ABOUT DAVE NIEHAUS AND THIS PROJECT
ON DAVE NIEHAUS: This book is a biography of one of the game’s favorite sons and most devoted servants, one of baseballs’ finest broadcasters.
There are fewer than forty men who broadcast major league baseball and whose career culminated with enshrinement in baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Only one made it to Cooperstown before any players from the team whose games he broadcast. That one man was Dave Niehaus of the Seattle Mariners.
This is his story.
Dave’s story deserves to be told – for him, for his family and for his baseball family, those who thrilled every evening to his voice, to the pictures he painted with his lyrical prose as he brought the game from the ballpark to our backyard.
ON THE BOOK: In writing “My Oh My: The Dave Niehaus Story,” I hope to preserve Dave’s legacy by telling the story of his life inside and outside of baseball. From his Princeton, Indiana roots he rose to the pinnacle of success in his chosen field and his story is one of unwavering passion for the sport he loved so dearly. It is also the saga of a devoted family man, married to his wife, Marilyn, for 48 years, father of three children and grandfather of seven.
I am deeply indebted to my editor, J Michael Kenyon – columnist, radio host and sports historian. Without his vast knowledge of the game and personal friendship with both Dave and me, this endeavor would have been impossible.
I treasure the experience of knowing Dave and of calling an inning of Mariner baseball with him at the Kingdome. I remain friends with Marilyn Niehaus, Dave’s wife, who has provided me with dozens of photos and has given me her blessing on this project. I am also privileged to have the support of Dave’s former broadcast partner, current Seattle Mariner broadcaster, Rick Rizzs and Dave’s estimable producer/engineer, Kevin Cremin – each of whom wrote a foreward for the book.
Ongoing encouragement from the Seattle Mariners Baseball Club and support from the Seattle Mariners RBI Club and Commissioner Bob Simeone, as well as contributions from the Billy Mac Roster have been instrumental in bringing this project to fruition.
Among the people I interviewed for this book were Marilyn Niehaus, Rick Rizzs, Kevin Cremin, Dick Enberg, Jon Miller, Tracey Ringolsby, Ken Levine, Jim Nabors, Mike Gastineau and Dave Grosby. Former Mariners Chuck Cottier, Tom Paciorek, Joe Simpson, Glenn Abbott, Dave Valle and Jay Buhner have also contributed to the book.
GOALS OF THE PROJECT
$14,500 to defray the costs of self-publishing and marketing both a limited, signed & numbered, hardcover collectors edition and a softcover edition.
Thank you for taking the time to learn about my project and I sincerely hope that you will assist me in getting Dave’s story told. This campaign will run for 41 days from March 21,2017 - May 1, 2017. Please email me at billymacmusic@me.com, if you have any questions.
One last request: whether or not you are able to make a pledge, please help us spread the word about this campaign via Facebook, email, Twitter and Instagram. The more people you tell, the more successful we will be together. Thank you. Billy Mac
PLEASE ENJOY THIS BRIEF EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK
“Their heroics were not recorded in the box scores and their names never appeared among the league leaders in any categories other than sore throats and sharpened pencils.
They may never have thrown a shutout or recorded a save, legged out an infield single or stretched a soft line drive into a double. But without them, neither did we. They never ran through a stop sign to score by a whisker or dug one out of the dirt to nip the runner, but save for them, none of us would have either. They wore no numbers and could not be found in the scorecards. Yet, without them, the numbers would not have been spoken and the scorecards would have remained blank. These were the men who called the game.
Their impact was, at times, even greater than those who toiled between the lines, their reach every bit as far. Into millions of homes they came, down countless highways their voices tumbled from the dashboard. Into crowded, rapturously silent bars and meeting halls they echoed, into the earphones of schoolboys with transistor radios in their pockets. Like an umbilical cord they connected us to the game, to our favorite pastime. Like an outstretched hand, they bade us to grasp on and be connected to “the windup and the pitch.”
They gave us the Texas Leaguer and the little blooper, the sharp line drive and the blue darter, the scorching one-hopper that handcuffed the third basemen and the hard, in-between hop that ate him up, the lazy fly ball and the can of corn. From them came the pitches that were down in the dirt and the fifty-nine-footers, the calling card and the chin music. Pitches that danced on the corners and painted the black were gaped at and waved at and “shaken their heads at” and spun on and fanned on and passed on by batters who were all tied up in knots or frozen at the dish or just plain unable to pull the trigger.
They filled our ears and our baseball souls with offerings and deliveries that were blistered and scorched, pounded into the terra firma, chopped off the plate, hammered to left, trickled into right, parachuted into centerfield. Those deliveries might be herky-jerky, all-arms, corkscrew, like a rocking chair and they issued forth seeds and darts and high cheese and rainbows and yellow hammers.
Theirs was a universe in which managers were blowin’ their tops and pullin’ their hair out or gettin’ a little grayer with every pitch as coaches were throwin’ up stop signs or wavin’ ‘em in or on their hands and knees tellin’ ‘em to get down or, sometimes, just wiping off the previous sign. "
