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"Style, not shtick. Wit, not bombast." That's the way Bob Costas describes longtime San Francisco Giants broadcaster Hank Greenwald's on-air voice in his foreword to Greenwald's acerbically free-wheeling look back at his years in the booth. It's a description that also goes a long way toward characterizing the man and his memoir. Greenwald, now retired from the grind of day-to-day game-calling, was a rarity on the air. He not only knew how to make a game come alive, but also how to liven up the pauses in action with a genuine humor that was funny but not self-serving, self-referential, or worse, self-reverential. Not surprisingly, This Copyrighted Broadcast reflects that balancing act: it's smart in its look at the state of the game, on and particularly off the field (to wit: "If there's one thing owners don't accept, it's blame. They don't have to, they're owners"; "What a shame baseball is so insecure about itself"), it's funny, it's honest (wait till you see what Greenwald has to say about Barry Bonds), it's daring in what it reveals about broadcasting and some of the absurdities of being a ball club's paid mouthpiece--unless you're an institution like Harry Caray, you don't always get to call it like you see it--and it's poignant in its revelations about family, especially concerning Greenwald's remarkable relationship with a daughter who has Down's Syndrome. But mostly, it's a collection of terrific anecdotes from a man who knows how to tells stories, move things along, and amuse with skill and absolute timing. This is, after all, the announcer who, when told by a producer to shorten his sign-on of a game from Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium, looked directly into the camera and bid fans a good evening from Two Rivers Stadium. --Jeff Silverman
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cite this book:
- Broadcast Rites and Sites, Revised Edition: I Saw It on the Radio with the Boston Red Sox by Joe Castiglione on page 313, and page 349
- Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero by Jeff Pearlman in Back Matter
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