Sunday, July 28, 2013

Washington Baseball (Nationals and Senators), Arch McDonald, and Robert Ruark

Before today's game between the Washington Nationals and New York Mets (a veritable rout, it turned out), we were walking the concourse of Nationals Park and were walking by the Washington baseball history exhibit area (roughly behind home plate--interestingly, the internet wandering I have done has turned up no discussion of this exhibit area!). I have looked at this before, although maybe not with any intensity. Anyway, today I was struck by one photograph in particular.

While I am not sure what the caption of the photograph at the exhibit was, the caption on the picture to the left is roughly the same: "Bringing the Game to the Fans: Washington Senators radio broadcaster Arch McDonald is shown calling a Senators game during the late 1930s."

This got me wondering, in particular about the chimes that McDonald seems to be about to strike, which in turn led to this internet wandering exercise. [Note: unlike other exercises in this blog, I am not going in order of my exploration, because, for example, I could not even find this photo on first or second try.]

Thanks to the Detroit Tigers broadcaster Mario Impemba for posting this photo fairly recently on his Twitter feed. I don't know Impemba, but was happy (especially after my other explorations) to know that someone still recalls McDonald.