BW - EP138—004: Baseball Memories From Radio History—Dizzy

Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

Jerome Hanna "Dizzy" Dean was born on January 16th, 1910 in Lucas, Arkansas, only attending school into the second grade. He made his professional debut in 1930 for the St. Louis Cardinals, sticking with the big club in 1932. The team was soon nicknamed the Gashouse Gang for their on and off field exploits. Two years later Dean was the 1934 World Series team’s ace. His brother Paul was also on the pitching staff. For the next three years Dean won seventy-eight and lost just thirty-two. Paul won forty-three games of his own. The Cardinals biggest rivals in the 1930s were the New York Giants. Even with Dean’s brilliance, his Cardinals won only one world series before arm troubles derailed his career. He then went into broadcasting, calling Baseball for radio, and then TV, from 1941 through 1965. He had his own radio show for NBC in the summer of 1948. During that summer’s all-star break, the Brooklyn Dodgers fired their longtime manager Leo Durocher. Durocher signed with the Giants, who moved their manager Mel Ott to a front office position. All three New York teams missed the playoffs that year. That same summer Gordon McLendon founded a U.S. radio network called the Liberty Broadcasting System. McLendon built the network up to nearly five-hundred affiliates, second in size only to the Mutual Broadcasting System. His success led to restrictions on Major League Baseball broadcasts in minor league franchise areas and blackouts within a seventy-five mile range of major league cities. It was a disaster for the network, which folded on May 16th, 1952.