It was April 2006. I was working for Starline Films, and we were hosting a charity celebrity basketball game at Basketball City in Manhattan, trying to get the word out about our film 4CHOSEN. I was going to serve as the public address announcer for the game, but also provide some running commentary as well. It was all coming together very nicely, and then the moment that ranks as one of the ten I'll never forget in my life happened. Near the end of our pre-game ceremonies leading up to me introducing the lineups for both teams, a voice said the following over the loudspeakers in the entire building:
"...and now, to serve as your public address announcer for the rest of the evening, from Starline Films, here's Jonathan Moncrief..."
Yep, Bob Sheppard said my name. As I type this I'm tearing up just thinking about it and how cool it was.
Sheppard died today at the age of 99. For four generations of Yankees fans and Giants fans, he was the voice of Yankee Stadium. He was the Yankees PA announcer from 1956 until 2007, when his health finally began to fade. He also held a similar post for 50 years with the Giants, first at Yankee Stadium and later at Giants Stadium.
You didn't have to be a fan of those teams to appreciate the sound of his voice, the way he was particular about annunciation, and how in an age of screamers and hucksters he was about elegance and simplicity. He was a professor at St. John's University in New York after having been a speech teacher at John Adams High School. On April 17, 1951, both he and Mickey Mantle made their first ever appearances in Yankee games. In the last interview Mantle ever gave before his death, he was introduced by Sheppard as he was for every at bat, and he said to the interviewer that it still gave him chills to hear his name. Derek Jeter has asked that only Sheppard's pre-recording of Jeter's name be used when he comes to the plate for games. Reggie Jackson called him "the voice of God."
I had the good fortune to hear him speak in a classroom setting. I was in the summer between 8th and 9th grades in 1982, and I had been enrolled in a journalism class for people of my age at St. John's. For the most part, the six weeks of classes were uninteresting and the classroom was hot with no air conditioning. But there were two highlights: they showed the film 'The Jackie Robinson Story' and we then got the chance to talk with Rachel Robinson; and in the last class (which a few of the regulars from the first five skipped) Sheppard spoke with us for two hours. It was amazing hearing him not only talk about the great Yankees and Giants players and games, but also his philosophy of broadcasting and doing his job.
When I was working on organizing the basketball game years later, a few of us were discussing how to jazz up the game and I suggested how cool it would be to have Sheppard do some of the announcements coming into the arena in a pre-recorded setting. We contacted his son Paul, and apparently people had been paying to do voice over work for everything from weddings to Bar Mitzvahs to on-hold answering machine messages. So I put together several scripts for him to read, understabnding his cadence when introducing players or reading promotional announcements at games. And when we were sent the files following his recordings, we spent the rest of the day listening to them over and over and over and over and over and over again. We were still finalizing the roster, so we had him record a few names and some announcements for the start and end of the event, as well as what to when you entered the building. We even had him record a series of numbers, so that we could insert them into a starting lineup introduction. And even just the sound of him reading off a series of numbers was amazing to listen to. Check out this mini-clip of the event on YouTube that features his voice and mine too:
Like millions of others, one of the things I prided myself on was learning how to imitate his voice. Earlier this baseball season in Santa Monica, I was asked to do so some PA announcing of games. When the team in the little league called the Yankees played, I would announce their batters coming to the plate during their at bats in my Sheppard voice.
He will be missed, and in some ways I'm glad that PA announcers in pro sports are more about the screaming. It only enhances Sheppard's legend.
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