Red Barber’s First Broadcast Was a Paper on Cow Obstetrics

In January 1930 a University of Florida student named Walter Barber was asked to fill in on the campus station, WRUF, for a professor who had not shown up. The paper he read on the air was titled “Certain Aspects of Bovine Obstetrics.” He was hooked on radio anyway.

Sanford and Gainesville

Barber was born in Columbus, Mississippi, on February 17, 1908, and moved with his family to Sanford in 1918. Everyone called him Red.

The Catbird Seat

He called games for Cincinnati, then Brooklyn. On August 26, 1939, he broadcast the first major league game ever televised, the Reds against the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He called Jackie Robinson’s first game in 1947, then moved to the Yankees. His phrases stuck: a player in control was sitting in the catbird seat, and an argument was a rhubarb.

Late Career

In 1978 he and Mel Allen became the first two winners of the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame. From 1981 until his death he talked with Bob Edwards every Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition. He died in Tallahassee on October 22, 1992.