Jerry Coleman - Broadcasting Career

Broadcasting Career

In 1960, Coleman began a broadcasting career with CBS television, conducting pregame interviews on the network's Game of the Week broadcasts. His broadcasting career nearly ended that year; he was in the midst of an interview with Cookie Lavagetto when the national anthem began playing. Coleman kept the interview going through the anthem, prompting an avalanche of angry letters to CBS.

In 1963 he began a seven-year run calling New York Yankees' games on WCBS radio and WPIX television. Coleman's WPIX call of ex-teammate Mickey Mantle's 500th career home run in 1967 was brief and from the heart:

Here's the payoff pitch... This is IT! There it goes! It's out of here!

After broadcasting for the California Angels for two years, in 1972 Coleman became lead radio announcer for the San Diego Padres, a position he has held every year since but 1980, when the Padres hired him to manage (predating a trend of broadcasters-turned-managers that started in the late 1990s). He also called national regular-season and postseason broadcasts for CBS Radio from the mid-1970s to the 1990s.

Coleman is also famous for his pet phrases "Oh Doctor!", "You can hang a star on that baby!", "And the beat goes on", and "The natives are getting restless".

During an interview in the height of the steroids scandal in 2005, Coleman stated "if I'm emperor, the first time 50 games, the second time 100 games and the third strike you're out", referring to how baseball should suspend players for being caught taking steroids. After the 2005 World Series, Major League Baseball put a similar policy in effect.

He is known as the "Master of the Malaprop" for making sometimes embarrassing mistakes on the microphone, but he is nonetheless popular. In 2005, he was given the Ford C. Frick Award of the National Baseball Hall of Fame for broadcasting excellence, and is one of five Frick award winners that also played in the Major Leagues (along with Joe Garagiola, Tony Kubek, Tim McCarver, and Bob Uecker).

In the fall of 2007 Jerry was inducted to the National Radio Hall of Fame as a Sports Broadcaster for his years as the play by play voice of the San Diego Padres.

Coleman no longer handles play-by-play duties, leaving Ted Leitner and Andy Masur to cover most of the radio broadcasting efforts for each Padres game. He does, however, still work middle innings as a color analyst. As of the 2010 season he reduced his broadcast schedule down to 20-30 home day games. As of November 2010, Coleman is the second oldest active play-by-play announcer, behind only fellow Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner.

Coleman collaborated on his autobiography with longtime New York Times writer Richard Goldstein; their book American Journey: My Life on the Field, in the Air, and on the Air was published in 2008. On September 15, 2012, the San Diego Padres unveiled a Jerry Coleman statue at Petco Park.