SportsChatter |

I’m old but not old enough to have seen Dizzy Dean  pitch. I do remember him and Peewee Reese  doing Saturday baseball back in the 50’s and 60’s. Even as a young boy, I could tell that his use of the English language was something to behold. He was a country boy from the word go and I guess thats what made him so popular as a broadcaster back then.

He was born in Lucas Arkansas to sharecroppers Alma and Albert Dean. he had an older brother by the name of Elmer, but I’m not sure if he played baseball or not. His younger brother Paul  played baseball and joined the Cardinals in 1934  and the Cardinals went on to win the NL pennent that year with Dizzy winning 30 games and Paul 19. They also beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series that year.

He gave up baseball in 1947,  took his act to the Cardinals’ broadcast booth, where the ungrammatical, chatty farm boy was an instant success. For Dean, slide became “slid, slide, slud.” Fielders “threwed” the ball, and runners returned to their “respectable” bases. English teachers cringed, but fans roared. Dean later did network telecasts and turned the CBS-TV Game of the Week into a household favorite.

In 1953, Dean was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He retired from broadcasting in the late 60’s and retired to Bond, Miss. He died on July 17 1974 in Reno, Nevada and was taken back to Bond Miss. to be buried. Ol’ Diz was a baseball legend in every sense of the word.

“As a ballplayer, Dizzy Dean was a natural phenomenon, like the Grand Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef. Nobody ever taught him baseball, and he never had to learn. He was just doing what came naturally when a scout named Don Curtis discovered him on a Texas sandlot and gave him his first contract.”
—  Red Smith

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