France Laux, the St. Louis Cardinals’ famed Depression-era, Gas House Gang Voice

To celebrate the 2025 season, we continue Curt Smith’s series, Voices of Summer, on baseball’s leading all-time announcers to appear regularly through the year. Today, the Voice of the St. Louis Cardinals’ famed Depression-era Gas House Gang, France Laux.

By CURT SMITH

“Swarming up from the Texas wheat fields, the Georgia cotton lands, the West Virginia coal mines, the Oklahoma cow ranges, [they] redramatized for the public that old traditional story about the talent of common men,” drama critic Lloyd Lewis wrote of the 1930s Cardinals. They wed spunk, zest, and a grand sobriquet.

The Gas House Gang stemmed from Willard Mullin’s sketch of clubs, not bats, on players’ shoulders fleeing the poor gas tank part of town. Their lead  announcer, like the team, was quintessentially Mid-American. Born: Guthrie, Oklahoma, 1897; degree, Oklahoma City College; service, U.S. Army Air; after World War I, insurance and real estate broker and football referee.

The 1927 World Series opened October 5. By noon KVOO Tulsa station head Fred Yates  was in a world of trouble. “I didn’t have a guy to re-create,” he said. France Laux lived in nearby Bristow. “Someone said his name. I get in my car and find France” driving down a street.

“Can you broadcast baseball?” Yates shouted, pointing Laux’s car to the shoulder. “Never done it,” said France. “Why?” Fred: “Get in. We’re going to the studio.” Arriving minutes before the game, Laux called the Pirates-Yankees Series, added college football, and in 1929 got a KMOX St. Louis 30-day trial. Through 1942, he aired the Cardinals and sad-sack Browns. “Forget a booth,” France said. “At Sportsman’s Park I sat in boxes near the field.”

The Gas House Gang Redbirds baited umpires, dropped water bags from windows, and filled hotel lobbies with workmen’s tools. Their Mississippi Mudcats band played “Rock Island Line” and “The Wreck of the Old  ‘97” on fiddles, harmonicas, washboards, and guitars. “I am possibly the only manager that carried an orchestra,” mused skipper Frank Frisch. “We traveled with more instruments than we did shirts or anything else,” winning pennants in 1930, 1931, and 1934.

For nearly a decade Pepper Martin manned the club’s minor-league assembly factory. In 1931, promoted, he got a Fall Classic record-tying 12 hits. “He was wild and had a lot of company,” said the St. Louis Globe-Democrat’s Bob Burnes. Joe Medwick had a stevedore’s body. Dizzy Dean treated discipline like cyanide. Restrained, Laux flaunted skill at description. Frisch’s team gave him a lot to describe.

“France spoke in a flat, metallic way” redolent of the prairie, said The Sporting News (TSN) columnist Bob Broeg. KMOX’s fifty thousand watts helped. “It went everywhere,” recalled Globe-Democrat sports editor Bob Burnes. “Excel there and you got noticed.” Example: France was the first to introduce singing cowboy Gene Autry, then a telegraph operator in Chelsea, Oklahoma. Another: CBS gave Laux the 1933-38 Series and All-Star Game. In 1934’s Mid-Summer Classic, he etched Carl Hubbell fanning five straight American Leaguers.

That October, Laux, Pat Flanagan, and Ted Husing called “the first sponsored Series [Ford gave CBS and NBC each $500,000],” France said. Comic Will Rogers, earning nearly that much a year, inquired, “You don’t happen to know Judge Laux out in Oklahoma, do you?” France  replied. “Just slightly. He’s my dad.”

Two years later Tony Lazzeri smacked a Series slam. “He jogs in and stabs the plate for the fourth run on that hit!” cried Laux. “This has been quite an inning for the Yank!” Game Six began quite a skein. “A ground ball to [Lou] Gehrig. Scoops it up! Touches the bag for the third out—and the 1936 World Series is over!”—the first of four Bombers titles in a row.

Next season Laux became the first TSN staff-picked “Announcer of the Year” for “being chosen oftener than any other announcer to report the World Series and All-Star Game.”  His network adieu was 1941’s Mid-Summer Classic in Detroit. “And there’s a drive going out to right field! Looks like it’s going to be a home run . . . for Arky Vaughan!” France yelped. Ted Williams’ ninth-inning blast gave the A.L. a 7-5 stunner. Sponsor Gillette then dropped Laux like a stale loaf of bread.

“It decided who got assignments,” said Broeg. “Competition killed him. France wasn’t hip enough nationally.” He drifted back to St. Louis, which by now also found him lacking. In 1945, Harry Caray and Gabby Street began on WEW and WTMV East St. Louis, two years later gaining Redbirds exclusivity. France bought a bowling house, became American Bowling Congress secretary, and again called the Browns in 1948-53.

“Baseball people knew who Laux was,” said the Cardinals’ Jack Buck, joining Caray in 1954. “If others did, it was through bowling or like, ‘Gee, he was a pioneer,’” less skin and bones than catchphrase or caricature. Many forgot he had ever done play-by-play. In 1976, wife Pearl died after 47 years of marriage. Laux followed two years later, having told a friend, “I just lived too long.”

Next: The only man chosen by a U.S. President to call the World Series, “The Old Commander,” Bob Elson.

CURT SMITH is the author of 18 books, including Voices of The Game, to Esquire magazine among the “100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written.” His other books include Long Time Gone, on 1970s America; The Presidents and the Pastime, a history of baseball and the White House; and George H. W. Bush, a biography of the 41st President, for whom Smith  also wrote speeches during Bush’s time in office. Since 1998, the former Saturday Evening Post senior editor has been the Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Rochester.