The popular New England sportscaster, Fred Hoey was beloved; Entertained many; He died in 1949

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, Fancy two strangers from Providence, Rhode Island and Penobscot, Maine, stranded on a South Sea isle. They differ in age, sex, race, and religion, but not on their favorite big-league club. The Red Sox won five of baseball’s first15 World Series—but none for 86 years after the Twenty-Sixth Division entered France in World War I. It’s moniker was the Yankee Division. Who says the military lacks a sense of humor?

In New England, Red Sox ‘r’ us. Fenway Park’s odd angles, high and low fences, and drop-dead closeness are, in turn, the Olde Towne Team’s. Fred Hoey was 27 when it opened in 1912. In 1925, he joined WNAC Boston’s six-state Yankee (later, Colonial) radio network. For the next 14 years he called the Sox—also, the Hub’s National League Braves.

By then, the Red Sox equaled Dead Sox: second division, 1919-33. “No wonder they gave me a Day in ’31 [and gold, a pipe, and $3,000 certificate of deposit],” blurted Hoey. Later Sox Voice Ken Coleman recalled that of the two clubs, “the Sox registered more. In each case, Fred was the first—and the first, you don’t forget.” Many simply called him, as Coleman mused, “The man who does the games.”

Raised in Saxonville, near Framingham, a Boston suburb, Hoey, then 12, saw his first game in 1897 ‘s Temple Cup Series v. Baltimore. Later he played amateur and semipro baseball, ushered at the Red Sox’ Huntington Avenue Grounds, and from 1909 to 1946 covered baseball for a number of Boston papers. “I never met or heard him,” said broadcaster Ned Martin, joining the Sox in 1961. “But I feel I knew him, because people still swear by him. He set the stage for all the club’s announcers to come.”

Hoey was repetitive—“He throws to first and gets his man!”—and abided the idiosyncrasy of early radio. Most games were daytime. At six o’clock, the Yankee Network broke for news. “Ninth inning, tied, no matter,” said Coleman. “The carriage became a pumpkin.” Fred could vend—mostly Kentucky Club pipe tobacco and Mobil’s Flying Red Horse—and stir Euripidean concern. Sadly, he could not overcome the sauce.

In 1933, Hoey reached the radio booth before the World Series opener with evident breath and fumbling. His prose was incoherent, CBS yanking Fred off the air. Explanation: a “bad cold.”  In Boston, “where people knew about his drinking, all was forgiven,” Ken said. “Letters flooded the papers: ‘How dare you hurt our Fred?’” Throughout, wrote The Sporting News, “his mail keeps the postman loaded down,” Hoey sober enough in 1936 to air Mutual’s All-Star Game coverage at Braves Field.

After the 1925-31 Red Sox placed last, Hoey met new owner Tom Yawkey, who began reworking Fenway Park. “The park was run down,” said future Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti. “Restoring it, Yawkey saw himself as owning the team, but to many he became it.” The ’37ers finished fifth. That fall, Yankee Network head Joe Castiglione, III, axed our Fred. “Booze again,” mused Martin. Pickets swamped WNAC. Even President Roosevelt asked that he be rehired.

Reinstated, “Fred thought he owned New England,” mused 1948-50 Sox Voice Leo Egan. In 1938, Jimmie Foxx’s team-record 50 homers did. Next spring, second baseman Bobby Doerr told a rookie, “Wait till you see Foxx hit.” Replied rookie Ted Williams: “Wait till Foxx sees me hit.” Remaining: Jimmie’s penchant for malapropism. Of one Foxx homer, Fred said, “Homer hits a Foxx.”

In 1938, Hoey demanded a raise. Again, Shepard canned him. Once more a goodly portion of the public stormed Fenway. Replacing the Red Horse and Kentucky Club, new sponsors General Mills and Socony Oil yawned. “They wanted their own announcer,” said Coleman. “Plus, radio was changing. Fred paused an awful lot. Sponsors wanted somebody glib.”

Known as the region’s “Mr. Hockey,” Hoey was a long-time player, coach, manager, and referee. Gruff and austere, he died November 17, 1949, at 64, in a gas-filled room, of accidental asphyxiation, his body found by a delivery boy.

“Hoey was generally credited with building up baseball broadcasting to the lofty spot it holds today,” read the Boston Daily Globe. Joe Castiglione anchored Red Sox radio play-by-play from 1983 through 2024. “Whenever you hear me,” he mused, “remember where it began.”

Next: The Voice of the Gashouse Gang Cardinals, France Laux.

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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 Character at the Core: 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.