Respected for his integrity and admired for his folksy, literary style, Red Barber ranks as one of the greatest sportscasters in broadcasting history.

"The 01' Redhead" was born in Columbus, Mississippi, and grew up in Sanford, Florida. Barber inherited the storytelling ability of his father, a railroad engineer. From his mother, an English teacher, he absorbed a love of language. While studying English at the University of Florida in 1930, Barber joined the staff of WRUF, the campus radio station. Among his duties were play-by-play broadcasts of the University of Florida football games.

     In 1934, at WSAI in Cincinnati, Ohio, Barber began a 33- season career of broadcasting major-league baseball. Thanks to the innovations of Cincinnati Reds general manager Larry MacPhail, Barber was at the microphone for the first night game in the big leagues, and he broadcast from an airplane when the Reds became the first team to travel by air.

     Following MacPhail to Brooklyn in 1939, Barber enjoyed more "firsts," including the first televised major-league game on 23 August 1939. That NBC game between the Dodgers and Reds also featured Barber doing the first TV commercials. Later that year, Barber did play-by-play announcements of the first football games ever televised.

     Barber called the first integrated game in 1947 when the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the major leagues. Like many Southerners of his generation, Bar­ ber opposed integration and considered leaving the Dodgers. He knew listeners would focus on how he handled the situation and said he had "the hottest microphone in broadcasting" at the time. Robinson's enormous courage in the face of threats on his life made Barber a convert to civil rights. Robinson and the black players who followed him into the majors praised Barber for treating them like other ballplayers and never referring to their color. They said that was exactly what they wanted. Robinson led the Dodgers to the 1947 World Series, the first to be televised, and Red Barber called the games.

     New York listeners and viewers were charmed by Barber's folksy expressions. From his "catbird seat," Barber described an outfielder "movin' as easy as a bank of fog," a pitcher who was "no slouch with the willow," and an infielder trying to handle a ball "slicker than oiled okra." A close game was "tighter than a new pair of shoes on a rainy day," but a one­-sided game was "tied up in a croker sack." A bad game was "full of fleas." A pitcher might be "as wild as a hungry chicken hawk on a frosty morning," but another might be so good "he could toss a lamb chop past a hungry wolf." A fight was a "rhubarb," and a game with a lot of hits was an example of "tearin' up the pea patch."

     Barber was no rube, however, and he never played the clown. His expressions came as naturally to him as his use of words such as concomitant and penultimate. He surely was alone among play-by-play announcers in quoting Byron and Coleridge to describe action on a baseball diamond.

     Calling the games as a detached journalist, Barber refused to root for the teams that paid his salary. In the days when road games were sometimes described by announcers reading telegraph reports, Barber refused to pretend he was actually watching a game. He also rejected the superstition of ignoring a no-hitter in progress. He believed the pitcher's no-hit performance was the obvious lead story of the game.

     Hired by Edward R. Murrow in 1946, Barber served as Director of Sports at CBS for nine years. Among Barber's innovations was the football "round-up," in which the network would broadcast bits of several games on the same Saturday afternoon, switching to a more interesting match when a game became dull or one-sided. Out of one of these round-ups emerged Barber's protege, Vin Scully, who joined Barber and Connie Desmond on the Dodger broadcasts in 1950.

     Barber could also be heard on The Old Gold Hour with bandleader Sammy Kaye and later with Woody Herman. His work for CBS included many celebrity interviews with people not connected to sports, including Fred Astaire, Francis Cardinal Spellman, and former president Herbert Hoover.

     Leaving the Dodgers after the 1953 season, Barber joined his old rival Mel Allen in the broadcast booth at Yankee Stadium. Barber and Allen, the two great stars of their era, remain linked in the memories of many baseball fans. When the Baseball Hall of Fame began honoring broadcasters with the Ford C. Frick Award in 1968, it could not decide between Barber and Allen, so it gave the award to both.

     Barber's independent streak was costly. Named to broadcast the 1953 World Series, he insisted on negotiating his fee. He was removed from the broadcast and was never asked to call another World Series. When CBS took control of the Yankees, it gave Barber three former ball players as broadcast partners. Barber believed broadcasting was a professional career, not a lark for ex-athletes who could no longer play the game. The 1966 Yankees were a bad team that drew just 413 fans to a game in September. Barber's reference to the sparse attendance did not endear him to management. He was fired after the 1966 season.

     Barber retired from daily broadcasting and returned to Florida, where he wrote five books. From 1981 until his death in 1992, Barber was a commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Speaking from his home in Tallahassee, Barber, with his four-minute chat each Friday, was the most popular feature on NPR. Listeners loved hearing his stories about sports and the early days of broadcasting, but they especially enjoyed hearing him talk about his garden, the adventures of his pet cat, and the opera he had enjoyed that week on public television. He spoke with pride of his on-air support of blood drives during World War II, his USO tours, and his decades as a lay reader in the Episcopal Church.