Clem McCarthy

Hollywood Stars : Clem McCarthy

Clem McCarthy, Clem McCarthy (9 September 1882 - 4 June 1962) was an American sportscaster and public address announcer. He also lent his voice to Pathe Newss RKO newsreels. He was known for his gravelly voice and dramatic style, a whiskey tenor as sports announcer and executive David J. Halberstam has called it.As Halberstams book Sports on New York Radio notes, McCarthy is considered one of horse racings great callers, setting the stage for well-known voices from Cawood Ledford to Dave Johnson. He was the first public-address announcer at a major American racetrack, Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Illinois.In addition to being a race caller for racetracks and NBC Radio, he was a top boxing announcer, too. His most often replayed boxing sportscast is probably his NBC radio call of the 1938 Joe Louis-Max Schmeling rematch at Yankee Stadium:Louis, right and left to the head, a left to the jaw, a right to the head, and [referee Art] Donovan is watching carefully. Louis measures him. Right to the body, a left up to the jaw, and Schmeling is down! The count is five! Five, six, seven, eight -- the men are in the ring! The fight is over, on a technical knock out. Max Schmeling is beaten in one round!Later that same year he called the famous Seabiscuit / War Admiral match race, including this phrase in the final stretch run, as Seabiscuit shocked the horse racing world by outrunning the heavily-favored War Admiral:Seabiscuit by three! Seabiscuit by three!McCarthy is also known for having mis-called the 1947 Preakness Stakes when a crowd standing on a platform blocked his view of the far turn, just as two horses with similar silks switched places. (Chic Anderson, one of McCarthys most famous descendants as a track announcer, made a similar mistake in the 1975 Kentucky Derby.) As with Anderson later, McCarthys quick and humble admission of the mistake helped the criticism eventually blow over.The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association inducted McCarthy into its Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1987, McCarthy was inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame along with veteran ABC Sports announcer Jim McKay.Comedian Doodles Weaver mimicked McCarthy in his 1948 novelty recording (with Spike Jones) of the William Tell Overture.[edit] External linksSportscasters Hall of FameClem McCarthy calls the Joe Louis / Max Schmeling rematch, 1938PersondataNameMaccarthy, ClemAlternative namesShort descriptionDate of birth9 September 1882Place of birthRochester, New YorkDate of death4 June 1962Place of deathNew York City, New YorkThis biographical article related to an American boxer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v В· d В· eThis American horse racing biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v В· d В· eRetrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clem_McCarthyCategories: American sports announcers | 1882 births | 1962 deaths | American people of Irish descent | American horse racing announcers | People from Rochester, New York | Boxing commentators | American boxing biography stubs | American horse racing biography stubsHidden categories: Articles with hCardsPersonal toolsLog in / create accountNamespacesArticleDiscussionVariantsViewsReadEditView historyActionsSearchNavigationMain pageContentsFeatured contentCurrent eventsRandom articleDonate to WikipediaInteractionHelpAbout WikipediaCommunity portalRecent changesContact WikipediaToolboxWhat links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkCite this pagePrint/exportCreate a bookDownload as PDFPrintable version This page was last modified on 2 February 2011 at 21:30.Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;additional terms may apply.See Terms of Use for details.Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.Contact usPrivacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimers if ( window.isMSIE55 ) fixalpha(); if (window.runOnloadHook) runOnloadHook();