Dave Niehaus 1935-2010

We're easing back after a couple of days in which it was nice not having to be involved in the usual cha-cha. We appreciate the many comforting words given both in the thread and to us by email after the death of our mom.  

While we were out, Seattle radio took another big hit: Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Mariners shuffled the mortal coil. He lived a shorter life and died more unexpectedly than our mom, who lived long and died slowly over about 3 years.

Though we're usually not concerned with sports radio, (or baseball in general) BlatherWatch needs to acknowledge the passing of this giant in local broadcasting and metaphore. We'll let his many friends, fans, and colleagues do the memorializing.

We did share his love of salami and rye bread. 

Comments

[Puget Sound]

Damn, once again the fabric that makes up the community gets a little more frayed.
More than any particular player, Dave was our connection to Baseball.
Dave was a giant and my favorite. I grew up with the wonderful Vin Scully and heard a lot of the legendary Jack Buck while in the military on Armed Forces Radio.
Both of them had a tremendous advantage over Dave. They usually had good to great teams to do the play by play.
Dave didn't have that most of the time. Yet he always made it work.
If you don't 'get' baseball on the radio you'll probably not understand it's magic. With someone like Dave it was just so damn nice to know when you got in your car or sat on the deck that you could put the M's on, listen, and share with family/friends. A very communal experience or one that also worked well when you were by yourself in the garden.

[Mike Barer]

As I've said in some other comment threads, it was like a wrecking ball hit the Space Needle, only worst.

[AprilMayJune]

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

[TomF]

Dave's greatest accomplishment was to sustain our interest in a baseball franchise that has been terrible for 26 its 34 years. It's comparatively easy to "sell" the Yankees or the Red Sox, but the Mariners usually play badly and out of contention. By July or so you know they're staying in the cellar and not much interesting is going to happen.

But Dave stuck with the M's, and the Northwest, when he could certainly have gone the way of his old A's partner Dick Enberg and had a more glamorous, interesting, lucrative network career.

His storytelling skills became a bigger draw than the team itself.

Nothing like arriving back at Sea-Tac on a warm summer night, easing into the car to head home, and listening to Dave call the last two or three innings of a lopsided, hopeless M's loss as I sped up I-5. That's how a whole generation of Seattlites knew they were home. Dave's impossible to replace.

[KS]

Dave Niehaus was a class act and it's still a shock. He cannot be replaced and he is right up there with the baseball broadcast giants - Vin Scully, Jack Buck and Bill King. Scully is the only one who is still with us. I will always remember the excitement in 1995 when they beat the Yankees in the ALDS and how his excitement reverberated throughout the region... He will be sorely missed throughout the Pacific Northwest.