Baseball Hall of Fame’s broadcast wing gets pioneer in Jack Graney

Jack Graney, the newest electee to the Baseball Hall of Fame was, like several recent honorees from the two veterans committees, a pioneer.

Graney, long-time broadcaster for the Cleveland Indians, was named earlier this week as the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award. That means he will inducted into the broadcasters wing of the Hall of Fame in ceremonies this summer.

Hall voters earlier this week elected six new members, among them pioneers Buck O’Neil and Bud Fowler. Fowler was the first African-American to play professional baseball, while O’Neill was the first African-American Major League coach.

Graney was a pioneer in his own right. An outfielder with the Cleveland Naps and Indians between 1908 and 1920, Graney worked in the Indians’ radio booth from 1932 until 1953. Debuting less than a decade after baseball games were first broadcast, he became the first former player to take to the microphone.

It was a calling later followed by hundreds of the game’s greats: Dizzy Dean, Pee Wee Reese, fellow 2022 Hall inductee Jim Kaat, Tim McCarver, Jim Palmer, John Smoltz – it’s a long list. Graney was the first.

Graney’s playing career began with two games in 1908. However, he broke a finger and did not play again until 1910, when he established himself as a regular in the Cleveland outfield. A lifetime .250 hitter, he played on one pennant winner. Graney had a reserve role on the 1920 Cleveland team that defeated Brooklyn in that fall’s World Series. He was hitless in three postseason at-bats.

He retired in 1922 and initially tried to capitalize on his local fame by opening an automobile  dealership. He also worked in investments before Cleveland station WHK solicited him to be the voice of their radio broadcasts.

Graney broadcast one World Series, that coming in 1948 when the Indians defeated the Boston Braves in six games.

In a biography of Graney written for the Society For American Baseball Research (SABR) by Adam Ulrey, Graney’s broadcasting style was described thus: “He was a careful reporter and observer … His voice dripped with sincerity and crackled with vitality. He wasn’t bored with baseball, you could tell he loved his job. He made baseball sound like sport.”

Graney left the Cleveland booth in 1953, but aired minor league hockey in the city. A native Canadian, he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984, six years after his death.