Pat Flanagan was one of the early “Voices of Summer” during the regular seasons in Chicago

By CURT SMITH

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 father of the re-creation, Pat Flanagan.

Bing Crosby played Father Flanagan in the 1945 Oscar-winning film Boys Town. From 1929 to 1943, another Flanagan (Charles Carroll) made baseball a religion. “It’s one of those unique gifts,” he said of his nickname “Pat.” Others included gray hair, brown eyes, and a made-for-TV face, none of which enhanced radio. A breezy voice, can-do knack, and blueprint of a mind did.

Flanagan arrived in Chicago in late 1928, the Cubs and White Sox each airing its entire home schedule. Away games were ignored, which got Pat to puzzling. “Stations didn’t do the road because line charges were expensive,” he said. The challenge was clear: How could you cover baseball without being at the park?

The solution became wireless telegraphy, like Western Union’s Simplex machine “[giving] play-by-play,” wrote The Sporting News, “within three seconds of the time it occurs.” An operator sent Morse Code to the station. B1L meant ball one, low; S2C, strike two, called. Eureka! A Voice could describe a game play he never saw.

One day, Pat used Simplex for a game from Cincinnati. “If you want these out-of-town games regularly, write and tell us,” he said, signing off. Next day nine thousand listeners did. Mused legendary announcer Jack Brickhouse, “Pat invented re-creations,” buoying the pastime for the next three decades.

Virginia is often styled the Mother of Presidents. Iowa fathered or schooled many of baseball’s grand broadcasters. Born in Clinton in 1893, Flanagan graduated from Grinnell College, won a Silver Star in World War I, practiced chiropractic at Palmer School in Davenport, and sang songs, led exercise, and taught philosophy on its station.

“Some first year!” he said later about 1929. The Cubs won the pennant. CBS’s Flanagan dueled NBC’s Graham McNamee on the World Series. In the opener, Philadelphia A’s manager Connie Mack started Howard Ehmke, 35, “who hadn’t pitched much,” Pat mused. “Connie loved surprise.” The retread fanned a Fall Classic-record 13. Up two sets to one, Chicago led Game Four, 8-0. Then, in the seventh inning, the A’s scored ten runs, aided by Mule Haas’s drive to center field, where the Cubs’ Hack Wilson thought it a can of corn.

“He’s over, getting under it,” Pat began. “Wait, it looks like Hack’s lost it [in the sun]! He has . . . the ball falls! [Joe] Boley scores, and Max Bishop! And here comes Haas. An inside-the-the-park homer!” The inning whipsawed the Series, Philly winning, 10-8. In 1930, Hack knocked in a still-record 191 runs. Two years later, Charlie Grimm became the first manager hired after mid-season to win a pennant. Soon Chicago expected an every-third-year National League flag—“an itch,” chirped Flanagan, “like clockwork.” Alas, the Cubs’ clock stopped after 1929-32-35-38.

Meanwhile, the 1921-35 White Sox flunked the first division. Pat tried not to notice, speaking 30,000 words in a typical nine-inning game. A listener patented a “word-meter”:  Flanagan averaged 240 words per minute; 200 meant “stalling speed.” In 1933, he aired his sole All-Star Game and in 1934 Pat’s last of three Series on CBS. Next year the Cubbies lost their fifth straight Fall Classic. “Maybe we should skip October,” Grimm laughed.

By 1935, four Des Moines outlets carried the Cubs. “Most did some games live from Chicago,” said WHO’s Ronald “Dutch” Reagan, the future U.S. president noting, “Thanks to re-creation, I could do them from hundreds of miles away.” One day the wire stopped. Reagan considered returning to the station. “Then I thought, no, if we put music on people will turn to another station doing it in person.” What to do? Make a big to-do.

“Foul balls don’t make the box score, so for seven minutes I had Billy Jurges set a record,” Reagan recalled, telling his audience how pitcher Dizzy Dean used the resin bag, mopped his brow, and tied a shoe. Rain was said to fall, a fight said to near. “None of this happened,” Dutch continued, “but at home it seemed real.” Finally, power was restored, Reagan laughing over what the wire read: “Jurges popped out on first ball pitched.”

In 1937, Reagan traded baseball for Hollywood. A year later, Flanagan salved the Cubs’ last three-year itch. That September 28, Chicago trailed Pittsburgh by one-half game. Inning nine began tied at five. “It’s dusk, Wrigley Field had no lights. The ump said game’s over if no one scores this inning,” Pat said. After the Pirates and first two Cubs went meekly, Gabby Hartnett faced Mace Brown. “This is it,” Flanagan continued. “The Cubs have to score. A long drive to deep left-center! Lloyd Waner going back! Gone! Gone! Cubs win!”

Chicago clinched the 1938 pennant on October 1. The City of Big Shoulders then shouldered another blow. “We’ve played ’em twice [also swept in 1932],” Pat said after the Yanks won every game. “Win a Series? I’d settle for a game.”  In 1943, braving cancer, he would have settled for good health. After 15 years in Chicago, Flanagan retired to the Cubs’ longtime training site, Catalina Island, off Los Angeles, saying, “I love it. I’ve been coming here for years.”

Pat mused, “I tried to make studio play-by-play real,” succeeding so well that one person called Chicago’s WBBM asking where Flanagan sat at the park. Pat died in 1963, at 70, a decade after Pittsburgh became the last team to begin live road coverage. “He wouldn’t like radio now,” said Brickhouse at the time. “He’d miss re-creations.” The world outliving baseball’s Father Flanagan was not a world he knew.

Next: Fred Hoey, the Voice who helped make the Red Sox New England’s team.

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