Daily Dose of Crimson Tide: Mel Allen

If you never got to hear Mel Allen call a game, you unfortunately missed out.

Long before he became a radio legend, Mel Allen (who was born Melvin Allen Israel in Birmingham), was a student at Alabama, where he also earned a law degree and served as the public address announcer at football games.

After graduating, he took a week’s vacation in New York City, auditioned for the CBS Network and was hired for $45 a week.

During his first year at CBS, he announced the crash of the Hindenburg, and ad-libbed for a half-hour during auto racing’s rain-delayed Vanderbilt Cup from an airplane.

In 1939, he broadcast baseball games for both the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Giants, and eventually became known as the “Voice of the Yankees.”

Allen officially changed his name after entering the Army in 1943, and after returning to the civilian broadcast booth called 22 World Series games on radio and television, and 24 All-Star Games.

Among them, he called one of the most famous games in baseball history, Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, when Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run off Ralph Terry to win the fall classic for the Pittsburgh Pirates. It's the only walk-off home run in a Game 7 of the World Series.

In 1998, the Yankees dedicated a plaque in his memory for Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. It calls him “A Yankee institution, a national treasure,” and includes his signature line, “How about that?”

Another of his many many catchphrases was "Hello there, everybody!" to open a broadcast.

In his later years, he was the first host of the popular show, "This Week in Baseball."

Allen was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.

In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association had him second on its list of greatest sportscaster of all time, second only to Vin Scully.

Some of this post originated from "100 Things Crimson tide Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die," published by Triumph Books