Page 275 - 1975 BoSox

FROM 1953 THROUGH 1956, JIM Woods was Mel Allen’s and Red Barber’s partner on New York Yankees
radio/TV. One day, eying Woods’ slight overbite and gray buzz cut, Enos Slaughter jibed, “I’ve seen better headsonapossum.”In1958JimmovedtoPittsburgh, where announcer Bob Prince’s wife called Woods’ spouse “Mrs. Possum.” In 1974-78 the Red Sox’ Poss and Ned Martin bagged New England: Ned, wry and spry; Jim, booming like a barge. Who was better –Woods with Prince, or Martin? Did any trio top Jim, Mel, and Red? “It’s no coincidence,” said Allen. e common tie was Poss.
A 1960s Avis ad blared, “We’re number two. We try harder.” In a 31-year career, Woods was number two to Allen, Barber, Russ Hodges, Jack Buck, Monte Moore, Prince, and Martin: “baseball’s peripatetic ‘second’ announcer’ who has worked for a quarter of the clubs in the majors,” wrote William Leggett. Being top gun seldom crossed Possum’s mind. Drinking and betting at the ats and harness track did. “Having fun, Jim wanted not to try harder,” Ned mused. He didn’t have to, as 1960 attests.
From 1958 to 1969 you could walk down a street in Oil City and Wheeling and Titusville and hear perhaps baseball’s all-time greatest booth. A ne play sparked Bob’s “How sweet it is!” Woods used a line he later took to Boston.“ ere are a reported fteen thousand people at the game. If that’s true, then at least twelve thousand of them are disguised as
empty seats.”
Some thought Poss and Prince each a maniac. Both were maniacally riveting. Like Bogart and Bacall or Abbott and Costello, one still denotes the other.
e son of Army Colonel F.A. Prince, Bob was raised at six posts and 14 or 15
schools. Later the Army brat unked out of four universities, got a B.A. at Oklahoma, and entered Harvard Law. In 1940 Prince, 24, read about a judge who frequented a burlesque house. One night papa saw Bob, with a stripper, in a newsreel on the jitterbug. “You’rewastingmymoney,”perephonedfromAlabama, yanking ls from school. “Here’s $2,000. Go make a living.” Prince had another aim.
Bob’s unwritten memoir read I Should Have Never Danced with the Stripper. He should have never been scarred by a polo mallet, kicked in a rodeo, or jailed for vagrancy — but was. A pattern emerged, worthy of di dent respect. “Anything short of murder,” he said, “I’ve been there”— like Woods, later naming Bob the Gunner after the husband of a woman Prince was talking to in a bar pulled a gun.
From Harvard, Prince moved to his grandmother’s home in Zelienople, near Pittsburgh — “the only town where I could nd a place to live.” Upset, Dad phoned again: “ row that bum out of the house.” At 25 the vagabond nally settled on a career. “In the Army I’d played golf, polo, fenced. All I’d been trained to do was loaf. Broadcasting was the next easiest thing.”
By day Prince sold insurance. At night he began “[Walter] Winchellizing” on radio. Once Woods charged that boxer Billy Conn ducked opponents. e next week Conn hit him in the gut. “I can’t ght you,” said Bob, the ex-college diver, “but I’ll swim you.”
Conn later asked, “What would have happened if we’d fought in the pool?” Prince: “I’d have drowned you.” Instead, he pro ted from a man immersed in God.
In 1948, Bucs mikeman Jack Craddock resigned to preach at revival meetings. e Gunner replaced him as lead Voice Rosey Rowswell’s aide. “We were bad, and Rosey’d trip the light fantastic,” said
Jim Woods
By Curt Smith
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