential contribution to baseball over the airways, first and foremost,