Courtesy St. Louis Post Dispatch

(June 16, 2009) The remarkable run of success in St. Louis baseball radio booths started with a guy named France in the late 1920s then rolled through a Dizzy period in the '40s. The tradition was able to Caray on through the '50s and into '60s. The Bucks stopped there, too. Throw in long runs by Mike Shannon and Buddy Blattner and a shorter spree by Joe Garagiola and the roster is resplendent.

And that list doesn't even include Bob Costas, who never had a major role with a St. Louis baseball team but developed into one of baseball's iconic voices after formulating his career in the city.

When the All-Star Game comes to town next month the descriptions on Fox's telecast will come from men with deep St. Louis roots in different areas -- Joe Buck in broadcasting, Tim McCarver on the field. They are another reason many people think baseball's Mid-Summer Classic is a perfect fit here.

And one man is credited as being the cornerstone of this epic local baseball broadcast marathon -- Robert Hyland, who ran longtime Cardinals flagship station KMOX for decades. Although the bedrock was in place before he took control in 1955, he was in charge as the outlet blossomed into what was widely recognized as the top local station in the country. And that foundation was built on Cards broadcasts and the men who called the games, in a period when KMOX's self-proclaimed "Sports Voice of America" moniker was reality, not a memory. Hyland had an iron-fist grasp on the station until his death in 1992 and had an uncanny instinct to find and hone talent in and out of baseball.

"Bob Hyland is sportscasting in St. Louis," Jack Buck, who spent nearly 50 years in the Cards' booth, once said. "He's the man who gets things done."

How deep was the talent pool in which Hyland paddled? In his first big move, he fired Milo Hamilton after one year with the Cards in favor of Garagiola -- and both went on to Hall of Fame baseball broadcasting careers.

"He took a chance on me, a big chance," Garagiola said. "... But Bob stuck by me.'" FRANCE LAUX He set the trend for prominence in St. Louis baseball broadcasting. He arrived from Tulsa in 1929 and spent 18 seasons calling Cardinals and Browns games on KMOX. CBS bought the station shortly after Laux came aboard and tabbed him to broadcast the World Series from 1933-1938, beginning the trend of broadcasters with St. Louis roots emerging on the national stage. He also broadcast eight All-Star Games.

"When he was young, he was pretty aloof but he warmed up as he came to know St. Louis," now-deceased longtime Post-Dispatch sports editor Bob Broeg told Curt Smith for his 1987 "Voices of the Game" book. "It took him time to adjust. Eventually he did that, but he still always spoke in a flat, metallic southern type of accent. ... France had his strengths -- players and managers like him and he was impartial to the bone."

Jack Buck, who died in 2002, said in the book, "When I was coming through the door at KMOX he was going out. ... France became one of the early big names in network broadcasting."

Laux died in 1978.

ROBERT "BUDDY" BLATTNER After retiring as a player in 1949 following a five-season big league career that included 19 games with the Cardinals, he worked with Dizzy Dean on Browns radio to begin a 26-year run of broadcasting baseball. He had a brief stint on Cardinals TV then went to California when the Angels were founded before wrapped it up with the Kansas City Royals.

For most of the 1950s he was big nationally, broadcasting baseball on Mutual Radio and ABC and CBS television. And the Beaumont High graduate made a name for himself years earlier when he was the world table tennis champion.

He also had a huge presence locally as the lead announcer for the NBA's St. Louis Hawks broadcasts in the '50s when they were rolling at Kiel Auditorium.

"Our announcer, Buddy Blattner, was terrific," former Hawks standout Cliff Hagan once said. "He gave us all nicknames (Hagan's was 'Lil' Abner') and personalized us to people."

Blattner is 89, and after a long tenure as an executive at the Lodge of the Four Seasons resort at Lake of the Ozarks now lives in St. Louis County.

JOE GARAGIOLA Nobody with heavy ties to the Cardinals' booth made it bigger in such a diverse manner at the network level than Garagiola. After retiring in 1954 following nine big-league seasons, many with the Cards, he joined the Redbirds radio crew for the next eight years, beginning as a "color" man.

"There weren't any 'analysts' or 'commentators,' back then," Garagiola once recalled, chuckling. "We were simply 'color' guys. Things were simpler. You didn't have to have those buzz words, those fancy names for a regular job."

After establishing himself locally, he made it huge nationally, spending nearly three decades with NBC. He was on NBC's No. 1 baseball broadcasting team, was in the booth for nine World Series and made the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster in 1991.

But the guy who grew up on the Hill in St. Louis did much, much more on the air. He had two stints as host of NBC's "Today" show and also hosted several game shows, including "Sale of the Century" and "To Tell the Truth."

He is 83 and lives in suburban Phoenix.

MIKE SHANNON He's in his 38th season in the booth, now paired with relative newcomer John Rooney, and is popular because of his down-to-earth manner and knowledge of the game. Shannon's playing career with the Cardinals ended abruptly in 1970 because of a kidney ailment, and after a year in the front office he moved into the broadcast booth. He had a rough start, a la Dizzy Dean, but he and Jack Buck eventually clicked and now he's a St. Louis institution with his "Shannonisms" and trademark "Get up baby! Get Up, Get Up, Get Up!" call as he tries to talk a ball hit by a Cardinal to rise over the wall for a homer.

Shannon "has that player's attitude, which I still don't have, where he can shake off a bad play or a loss by the next day," Buck said in a Post-Dispatch interview in 1996. "And I could be in the game 50 years and still not know some of what he does because I didn't play the game in the big leagues."

Shannon is closing in on his 70th birthday next month and is in the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. One of the lesser know tidbits about Shannon is that he was an excellent quarterback at CBC High and was recruited by Mizzou, but left for a baseball contract after his freshman season.

Former MU coach Frank Broyles once said that if Shannon "had stayed in school, he might have won the Heisman."

JOE BUCK The leader of the "new guard" is 40 now, and at the age when many broadcasters are just entering their prime he already has a massive list of accomplishments. He spent his early career years broadcasting the Cardinals but quickly gained national prominence, at an unprecedented pace, becoming the youngest person to have a full schedule of NFL games when Fox gave him that job in 1994 at age 25.

Two years later, Fox won the rights to Major League Baseball, and Buck became the network's lead play-by-play man.

He's set to broadcast his 12th World Series this fall, which would tie him with Curt Gowdy for most ever on TV by a play-by-play broadcaster. And it will be his 10th in a row, equalling Gowdy's record for consecutive years in the Series TV play-by-play slot.

"There are going to be generations of kids whose postseason baseball memories, and NFL football memories, will be tied to Joe Buck broadcasting the games," Fox Sports President Ed Goren has said. "That's a pretty special thing."

Former USA Today sports media critic Rudy Martzke once wrote that Buck "continues to be the best ever at television baseball play-by-play." And Bob Costas has said, "I don't think there's anybody as good as him in his generation."

He's branching out, with a new quarterly sports show -- "Joe Buck Live" set for its debut Monday on HBO. It will mix comedy with serious interviews and replace Bob Costas' offering on that network.

DIZZY DEAN He stepped into the booth after a Hall of Fame career as a pitcher and soon created controversy because of his mangling of the English language. Dean, son of Arkansas sharecroppers, had only a second-grade education. He called Cardinals games from 1941-46 and the Browns from 1941-48, often working with Johnny O'Hara, and broadcast nationally with Mutual, ABC and CBS.

"Saucy and ad-libbing, with a general spattering of gall, he charmed Mound City listeners," Curt Smith wrote in "Voices of the Game." "Runners 'slud' and pitchers 'throwed' the ball." Controversy followed. School teachers called for him to be pulled from the booth, but many listeners loved his home-spun style and in 1944 The Sporting News named him its announcer of the year. Still, commissioner Kenesaw Landis ordered him off the World Series network broadcast that year because his "diction was unfit for a national broadcaster." Dean had this reply: "How can the commissioner say I ain't eligible to broadcast? I ain't never met anybody that didn't know what 'ain't' means." He died in 1974.

HARRY CARAY He barreled onto the scene in 1945 and became one of the most popular broadcasters in St. Louis history with his bombastic, tell-it-like-it-is approach. He'd root hard for the home team and his frustrations when the Cards struggled came loudly across on the air -- "Can't anybody do anything right?" or "Boyer p-aaaaaaaaaaaa-ped it up" were common phrases. His bluntness, with his common-man approach in which he peddled the products of team owner Anheuser-Busch with aplomb, endeared him to listeners. So did his trademark home run call, "It might be! It could be! It is! A home run! Hol-ly Cow!" But he was fired after the 1969 season, amid rumors of an affair with the wife of one of his bosses. He addressed that in his autobiography published in 1989.

"... Just when I thought they were going to give me a gold watch for 25 years' work, they gave me a pink slip. ... I was allegedly having an affair with this executive's wife or that executive's wife. At first these (rumors) annoyed me. Then they actually made me feel good. Let's face it. I was almost 50 years old, wore glasses as thick as the bottoms of Bud bottles and never was confused with Robert Redford."

After a couple of short stints elsewhere, he ended up with the Chicago Cubs in 1982 and gained his biggest national fame via the team's national telecasts on cable superstation WGN. He made the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster in 1989 and died in 1998.

JACK BUCK He joined Harry Caray in the Cardinals booth in 1954, but it wasn't an immediate match when Joe Garagiola joined the team the next year and there was a bit of a power struggle. Buck was fired after the 1959 season, and Caray worked with Buddy Blattner and Garagiola. But those two were gone a year later and Buck was back, and he was Caray's sidekick for eight memorable seasons in the '60s to form one of the strongest teams ever to broadcast an individual team -- Caray with his over-the-top style and Buck with his analytical approach and dry humor.

"When Harry and I were doing the games together, we were as good a team as there ever was," Buck wrote in his 1997 autobiography. "His style and mine were so different that it made for a balanced broadcast. The way we approached the job, with the interest and love both of us had for the game, made our work kind of special."

Bob Costas who grew up in New York, listened to those broadcasts when sitting in his dad's car while "turning that dial like a safecracker" to pick up the signal on KMOX.

"I don't know if you've ever had two better talents in the same booth at the same time," Costas has said.

Buck finally got the top billing after Caray was dismissed in 1969 and became one of the city's most beloved citizens, with his "That's a winner" call after a Cards victory. He was big nationally, too, broadcasting many World Series and Super Bowl games and serving as the radio voice of "Monday Night Football" for many seasons. He won the Frick award in 1987 and died in 2002.

BOB COSTAS Although he never had a significant role broadcasting baseball in St. Louis, he got his career started in the '70s by calling games of the now long-defunct Spirts of St. Louis team in the American Basketball Association, worked at KMOX (1120 AM) while Jack Buck was the sports director, and made major contributions at the station.

Costas developed into one of the leading network voices of baseball at NBC, where he called the "Game of the Week" and World Series as well as many other sports. He is the network's longtime prime-time Olympics host and is the anchor of its NFL pregame show. How good is he?

"I am convinced ... that he is the best piece of talent ever to be involved in television sports in the history of television," Jack Buck said after Costas completed his first Olympics lead assignment in 1992.

Costas' national resume is ever-expanding from NBC to HBO to his latest endeavor, working for the new Baseball Network, which he saw as a logical transition for his primary work outside of NBC. "It's the sport I feel I know best and people most associate me with," Costas said.