Mel Allen

Mel Allen was the play-by-play voice of the New York Yankees from 1939 to 1964, the man in the broadcast booth for Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Don Larsen's perfect game, and the early years of Mickey Mantle -- and the man who gave half the roster its nicknames along the way. He coined "Joltin' Joe" for DiMaggio, "Old Reliable" for Tommy Henrich, and "The Scooter" for Phil Rizzuto. His own catchphrase, "How about that!", ended up on buttons before the season that produced it was even over.

From the Law Library to the Booth

He wasn't born Mel Allen. Melvin Allen Israel arrived on February 14, 1913, in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of Jewish immigrants who'd fled Russia. He enrolled at the University of Alabama at 15, earned a political science degree in 1932, and stayed on for a law degree in 1936 -- calling Crimson Tide and Auburn football games on the side while he studied. He passed the Alabama bar in 1937. Law was the plan.

Then he auditioned for a staff announcer job at CBS in New York and got it, and the network wanted one thing changed first: his last name. Executives told him "Israel" was "too all-inclusive" -- a euphemism for exactly what it sounds like, in an industry where that kind of pressure wasn't unusual in 1937. He kept his father Julius's middle name instead. Mel Allen walked into the CBS building. Melvin Israel, the law-school kid from Birmingham, didn't walk back out.

Wheaties Made the Call

In 1939, the Yankees and Giants shared a radio arrangement (the two clubs were never home on the same day, so one broadcast covered both). Arch McDonald held the job first. Wheaties, the sponsor, wasn't satisfied, and pulled a young announcer off Washington Senators games to replace him mid-season. That was Allen. By 1940 he was the Yankees' full-time voice, and he stayed there -- minus a war -- for the next quarter-century.

He left the booth in February 1943 to enlist in the Army, broadcasting for Armed Forces Radio and The Army Hour instead of Yankee Stadium. He came back in 1946 and picked up exactly where he'd left off, which turned out to be the best possible timing -- DiMaggio was still patrolling center, and a kid named Mickey Mantle hadn't shown up yet.

The Nicknames

Allen didn't just describe the Yankees. He named half of them. "Joltin' Joe" stuck to DiMaggio so completely that most fans forget it started as a broadcaster's turn of phrase. Tommy Henrich became "Old Reliable" -- Allen named him after a train that ran Ohio to Alabama, celebrated for always showing up on time, and the label fit so well it stopped sounding like a nickname at all. Phil Rizzuto got "The Scooter." A young pitcher out of Connecticut, Spec Shea, became "the Naugatuck Nugget," a nod to his hometown that Allen hung on him and never took back.

Then there was the catchphrase that outlived all of it. In 1949, DiMaggio came back from a heel injury and hit four home runs in three games. Allen shouted "How about that!" on the first one and kept shouting it for the rest of his career. By that October it was printed on buttons. Decades later, people who never watched a single Yankees broadcast still knew the phrase (most had no idea where it came from).

Partisan but not prejudiced.

That's how he explained rooting for the home team without pretending the other dugout didn't exist. Opposing fans accused him of Yankees bias anyway (an occupational hazard of the job he never fully shook). Allen gave credit where it was due and let the accusation roll off him.

The Booth for Everything

Allen was on the air for DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 -- a season most broadcasters would call the highlight of a career and Allen would spend the next fifteen years topping. He shared the NBC booth on October 8, 1956, for Don Larsen's perfect game, calling the first four innings before handing off to a 28-year-old Dodgers announcer named Vin Scully. Scully made the final call on television. Bob Wolff made it on radio. Allen had set the whole thing up and then watched, like everyone else, from the other half of the booth.

He called Roger Maris's 60th home run on September 26, 1961, on WPIX: "How about that! A standing ovation... for Roger Maris, who got number 60." Five days later Maris hit his 61st and broke Babe Ruth's single-season record -- a different broadcaster made that call, but Allen had narrated the entire chase that got Maris there.

Not every moment from that stretch reflects well on him. Later in 1961, with Mantle battling a virus, Allen introduced him to a celebrity physician named Max Jacobson, promising Jacobson would "fix him right up." The injection Jacobson gave Mantle caused an abscess that sidelined him for most of what remained of the home run chase and the World Series. Allen meant it as a favor. It cost Mantle a real shot at history.

December 17, 1964

The end came without warning and without an explanation. Allen was summoned to a meeting expecting the standard one-year contract renewal he'd signed every winter since 1939. Instead, co-owner Dan Topping told him the Yankees weren't bringing him back. "It wasn't anything you did, Mel," Topping said, "and it wasn't CBS." That was the entire explanation. There was no press conference, no statement, nothing on the record beyond a firing that made headlines with no reason attached to it.

The theories piled up for decades and none of them ever got confirmed. Declining attendance. A struggling sponsor. A new corporate owner wanting a fresher on-air image. The club being quietly shopped, which made trimming a high-salaried broadcaster look like good bookkeeping (nothing sharpens an accountant's eye like a franchise for sale). Baseball historians have spent sixty years trying to pin down the real reason. Nobody has.

Key Moments

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Mel Allen, the Voice of the Yankees?

Mel Allen (born Melvin Allen Israel, February 14, 1913, in Birmingham, Alabama) was the Yankees' primary play-by-play broadcaster from 1939 to 1964, minus a WWII service gap from 1943 to 1946. Known as "The Voice of the Yankees," he called DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Don Larsen's perfect game, and the early Mantle years, and coined several of the era's most famous player nicknames.

What nicknames did Mel Allen create for Yankees players?

Allen coined "Joltin' Joe" for Joe DiMaggio, "Old Reliable" for Tommy Henrich (after a punctual train route), "The Scooter" for Phil Rizzuto, and "the Naugatuck Nugget" for pitcher Spec Shea. His own catchphrases, "How about that!" and "Going, going, gone!", became part of the sport's vocabulary.

Why was Mel Allen fired by the Yankees in 1964?

The Yankees never gave an official reason. Co-owner Dan Topping told Allen only that "it wasn't anything you did," and no press conference or statement followed. Theories over the decades have pointed to declining attendance, a struggling broadcast sponsor, a new corporate ownership group (CBS) wanting a fresher image, and cost-cutting ahead of a possible sale -- but historians have never confirmed a definitive cause.

Where did Mel Allen's catchphrase 'How about that!' come from?

Allen started shouting "How about that!" in 1949 when Joe DiMaggio, returning from a heel injury, hit four home runs in three games. The phrase caught on immediately and was being printed on buttons by that October.

Was Mel Allen inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Allen and Red Barber were the first two recipients of the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award in 1978, created that year to honor broadcasters. Frick Award honorees are recognized in the Hall's broadcaster wing rather than inducted as full Hall of Fame members with a plaque in the main gallery.

Allen never got a real explanation for December 1964, and neither did anyone else. What he got instead was "This Week in Baseball" starting in 1977, an occasional seat back in the Yankees' booth once Steinbrenner brought him home, and a Ford Frick Award in 1978 that made official what Yankees fans already knew. The Voice never fully went quiet. It just took a while to get all the way back to the Bronx.