by Kirby Arnold
The answer, for a series of commercials produced in 1994, was to feature manager Lou Piniella as an impatient psychiatrist, pitcher Randy Johnson as a sometimes-wild circus knife thrower, outfielder Jay Buhner as a bombing standup comedian, and pitcher Chris Bosio as an aggressive dentist.
“That first year,” Martinez said, “there was a lot of skepticism among the players.”
Bosio, for example, wasn’t keen on the first idea thrown to him. The Mariners had wanted the beefy pitcher to dress as a ballerina. He listened to that concept in a meeting with producers, then took the board of sketches and broke it over his knee.
“Guys,” Bosio said, “I’m here to help, but I’m not going to be a ballerina.”
Producers and the marketing staff regrouped and, the next day, presented a new idea: Bosio as a mean, nasty dentist staring down the throat of a frightened patient, much the way he did with hitters from the mound. He loved it and so did the viewing public. Most of them, at least.
“We got complaints from a lot of dentists,” Martinez said.
Buhner’s first commercial featured him as an uninspiring standup comedian whose jokes fall flat in a quiet nightclub. “Here’s one for you,” he began. “Horse walks into a bar. Bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’”
The nightclub audience didn’t stir, so Buhner went to another joke that also didn’t work: “Here’s one for you … ”
Years later, during a ceremony at Safeco Field to honor Buhner after his retirement, he began his speech with, “Here’s one for you …”
Piniella, the fiery manager known for his intolerance for losing and impatience with soft players, became the perfect man to play a psychiatrist. That commercial began with the camera focused on an office door labeled “Dr. Piniella, Psychiatrist.” Behind it was the shadow of a hulking figure who had a patient on the couch.
“Whine, whine, whine!” shouted the voice behind the door, obviously Piniella’s. “All you do is come in here and whine! Now get off your duff and stop acting like a loser!”
The next scene shows the door opening and Piniella sticking out his head, saying, “Next!”
Johnson, known in the mid-1990s for his blazing fastball and occasional lack of control with it, portrayed a circus knife thrower whose skill drew cheers from the crowd as he “threw” knives toward a pretty young assistant.
The camera remained on Johnson as he made a final throw, and all viewers could hear was a huge gasp by the circus crowd. Johnson, who obviously had missed his spot, shrugged as if to say, “Oh, well, stuff happens.”
“A couple of upset people called because they thought Randy killed the girl,” Martinez said.
The commercials became as popular with the Mariners as they were with viewers, and despite long sessions in front of the camera, the players rarely complained and nobody became so impatient that they walked out of a taping. One came close, though.
Joey Cora and Alex Rodriguez were taping one commercial that would show what happens on the team plane during a long flight between cities. The kicker to the commercial was a scene showing Cora and Rodriguez being entertained by a puppet show.
“After they did their lines, Joey and Alex had to sit there as we did this silly puppet show,” Martinez said. “It was taking quite a while to get things right, and the director said, ‘Were going to need a couple more takes.’”
Cora, tired of waiting, looked at Martinez and said, “It’s time to go, bro.”
“Joey had had enough of the puppet show,” Martinez said. “We got two more takes and that was it.”
CHAPTER SIX
Dave Niehaus
THE VOICE OF THE FRANCHISE
DAVE NIEHAUS PULLED UP A CHAIR in the KVI radio booth in the Kingdome, opened a notebook, and wrote a “No. 1” at the top of a clean scoresheet. Niehaus, the play-by-play voice of the Mariners that first game on April 6, 1977, numbered every scoresheet of every game he called.
On June 8, 2006, in his 30th season calling Mariners games, he reached 4,500.
“Once I get to 5,000, that’s probably when it stops,” he said later that season. “I’m not going to say definitely, but probably. It’s been a long, long time.”
Niehaus made it to 5,000 and kept going. He may have thought about retiring, but he couldn’t truly pull himself away from a game that gave him such joy, just as those who followed the Mariners couldn’t imagine anyone else’s words describing the sights, sounds, and feel of a day at the ballpark. Niehaus had become one of the most popular of all Mariners and a beloved icon in the Pacific Northwest.
“Even in the 1980s, our radio ratings were among the highest in baseball. We attributed it to Dave,” former team president Chuck Armstrong said. “He has the unique ability to make you feel like he’s your friend. In the fans’ minds he is, because he’s in their homes 162 times a summer.”
That’s what made November 10, 2010, one of the most heartbreaking days the region has experienced.
Just a few weeks after closing the scorebook on his 5,284th Mariners game, Niehaus walked onto the deck of his home in Bellevue, Washington, and prepared to barbeque ribs. A short time later, word filtered through the baseball community that he was gone after a heart attack. He was 75.
An entire fan base mourned. Niehaus had symbolized the regularity that baseball brings to a day in the spring, summer, and fall, and his voice delivered a sense of comfort and hope for more than three decades. One longtime fan described Niehaus as the background music of his life. His daily dose of baseball connected generations of Mariners fans in such a way that it felt personal.
The next season, in 2011, the Mariners installed a bronze statue, created by artist Lou Cella, on the main concourse at Safeco Field (renamed T-Mobile Park in 2019) where fans can literally share a moment alongside their hero. The statue features a life-size likeness of Niehaus sitting at a desk with a microphone, a pencil in his hand and his scorebook opened to the unforgettable Game 5 of the 1995 American League Division Series. There’s also an empty bronze chair at that desk, where thousands of fans over the years have sat to have their photo taken or to simply share a personal moment with one of the most beloved of all Mariners.
He died as a legend whose impact on the game is appropriately recognized at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Two years before his death, Niehaus won the prestigious Ford C. Frick Award for baseball broadcast excellence. His speech at the 2008 induction ceremony in Cooperstown honored his radio influence as a kid, Harry Caray, and made clear how special the Frick award was to him.
“Radio plays with the mind. It gives you a mental workout and delusions of grandeur. That’s what Harry Caray did to me,” Niehaus said in his speech. “I know there are several bigger names who have preceded me in winning this award. And there will be several bigger names after me to win this award. But no one will ever be more appreciative.”
Niehaus grew up in baseball-rich Middle America, in the small southwest Indiana town of Princeton. He got his baseball influence from his father, who was an avid fan of the game and a friend of the Hodge family, whose son Gil would become an eight-time All-Star and manage the 1969 Miracle Mets. (“By the way,” Niehaus said. “It’s Hodge, not Hodges. A lot of people make that mistake.”)
Living in Princeton, about 170 miles from St. Louis, it was difficult to become anything but a Cardinals fan. Niehaus became enthralled with the Redbirds while sitting on his front porch listening to their games on the radio.
“We had a big Zenith in the living room, and after supper we would turn that radio on and turn it up loud, then go out on the front porch and sit on the swing,” Niehaus said.
He would listen to Harry Caray, the Cardinals’ energetic play-by-play announcer, as he described a setting that seemed like baseball heaven.
Niehaus’s parents, Jack and Delania, took him to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis for the first time when he was about 10. He remembered the ballpark being as pristine as he’d imagined from the radio broadcasts.
�
��But when the ballplayers came out, it was a letdown,” he said. “Harry Caray had made them seem larger than life, but to me they were just like the guys I’d seen at Bosse Field.”
Several years earlier, Niehaus had seen his first professional game at Bosse Field, a stately old minor-league stadium—still in existence as the third oldest pro ballpark in America—in Evansville, Indiana. Back then it was home to the Evansville Bees.
Part of Niehaus’s baseball education also took place in a pool hall in downtown Princeton. The place was active every night with men shooting pool and baseball scores flowing in through a ticker.
“I can still see the guy up there at the chalkboard with a little glass of water and a piece of chalk,” he said. “As the scores would come over the ticker, he would dip the chalk in water and write a zero or a two or whatever the score was. He had very, very neat handwriting, and it would dry real white. I used to sit there and be fascinated with that.”
That fascination carried Niehaus through school—he graduated from Indiana University—and into broadcasting. He worked for the Armed Forces radio and TV service, first calling Dodgers games, then the Yankees, plus hockey and basketball in New York. He returned to Los Angeles in the late 1960s to call baseball, basketball, and football games, then joined Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale in 1969 on California Angels broadcasts.
Back In the Saddle, In Seattle
Dave Niehaus pursued the opportunity to become a lead play-by-play voice when the Mariners were granted an expansion franchise for the 1977 season. He got that job and arrived in Seattle just as unknown to the fans as many of the players were.
“I was a raw rookie,” he said. “I’d never really spent any time in Seattle. I’d been through Seattle doing UCLA basketball and football, but I didn’t know what to expect.”
The moments before his first Mariners broadcast—when they played the California Angels at the Kingdome—were nerve-wracking enough, and the presence of Angels owner Gene Autry made it doubly so. Niehaus had worked in Los Angeles for Autry.
“I had a minute or two before we went on the air and I was sitting there concentrating,” Niehaus said. “Then I felt a tap on my back. It was The Cowboy.”
Autry smiled at Niehaus and said, “David, how are you? Are they treating you all right in Seattle?”
“They’re treating me just fine, Gene, just fine,” Niehaus responded.
“That’s great to hear, David,” Autry said. “By the way, is there a place in the whole Kingdome where a man can get a drink?”
Niehaus had become keenly aware over the years that Autry drank vodka in a glass, and he also knew that there was a bar just behind the broadcast booth in the Kingdome.
“What would you like to drink?” Niehaus asked.
“Well, David, just a shot of vodka will do,” Autry said. “A big, big shot of vodka.”
Niehaus hurried back to the bar, grabbed a big plastic cup and asked the bartender to fill it with vodka. He rushed back to the broadcast booth and gave the cup of vodka to Autry, then tried to compose himself as the radio broadcast began.
Broadcaster Dave Niehaus sits in the empty stands at Safeco Field prior to the start of the game. Photo by Dan Bates/The Herald of Everett, Washington
“Hello everybody, this is Dave Niehaus with Ken Wilson, and welcome to Mariners baseball,” he said on the air. “We’ll meet our special guest, manager Darrell Johnson, right after this break.”
Niehaus caught his breath again and turned around to see Autry still standing behind him.
“David, I should never have let your ass go,” Autry said, before taking his vodka and walking out of the booth.
Niehaus remembers the first Mariners team to be interesting, if not particularly good. Those Mariners rekindled the memory of Niehaus’s time in Los Angeles when he listened to Bill Rigney, manager of the first Angels team in 1961, address his players at spring training in Palm Springs.
“They were all a bunch of castoffs who nobody wanted, draft picks from other clubs, 26th and 27th guys,” Niehaus said. “When he made his first speech, he told those players, ‘Guys, nobody in this game has ever gone 162–0. We’ve got a shot.’
“I always remembered those words when it came to that first Mariners team.”
They weren’t very good, but they allowed him to tell a nightly drama that lasted all summer.
Painting a Picture With Words
Dave Niehaus developed a style that Mariners fans came to love. He told stories and described the scene vividly for listeners. That was important in the early days of the franchise because Mariners games rarely were on TV. Only 17 games were televised each of the first two seasons, and no more than 20 until 1982.
It became Niehaus’s responsibility to bring the images of the Kingdome to radios throughout the Northwest, just as Harry Caray did when Niehaus was a kid on his front porch in Indiana.
“Dave paints the best word picture of any baseball announcer I’ve heard,” said Chuck Armstrong, then the Mariners’ president.
And he was best known for his signature phrases.
Niehaus wasn’t certain when “My, oh my!” joined his repertoire, but it became so effective that the Mariners had it plastered on buses and bumper stickers one season.
“I’d always used it and I don’t know where it came from,” Niehaus said. “But what else is there to say? It seems so natural.”
Niehaus’s home-run call—“It will fly away!”—came from a song he heard while he was in Arizona covering the Mariners’ first spring training in 1977.
“An announcer is probably identified by his home-run call more than anything,” he said. “I’d been thinking about it for some time, and I was coming back from dinner late one night and the radio was on. They played a song, and the refrain was ‘It will fly away.’”
J. Michael Kenyon, who covered the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was riding back to the hotel with Niehaus when they heard the song.
“I said, ‘Mike, that’s exactly what a home run does when a guy really gets hold of it,’” Niehaus remembers. “I didn’t know if I had the guts to use it or not. The next day we were playing San Diego and there were three or four home runs hit, and I decided to use it. It has taken off since then.”
The cry Mariners fans loved most was Niehaus’s grand slam call. He had long screamed, “It’s a grand salami!” for grand slams, but in the mid-1990s he added a popular twist: “Get out the rye bread and mustard, grandma. It’s grand salami time!”
“I was thinking one day, ‘What goes good with salami?’ I came up with that,” Niehaus said.
When he first used it during a road telecast, his partner in the booth, Ron Fairly, was shocked.
“Ron thought I had taken a step to the other side of the line,” Niehaus said. “He didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But when we got home, that’s when we realized that the town had gone crazy with that phrase. The people from the O’Boy! Oberto sausage company sent me these huge salamis.”
A Great Honor
As the years passed and Niehaus’s popularity grew, Mariners fans hungered for a winning team not only for themselves, but also for the man in the broadcast booth who had suffered through more lousy seasons than anyone.
In 1995, they got their wish when the Mariners made their fabulous comeback to win the AL West. After Randy Johnson struck out Tim Salmon for the final out that clinched the franchise’s first division crown, the crowd in the Kingdome celebrated deliriously as the Mariners mobbed each other on the field.
Then something special happened. The crowd turned and faced the broadcast booth, saluting Niehaus with more deafening cheers on a day he’d waited 19 years to experience.
Nothing in baseball, however, became more special to Niehaus than the Mariners’ first game at Safeco Field (renamed T-Mobile Park in 2019), the new retractable-roof stadium that brought a new era of baseball to Seattle on July 15, 1999. He had taken part in elaborate pregame ceremonies and started back toward
the broadcast booth.
Team president Chuck Armstrong stopped him.
“Wait a minute,” Armstrong told Niehaus. “We need you to do one more thing.”
Armstrong grabbed Niehaus’s hand and placed a baseball in it, then told him to walk to the pitcher’s mound.
There had been considerable speculation over who would throw out the ceremonial first pitch: One of the original Mariners? A former star player? A government official who helped push the stadium funding and keep baseball in Seattle?
The person who got the ball was the most deserving of them all—Dave Niehaus.
“I hardly made it out to the mound I was sobbing so much,” he said.
Tears were flowing, too, on the edge of the field where a cluster of dignitaries had gathered. That’s what it meant for them to see Safeco Field become reality and for Niehaus to christen it.
Niehaus composed himself on mound and looked toward the plate, where Tom Foley, the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, set up to catch his throw. Niehaus flung it high and Foley missed the ball, which rolled to the backstop.
“That ball should have been caught,” Niehaus said with a laugh. “It was high, but it wasn’t that high.”
Clutching the ball tightly after the first-pitch ceremony, Niehaus posed for pictures before hurrying to get off the field and back to the broadcast booth.
“That ball was going to be one of my greatest trophies,” he said.
It was until Armstrong grabbed him by the arm again.
“Give the ball to the Speaker, Dave,” Armstrong told Niehaus.
He gave the ball to Foley and returned to the broadcast booth without the trophy.
What nobody could take from Niehaus was the memory of that moment, and he always cherished it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Young Stars Emerge; Victories Don’t
BY THE MID-1980S, the face of the Mariners was changing.