Byrun Saam: Fans worshiped and toured Phillies, started in1935; Voice: Kallas, Musser and Campbell;

Headline: Byrum Saam, Master of the Malapropism

To celebrate the 2025 season, we continue Curt Smith’s series, Voices of Summer, on baseball’s all-time announcers that will appear regularly through the year. Today, a Voice whose malapropisms buoyed the Philadelphia Phillies and Athletics, Byrum Saam.

By CURT SMITH

To Dixie, the Lost Cause meant the Civil War; the Republican Party, beating Franklin D. Roosevelt; the New York Mets, a 40-120 record in 1962. To Byrum Saam, it denoted reinventing the King’s English.

“Hello, Byrum Saam, this is everybody speaking,” By began his big-league debut. Another: “[Outfielder] Bob Johnson is going back. He hits his head against the wall, reaches down, picks it up, and throws to second base.” Encore: In 1959, Mel Allen introduced him on NBC’s World Series: “And here’s the amiable, affable, able Byrum Saam.” Distracted, By misheard him. “Right you are, Mel!” he replied.

“By’d say the wrong thing,” said Phillies colleague Richie Ashburn, “then wonder why people laughed.” Less humorously, he described more baseball defeats than anyone. “Here we are,” Saam would note, “rolling into the eighth.” By was sober, yet surreal, another partner, Harry Kalas, observed. “He’d crack us up between innings, but had been raised to be serious on the air.”

Saam’s 1938-54 Athletics and 1939-49 and 1951-75 Phillies finished 3,239-4,395. His solution: “Focus on things beyond the field.” A brawl might roil the stands. When Shibe Park hosted the first American League night game, its roofed press box made some tie rope around their waist. “It wasn’t easy,” By recalled. “You’re getting killed and everybody’s at the shore” getting a cheesecake, beer, and burn.

Nicknamed “The Man of a Zillion Words,” Saam used most on baseball. Airing 13 no-hitters, two network Series and All-Star Games, and nearly 8,000 local games, he received the 1990 Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcast excellence. By also aired football’s Eagles, University of Pennsylvania, Blue-Gray Game, and Cotton and Sugar Bowl, “never projecting pessimism,” said the book The Mackmen. Given some of his teams, that ,ay have merited a Purple Heart.

The Ft. Worth native attended high school with Ben Hogan, played hoops with Sammy Baugh at Texas Christian University, and was hired by a local radio owner. He was later recommended by Ted Husing to 50,000-watt WCCO Minneapolis, which required a baseball audition. Saam had never done the sport, but was hired after re-creating the 1935 Series. He aired the city’s Triple-A Millers, then joined the Phillies and the A’s.

Philadelphia’s fandom soon felt a bond. “Would you talk a little louder?” one woman wrote. “My radio battery is getting weak.”  In 1950, N.W. Ayer & Son ad agency ended road re-creations, for the first time each Philly team airing its entire schedule live. No station could handle the inventory: thus, the Athletics stayed at then-flagship WIBG, the Phils moving to WPEN. “I had to weigh my close relationship with the kindest man who ever lived,” By explained of A’s manager, owner, and patriarch Connie Mack.

Lost Cause: Saam’s 1950 Athletics placed last. By contrast, the Phils waved their first flag in 35 years. “It must have bothered him,” said Ashburn. “You do the Phillies so long, then leave the year they win.” In late 1954, the A’s moved to Kansas City. A year later Saam rejoined the Phils. “I hated Mr. Mack leaving,” he said, “but I’d missed the Phillies.” Together they approached their Gallipoli—1964.

Nineteen sixty-four. The phrase is so affixed to Philadelphia that even non-natives grasp the spoken tone reserved for a drunken spouse or wayward child. For 73 straight days the team gripped first place. Rookie Richie Allen hit 29 homers. Jim Bunning was perfect against the Mets on Father’s Day.  On September 20, Philly led by 6 ½ games, then aped  a horse who, lacking food and water, nears the finish line in shock and pain.

The Phillies started 19-8 Bunning and 18-11 Chris Short eight of their last 12 games. Ten straight losses wrote finis. The Reds and Cardinals led Philadelphia by a game on closing day. “If we beat Cincy and the Cards lose to the Mets, it’s a three-way playoff,” Saam recalled. “If they win, they get the pennant.” The Phils won, 10-0, but St. Louis romped, 11-5. “It’s a good thing I got to do a network Series on my own,” By joked. “In time I knew I’d never get there with the Phils.”

Even so, he left you with a smile. In 1969, visiting expansion Montreal, Saam said, “You know, 85 percent of the people up here speak French. But they’re nice people, anyway.” One night he broadcast from San Francisco, saying, “And now for all you guys scoring in bed.” Recalled Ashburn: “Imagine that stir! How could you not love the guy?”

In 1971, the Phillies moved to Veterans Stadium. A flaw was faux grass. “It’s hard for anyone to pick up the baseball on artificial turf,” said Kalas. “That was especially true when By got eye trouble.” When one batter went deep, Saam bayed, “There’s a ground ball to short—and it’s gone!”

By 1975, By faced that vision thing. “I should have had cataract surgery, but I let it slide.” He retired that October. Next year’s irony recalled 1950’s. Richie had his pal call the Phils’  National League East clincher, saying, “Thirty-eight years and no winner. Damn right By deserved a title.” In 1990, a Hall of Fame reception evoked  his quirky, falling-off-the-turnip truck charm. Each napkin read, “Right you are, Mel!” At that moment the Lost Cause seemed triumphant, after all.

Next: Jimmy Dudley, perhaps the Cleveland Indians’ most beloved Voice.