God, or at least his Voice, is dead

Bob Sheppard died this weekend, at the age of 99. If you don't recognize the name, you probably would recognize the voice; Sheppard was the longtime PA announcer at Yankee Stadium, and hence, heard on a million MLB telecasts.

Now, I'm not a Yankee fan. As a matter of fact, they are one of my five least favorite franchises in sports, and Derek Freaking Jeter tagging Jeremy Freaking Non-Sliding Giambi is one of those moments that haunt me. But Sheppard was magic; dry, understated, majestic, and never saying more, seemingly, than he had to. You could not imagine his voice as a young man, or excited, or disgusted. He was simply the voice of record, and one of the best things about a game in the Bronx. It just always seemed more important when he was involved, and no matter how much you hated the team, you respected the voice.

For 50 years, Sheppard called games, and didn't make it, at least not as a live presence, to the new stadium. There's something correct about that. While he's there, in the monument area, he never really left the old yard, the past. When you heard him say the name of some new player, it took a long time for it to feel right, as if that voice could only be attached to some Yankee from the '50s or the '60s.

Sheppard also called games for the Giants, but I only heard about that today, in the obit. That says something, too. No one remembers who the public address announcer is at a football game. Only in baseball, where being at the yard is so much more meaningful than seeing it on the tube, does the impact of an announcer hold such weight.