Zounds of music. (Here Below).

ONE OF THESE CENTURIES something wonderful is going to happen in sports broadcasting. Some "suit" with a smidgeon of taste is going to take over a network and begin doing something about all the awful thundering that accompanies sports shows.

Why do we have to be blasted out of our socks every time a sports show comes on the air? Why do we need a cacophony of 76 trumpets, 76 fifes, and, naturally, 76 trombones?

Why is there no bill of rights for the protection of eardrums from all that Boom! Boom! Boom! From John Madden, we'll accept an occasional Boom! From the rest of the networks, never.

Can anything be done to sound-proof that Sousa psyche in sports shows? Absolutely. It wasn't that way in the day of radio. We were around when radio introduced the first golden voice of sport. Graham McNamee. He never worked with trumpets and trombones, but he enunciated perfectly.

True, he didn't have many clues about sport, but he made up for it by yelling enthusiastically on bases on balls and drop-kicks.

Remember, his listeners couldn't see anything. They had to depend upon the announcer to tell them what was happening. Graham may have been a little weak on the fundamentals, but he did a great cracker.

Good things began happening when TV came along. You could now see with your own eyes what the announcers were trying to tell you.

In time, the bright, informed young pros began showing up and suddenly we had Ted Husing, Bill Stern, Red Barber, Curt Gowdy, Jack Buck, and then the fabulous teams: John Madden and Pat Summerall (pro football), Keith Jackson and Bob Griese (college football), great major league baseball teams such as Red Barber and Connie Desmond, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, and Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver, terrific play-by-play announcers like Mary Albert and Vince Scully; genuinely funny guys like Joe Garagiola, whose long years in baseball prepared him for his triumphful career with the Westminster Dog Show (he always knew a dog when he saw one).

And wilderness became paradise enow. Without the 76 trombones.

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The first great radio sportscaster, getting up in the middle of Franklin Field, Philadelphia to do a Penn Relays about 60 years ago. He was dashing arrogant funny very knowledgeable, and had a great voice, better than anyone who came before him, and maybe after him!