The Music of Denny

Longtime Royals’ radio announcer Denny Matthews won the Ford Frick Award this week, which set off a fairly predictable chain of events in my hometown.

Event 1: I wrote a column celebrating and congratulating Denny for his award.

Event 2: Lots of people wrote in to say how much they despise Denny – and by extension, how much they despise me for liking the guy.

This has happened pretty much every time I have mentioned the name Denny Matthews, who has been Royals radio announcer for 38 years – since the first game – and yet still does not seem to be as beloved in Kansas City as you might expect. Quite the opposite, in fact. Only soccer columns, defenses of Chiefs coach Herm Edwards, nice words about the University of Kansas or the Democratic Party (not related) and anything at all said about Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds spark more negative feedback in Kansas City than a positive Denny Matthews column.

It’s the strangest thing. I have never lived in Detroit, but my impression is that the wonderful Ernie Harwell is universally beloved there. Same with Vin Scully in Los Angeles. I saw it up close with Joe Nuxhall In Cincinnati … Nuxie is the biggest man in town (it now occurs to me that even though I was a columnist in Cincinnati for three years, I must never have used the word “Nuxie,” because I have no idea how to spell it. Could be “Knucksie,” I suppose, or “Knucksy” or “Nuxxy” or “Nuxxee”).

I remember Herb Score being well-liked in Cleveland, even if people did call him Herb “No” Score. We all know how big Jack Buck was in St. Louis and Harry Caray in both St. Louis and Chicago. Dave Niehaus was supposedly named the Seattle sports personality of the last century. The point is that even though baseball announcers throughout America have varying styles and volumes and skill levels ... after a number of years all that becomes beside the point. The announcers become something like city landmarks or something. Quality is not the point when you grow up with a voice, and that voice is about summer and baseball and no school and barbecues and home runs and strikeouts.

How can you help but love the baseball voice you grew up with?

Somehow, though, Denny has never quite jumped to that city landmark level. Many seem somewhat oblivious to him, which is no big surprise I suppose. But what does surprise is that a lot of people actively dislike him – and nothing about Denny is actively dislikeable. About the worst you could say about him is that he can be dry. He doesn’t yell over home runs nor do some sort of Russ Hodges dance every time a closer gets the final out in the ninth (though Royals closers in recent years do get people out in the ninth only moderately more often than Bobby Thomson hits a homer off of Ralph Branca to win the pennant).

Denny pronounces names correctly, and he gets the count right, and he doesn't often stumble over his calls, and he can slip some insight into the empty spaces. He sometimes makes me laugh too. More, he explains what happened – perhaps more dispassionately than fans might like but with Swiss precision. Nobody could say they listened to a Denny Matthews broadcast and didn’t know what happened in the game. You will know everything, from which way the wind was blowing to what the left fielder was doing on a ground ball hit to third base. Put it this way: If you were snowed in at an out-of-town airport while your daughter had her first ballet recital, you would want Denny Matthews to call the action for you.

When I first arrived in Kansas City, I did not like Denny Matthews’ radio call much either. Where was the excitement? The passion? The clever home run calls? The attitude? I had come from Cincinnati, where Marty Brennaman had filled every radio broadcast with attitude – wisecracks and opinions and jokes and insults. I loved it. You always knew where Marty stood. Once in 1995, after the Reds reached the NLCS and drew thousands of no-shows to the first game, I wrote a scathing column ripping the city. Hey, I was young. The next night, Marty walked over to me and said, “I’m going to tear off a piece of your hide on the air tonight.” And he did. I’m still missing that piece of hide. A few months later, though, he told all of Cincinnati and anyone else listening to WLW that I was a bright young columnist who would go far in this world. It was always better when Marty was on your side.

A Denny broadcast was quite the opposite of Marty. He wasn’t tearing off hides. Denny stuck to game the way a Hollywood actor sticks to the script. He could squeeze in zingers, but it took me years to realize it. Now I do. When an umpire’s strike zone bounces around, he might say, “Here’s the windup, the pitch, and it’s down the middle for a ball.” When Angel Berroa goes through one of his periodic swing-wildly-at-anything phases (current phase began in May, 2004), he might say: “Well, hitters have been swinging at that outside pitch in the dirt for 100 years, and nobody’s hit it yet.” If a manager makes too many pointless late-inning moves in a 7-1 game, he might say, “Well, this manager’s going down swinging. And he’s taking all of us with him.”

It is good stuff. And it is easy to miss.

(A fan called in to say that one Denny call he always loved happened whenever a batter checked his swing. Denny would say “He had a notion.” The fan thought that was unique. I’m not sure if it is unique, but it does remind me that for years I thought the Beach Boys’ song lyric was: “If everybody had a notion across the USA, then everybody’d be surfing, like Californ-I-a.” But I guess it’s actually: “If everybody had an ocean across the USA …”)

In time, I just grew to appreciate Denny’s understated style. If a baseball announcer is really supposed to be the background music of summer, then Denny played the bass just right. For me, he became the easiest listen … I would have him on while I worked or mowed the lawn or took long trips or talked with buddies and just let the game fade in and out.

Obviously, though, some do not feel that way. Why do they despise Denny? Maybe it’s because he never has become a big part of the Kansas City community. Denny is a private guy, a homebody; he simply is not the kind of guy who could open up a big and loud sports bar in the heart of the city or bring out the fans to a charity event. His lack of a catch phrase is admirable in a time when every single young announcer coins some stupid slogan (“Great Googly Moogly!”). But because he has had no catch phrase and no “I-do-not-believe-what-I-just-saw” moment (nobody even remembers what he said when Dane Iorg looped the hit to right field), fans have had a hard time attaching any sort of personality to Denny. I think after 38-plus years, many still feel like they don’t know him.

And finally, for the last 15-plus years, Denny has been responsible for bringing mostly bad news to Kansas City baseball fans. Hey, you try calling Jose Lima and Darrell May on back-to-back nights. There are ways a losing-team announcer can be popular, of course, but these involve escaping the team’s shell by being funny or grandfatherly or sarcastic or bawdy (a great word, by the way) or larger than life. Denny simply cannot be any of these things. It’s not in him. He is an observer, a mirror, and when the game is lousy, he describes a lousy game. There have been a lot of lousy games in Kansas City lately.

Then there are those who simply feel he brings no passion to the game, no love for the Royals, no excitement about baseball. These are subjective things. I have been in Kansas City for more than 10 years, and I do hear those things in Denny’s voice now. We all hear what we hear. I remember a few years ago, I was talking to a fellow Cleveland guy. He was a few years older than me, and he was going on and on about the catastrophic awfulness of Indians longtime announcer Herb Score on the radio. He was talking about how Herb went off on goofy tangents constantly and got the count wrong and often messed up names and spent more time talking about tomorrow’s promotion than today’s action. And, of course, would go millennia without giving the score.

I was shocked. I wasn’t shocked because the guy was inaccurate – he was probably pretty accurate. I was shocked because I had grown up listening to Herb Score – hundreds and hundreds of games – and I had not heard any of those things. I had simply heard baseball. I had heard my friend, Herb Score, tell me night after night about my heroes, about Duane Kuiper and Rick Manning and Andre Thornton and Buddy Bell and Rick Waits and Sid Monge and Charlie Spikes and Jim Norris and – no don’t stop me, this is fun – and Joe Lis and Tommy Veryzer and Jack Brohammer … I can still hear Herb Score say each and every one of these names. I cringed with every “Throw to first, back safely,” he uttered, (he said it fast too, like one word, “Throwtofirstbacksafely.”). I imagined exactly how the park looked every time Herb described the weather (Herb talked more about the weather than Willard Scott). I fell asleep to Herb Score’s voice. I never saw Herb Score as someone to be praised or criticized … he seemed apart from such things. I just listened.

Calvin Trillin has written that anybody who does not think the best hamburger place in the world is in his/her hometown is a sissy. I suppose I have that sort of feeling for hometown radio broadcasters. You are supposed to love them because they're yours. Sure, broadcasters in other towns may be more technically sound, more passionate, funnier, sweeter, goofier, angrier or have a better voice. But they are still broadcasters in other towns. The Yankees are better than the Royals. That does not mean you pine for them.

So it surprises me there is not more hometown pride for Denny. Maybe there is … it is, after all, the critics who shout loudest. The emails run 2-to-1 against him now, but maybe that’s because the people who are proud of Denny are not the type to email. They’re the type to listen. Denny Matthews has been calling Royals games since the beginning. You would think that by now people have grown accustomed to his voice.