Merle Reid Harmon (June 21, 1926 – April 15, 2009) was an American sportscaster who was the

play-by-play In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present In linguis ...

voice for five

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) ...

teams, two teams in the

American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...

and the World Football League's

nationally syndicated Broadcast syndication is the practice of leasing the right to broadcasting television shows and radio programs to multiple television stations and radio stations, without going through a broadcast network. It is common in the United States wher ...

telecaster. Harmon also owned a chain of sporting good clothing stores. On July 1, 1987, at 3:00pm EDT. Merle Harmon was the first voice heard on WFAN Sports Radio 1050 in New York. His recorded call of the New York Jets winning Super Bowl III was played prior to Suzyn Waldman’s first live update.

Early life and career

Born and raised in

Salem, Illinois Salem is a city in and the county seat of Marion County, Illinois, United States. The population was 7,485 at the 2010 census. Geography Salem is located at (38.6282, -88.9482). According to the 2010 census, Salem has a total area of , of w ...

, Harmon served with the United States Navy in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

during World War II. After the conflict ended, he attended Graceland College on the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

, earning an

Associate of Arts An associate degree is an undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level of qualification above a high school diploma, GED, or matriculation, and below a bachelor's degree. The f ...

degree in 1947. He graduated from the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

with a Bachelor of Arts degree in radio & television broadcasting and marketing in 1949. He began his broadcasting career later that same year with the

Topeka Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central ...

Owls, a minor league baseball team in the Kansas–Oklahoma–Missouri League.

Broadcasting career

1950s

For two years beginning in 1953, Harmon broadcast

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...

football and basketball games as the first-ever voice of the KU Radio Network. In 1954, he called baseball for the Kansas City Blues of the American Association, moving to the major league

Kansas City Athletics The history of the Athletics Major League Baseball franchise spans the period from 1901 to the present day, having begun as a charter member franchise in the new American League in Philadelphia before moving to Kansas City in 1955 for 13 seas ...

the following year after that franchise's relocation from

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. He replaced By Saam, who returned to being the

Phillies The Philadelphia Phillies are an American professional baseball team based in Philadelphia. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division. Since 2004, the team's home stadium has been Ci ...

' main voice. Harmon first did Athletics play-by-play on KMBC-AM with Larry Ray (1955–56) and Ed Edwards (1957–58), then later on WDAF radio and

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

with Bill Grigsby (1959–61). He was fired after the 1961 season by

Charlie Finley Charles Oscar Finley (February 22, 1918 – February 19, 1996), nicknamed Charlie O or Charley O, was an American businessman who owned Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics. Finley purchased the franchise while it was located in Kansas Ci ...

, who had purchased the ballclub the previous year, for refusing to participate in a campaign intended to spite the sports editor of the ''

Kansas City Star ''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and ...

''.Smith, Curt. ''Voices of the Game''. 2nd ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

1960s

Harmon's first experience on national television came in 1961 when he was hired by

ABC Sports ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Televisio ...

to anchor various studio shows and call college football games. He, along with

Chris Schenkel Christopher Eugene Schenkel (August 21, 1923 – September 11, 2005) was an American sportscaster. Over the course of five decades he called play-by-play for numerous sports on television and radio, becoming known for his smooth delivery and bar ...

and

Keith Jackson Keith Max Jackson (October 18, 1928 – January 12, 2018) was an American sports commentator, journalist, author, and radio personality, known for his career with ABC Sports (1966–2006). While he covered a variety of sports over his caree ...

, were the play-by-play announcers for the network's baseball '' Game of the Week'' in

1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lyndo ...

. His broadcast partner was

Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color lin ...

. He became the primary broadcaster for the

Milwaukee Braves The Atlanta Braves are an American professional baseball team based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Braves compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East division. The Braves were founded in Bos ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...

, succeeding

Earl Gillespie Earl William Gillespie Jr. (July 25, 1922 – December 12, 2003) was an American sportscaster, best known as the radio voice of Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Braves from 1953 in baseball, 1953 to 1963 in baseball, 1963. Before 1953, he w ...

who resigned to become the

sports director The title of sports director can refer to the director of a live sports broadcast. It can also refer to an individual at a television or radio station who is in charge of the sports department. Director Director may refer to: Literature * ...

at WITI-TV. After two years working alongside Tom Collins (1964) and

Blaine Walsh Blaine Luke Walsh (April 17, 1925 – September 5, 1985) was an American sportscaster, best known as a play-by-play announcer for the Milwaukee Braves baseball team in the National League from 1953 to 1961.WEMP-AM, Harmon was not retained by the Braves, which moved to

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...

and selected Milo Hamilton, a voice more recognized in the new market, instead. Harmon joined Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall for

Minnesota Twins The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis. The Twins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central Division. The team is named after the Twin Cities area ...

broadcasts on WCCO-AM and WTCN-TV from 1967 to 1969. He had replaced Ray Scott, who was designated the lead

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ma ...

announcer on CBS. Harmon also lent his talents to professional football, reteaming with Grigsby to call

Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The t ...

games in

1963 Events January * January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Co ...

, its first season after moving from

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

. He became the voice of the New York Jets for the next nine years, first on WABC-AM (1964–70), then on

WOR-AM WOR (710 AM) is a 50,000-watt class A clear-channel AM radio station owned by iHeartMedia and licensed to New York, New York. The station airs a mix of local and syndicated talk radio shows, primarily from co-owned Premiere Networks, includi ...

(1971–72). His broadcast partners were

Otto Graham Otto Everett Graham Jr. (December 6, 1921 – December 17, 2003) was an American professional football player who was a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). Grah ...

(1964–65), Dick Young (1966–67) and

Sam DeLuca Saverio Frank "Sam" DeLuca (May 2, 1936 – September 13, 2011) was an American Professional Football offensive lineman in the American Football League and later a radio and television football coverage broadcaster. He played six seasons, three ...

(1968–1972). The highlight of Harmon's time with the Jets was the team's run to the Super Bowl Championship in 1968, which included the

Heidi Game The ''Heidi'' Game or ''Heidi'' Bowl is the name given to a 1968 American Football League (AFL) game between the Oakland Raiders and the visiting New York Jets. The contest, held on November 17, 1968, was notable for its exciting finish, in wh ...

and victories over the

Oakland Raiders The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Ra ...

and

Baltimore Colts The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from its founding in 1953 to 1984. The team now plays in Indianapolis, as the Indianapolis Colts. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breed ...

in the

American Football League Championship Game For its first nine seasons, 1960 through 1968, the American Football League determined its champion via a single playoff game between the winners of its two divisions (although ties in the standings in 1963 (Eastern) and 1968 (Western) necessitat ...

and

Super Bowl III Super Bowl III was an American football game played on January 12, 1969 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. It was the third AFL–NFL Championship Game in professional American football, and the first to officially bear the trademark name " ...

respectively.

1970s

In 1970, Harmon became lead announcer for the

Milwaukee Brewers The Milwaukee Brewers are an American professional baseball team based in Milwaukee. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. The Brewers are named for the city's association wi ...

and continued in that role through the remainder of the decade, teaming with Tom Collins and later

Bob Uecker Robert George Uecker ( ; born January 26, 1934) is an American former Major League Baseball (MLB) player and current sportscaster, comedian, and actor. Facetiously dubbed "Mr. Baseball" by TV talk show host Johnny Carson, Uecker has served as ...

. He also went into business during this period with Merle Harmon's Fan Fair, a chain of retail stores devoted to licensed sports merchandise. It grew to 140 stores nationwide before he sold the business in 1996. Also, Harmon was the play-by-play voice for the World Football League's Thursday night Game of the Week telecasts on

TVS TVS may refer to: Mathematics * Topological vector space Television * Television Sydney, TV channel in Sydney, Australia * Television South, ITV franchise holder in the South of England between 1982 and 1992 * TVS Television Network, US dis ...

in 1974, the circuit's only complete season. He was joined in the broadcast booth by regular game analyst

Alex Hawkins Clifton Alexander Hawkins (July 2, 1937 – September 12, 2017) was an American football player who played professionally as a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for the Baltimore Colts and Atlanta Falcons. He excelled as a speci ...

and various guest commentators, who included

George Plimpton George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 – September 25, 2003) was an American writer. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found ''The Paris Review'', as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was also known for " ...

Burt Reynolds Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. (February 11, 1936 – September 6, 2018) was an American actor, considered a sex symbol and icon of 1970s American popular culture. Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in television series such as '' ...

and

McLean Stevenson Edgar "Mac" McLean Stevenson Jr. (November 14, 1927 – February 15, 1996) was an American actor and comedian. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake in the television series ''M*A*S*H'', which earned him a Golden Glob ...

1980s and beyond

From 1980–1982, Harmon worked for

NBC Sports NBC Sports is an American programming division of the broadcast network NBC, owned and operated by NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal and subsidiary of Comcast. The division is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and it ...

, calling regional

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the maj ...

, MLB, and

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

action and contributing to the weekly '' Sportsworld'' anthology series. He was also slated to work on the network's coverage of the

1980 Summer Olympics The 1980 Summer Olympics (russian: Летние Олимпийские игры 1980, Letniye Olimpiyskiye igry 1980), officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad (russian: Игры XXII Олимпиады, Igry XXII Olimpiady) and commo ...

in Moscow, before the U.S. boycott of those Games. In 1988, Harmon returned to call several September NFL telecasts for NBC while the network's regular announcers were working that year's

Summer Olympics The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The ina ...

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...

. Prior to his retirement from broadcasting, Harmon worked on Texas Rangers telecasts, first on

KXAS-TV KXAS-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, United States, broadcasting NBC programming to the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alon ...

(1982–1984), then on Home Sports Entertainment (HSE) (1984–1989). During his eight seasons with the Rangers, he worked alongside

Steve Busby Steven Lee "Buzz" Busby (born September 29, 1949) is a former starting pitcher in Major League Baseball who played his entire career for the Kansas City Royals. He batted and threw right-handed. High school Busby attended Fullerton Union High Sc ...

(1982–85), Mark Holtz (1984),

Norm Hitzges Norm Hitzges (born July 5, 1944) is an American author and sports talk radio host. He is a member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. Career Hitzges hosts at KTCK (1310 AM / 96.7 FM, "SportsRadio 1310 The Ticket") in Dallas. Hitzges pioneered ra ...

(1986–89), Bob Carpenter (1986–88) and Greg Lucas (1989). Harmon called

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

college-football telecasts for the regional broadcaster Raycom Sports in the early 1980s, frequently paired with former Oklahoma head football coach

Bud Wilkinson Charles Burnham "Bud" Wilkinson (April 23, 1916 – February 9, 1994) was an American football player, coach, broadcaster, and politician. He served as the head football coach at the University of Oklahoma from 1947 to 1963, compiling a record of ...

. He called the 1985 and 1986 Liberty Bowl broadcasts for Raycom as well. Harmon made a cinematic appearance, playing one of the two NCAA Finals announcers in the 2006 feature film ''

Glory Road ''Glory Road'' is a science fantasy novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (July – September 1963) and published in hardcover the same year. It was nominated for ...

''.Full cast and crew for ''Glory Road'' (2006) – The Internet Movie Database.
/ref> Prior to his death, he was an active member of the National Speakers Association, and self-published his book, ''Stories'', a collection of humorous adventures from his broadcasting career. He was a successful keynote speaker at numerous conferences and association meetings. Harmon died of pneumonia at a hospital in

Arlington, Texas Arlington is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located in Tarrant County. It forms part of the Mid-Cities region of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan statistical area, and is a principal city of the metropolis and region. ...

on April 15, 2009.

References

External links

Kates, Maxwell. "The Baseball Biography Project: Merle Harmon," Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
*Merle Harmon was the announcer for the Topeka Owls. http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/224611 {{DEFAULTSORT:Harmon, Merle 1926 births 2009 deaths American Football League announcers American radio sports announcers American television sports announcers College basketball announcers in the United States College football announcers Graceland University alumni Kansas City Athletics announcers Kansas City Chiefs announcers Kansas Jayhawks football announcers Major League Baseball broadcasters Milwaukee Braves announcers Milwaukee Brewers announcers Minnesota Twins announcers Minor League Baseball broadcasters National Basketball Association broadcasters National Football League announcers New York Jets announcers People from Marion County, Illinois Texas Rangers (baseball) announcers University of Denver alumni World Football League announcers United States Navy personnel of World War II