Milo Hamilton | |
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 Milo Hamilton preparing to interview Mike Krukow at Wrigley Field | |
| Born | Leland Milo Hamilton (1927-09-02)September 2, 1927 Fairfield, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | September 17, 2015(2015-09-17) (aged 88) Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Occupation | Sportscaster |
| Years active | 1953–2012 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
Leland Milo Hamilton (September 2, 1927 – September 17, 2015) was an Americansportscaster, best known for callingplay-by-play for seven differentMajor League Baseball teams from 1953 to 2012.[1] He received theFord C. Frick Award from theBaseball Hall of Fame in 1992.[2][3][4]
Hamilton was born inFairfield, Iowa, a small city in the southeastern part of the state. He served in theUnited States Navy during World War II. During his time in the Navy, he broadcast onArmed Forces Radio.[3] He graduated from theUniversity of Iowa in 1949. After beginning his sportscasting career by calling collegefootball andbasketball for theIowa Hawkeyes, as well asminor league baseball for theDavenport Tigers and pro basketball for theTri-Cities Blackhawks (now theAtlanta Hawks) of theNBA, he got his first MLB announcing job in 1953, with theSt. Louis Browns of theAmerican League.[5]
When the Browns moved toBaltimore as theOrioles, Hamilton did not go with them. Instead, he joined theSt. Louis Cardinals, where he worked alongsideHarry Caray andJack Buck during the 1954 season. However, he was let go after only one year when the Cardinals wanted a spot in the booth forJoe Garagiola.[5]Hamilton next moved to theChicago Cubs, working alongsideJack Brickhouse andVince Lloyd. After three years, he was let go when Cubs ownerP. K. Wrigley wanted to make room forLou Boudreau as a broadcaster.[5]
After four years away from baseball, Hamilton was hired by theChicago White Sox in 1961,[5] serving as the assistant to the longtime White Sox announcerBob Elson.
When theMilwaukee Braves relocated toAtlanta for the 1966 season, Hamilton got the call to become the team's play-by-play announcer. Hamilton's voice was already somewhat known in Atlanta; local stationWGST had been part of the White Sox radio network in the early 1960s. Hamilton was paired withErnie Johnson, Sr., a retired Braves player.
Hamilton soon became so popular in Atlanta that executives with Braves flagship stationWSB-TV credited the Braves' high ratings on television (in 1972, with a prime-time ratio of 27) in part to Hamilton.[5] During much of this period, he was also the commercial spokesperson for Atlanta-basedDelta Air Lines, appearing on camera for Delta commercials introducing theLockheed L-1011 and theBoeing 747 to Delta's fleet.
While in Atlanta, Hamilton narratedHank Aaron's record-breaking 715th career home run in the Braves' home opener for 1974:
Henry Aaron, in the second inning walked and scored ... He's sittin' on 714 ... Here's the pitch byDowning ... swinging ... there's a drive into left-center field ... that ball is gonna beeee ... OUTTA HERE! IT'S GONE! IT'S 715! There's a new home run champion of all time ... and it's HENRY AARON![6]
Years later Hamilton remarked, "Hammer (Aaron) and I are forever joined at the hip because of 715."
The Braves did not draw well at that time because of several poor-to-mediocre seasons from 1971 through 1975. Hamilton criticized the poor attendance on the air. He refused to gloss over this issue, and the Braves' owners fired him after the 1975 season.[5] Shortly thereafter, the team was sold toTed Turner, who made the Braves a national phenomenon via then-cable "superstation"WTCG (later to become WTBS, nowTBS) with Hamilton's replacementsSkip Caray andPete Van Wieren, and with Johnson continuing in the booth.
Hamilton briefly considered a return to St. Louis after Jack Buck left the Cardinals forNBC, but pulled out of talks after learning that Buck could return to the team to reclaim his job if the NBC project (GrandStand) failed. Instead, he joined thePittsburgh Pirates for the1976 season, succeedingBob Prince. Any announcer would have had difficulty following the deeply entrenched Prince, who had been part of the Pirates' broadcast team since 1948 and who had been the Pirates' top announcer since 1954. Hamilton was the subject of biting criticism by sportswriters and by fans. Most of them were used to Prince's folksy style, and they thought that Hamilton was too restrained. One writer derided Hamilton's style as "broadcast-school professionalism".[5] Hamilton proved to be relatively thin-skinned to the criticism, and even felt that Prince manipulated Pittsburgh sportswriters against him, as well as attempting to track down people who wrote critical letters to newspapers about his commentary.[7] In the end, the situation in Pittsburgh became untenable for both Hamilton and the fans, and he eventually left to be replaced by his color manLanny Frattare, with whom he hadn't gotten along, and whose announcing style was more similar to Prince's.
Unhappy in Pittsburgh, Hamilton jumped at a chance to return to Chicago in1980 to join the Cubs' broadcast team alongside Brickhouse, Lloyd and Boudreau. He was under the impression that he was heir-apparent to Brickhouse upon the latter's retirement; indeed, he later said that he had been "guaranteed in blood" that he would replace Brickhouse on Cubs television broadcasts in 1982.[5] Brickhouse himself called Hamilton "the voice of the Cubs for years to come" just before he retired in 1981. That plan changed when Harry Caray, discontented with new White Sox ownership, was brought in shortly after theTribune Company bought the Cubs.
Hamilton and Caray never got along, in part because Hamilton blamed Caray for his replacement with Garagiola 27 years earlier in St. Louis.[5] Hamilton claims that during the1984 season, their relationship got even chillier when Caray admitted to him that he'd in fact had an affair with the daughter-in-law of the longtime Cardinals ownerGussie Busch — which has long been rumored to be the reason for his firing by the Cardinals in 1969.[5]
Hamilton also claimed that Caray said on the air that he had mailed alimony checks to all of his ex-wives.[5] However, on the record, Caray always denied that there was ever an affair.
The Cubs dismissed Hamilton after the 1984 season. Hamilton blamed Caray for the firing.[8] He told the writerCurt Smith that officials atWGN-TV spent an hour praising him, but they told him that they had to dismiss him because Caray didn't like him, and Caray was more important to the Cubs.[5]
Hamilton made comments critical of Caray that were published in a story after the latter's death in 1998, but Hamilton claimed in his bookMaking Airwaves: 60 Years at Milo's Microphone that his comments quoted in that story were actually part of a magazine article from 13 years earlier, and that he did not in fact make the comments after Caray's death. This story prompted an angry reaction from Caray's son,Skip Caray, who had succeeded Hamilton as a broadcaster for the Atlanta Braves. In 2006, Hamilton related his experiences with Caray in his autobiography. He devoted a chapter to Caray, whom he referred to as the Canary, calling him "a miserable human being."[9]
After leaving Chicago, Hamilton joined up with theHouston Astros. This was his longest and last tenure as announcer.[3] He spent two years as the number-two announcer behind longtime Astros voiceGene Elston (another native Iowan). After Elston was criticized for his lackluster call of the1986NL West clinchingno-hitter byMike Scott, he was let go, and Hamilton became the Astros main announcer from1987 through2012. While Elston called the 1986 NL West clincher against theSan Francisco Giants ontelevision alongsideBill Worrell, Hamilton called the game onthe radio alongsideLarry Dierker. This is Hamilton's call[10] of the final out:
Scott has struck out a dozen. His teammates have all the hits in the game. The score is 2-0 Houston. Now the hitter isWill Clark. He’s 0-for-3. Swing and a bouncer! This could be it!(Glenn) Davis runs to the bag! Game is over! No-hitter! Astros win the championship! What a way to do it! A no-hitter! Mike Scott has just thrown his first career no-hitter, and the Astros are the National League champions of the West!
On July 29, 2005, Hamilton, now in his late 70s, announced that starting with the2006 season, he would no longer accompany the club on the road, announcing only home games,[11][12] although he traveled with the club whenBusch Stadium,Nationals Park,Citi Field, andMarlins Park opened respectively.
Hamilton announced his plans to retire as an active broadcaster after the 2012 season, though intending to remain active with the Astros in a more limited way.
In addition to his early work with the Iowa Hawkeyes and Tri-Cities Blackhawks, Hamilton also, at various points in his career, called NBA basketball for theChicago Zephyrs,Chicago Bulls andHouston Rockets; college basketball forNorthwestern,Georgia Tech,Kentucky, andDePaul, as well as variousSouthwest Conference games for theHome Sports Entertainment channel in the '80s; and college football forNorthwestern,Ohio State andGeorgia Tech.
Hamilton's style could be described as enthusiastic but not "over the top."[5] He told Smith that Elston encouraged him to save his voice for thrilling moments, such as Aaron's 715th home run.[5] Hamilton was also known for his catch phrase "Holy Toledo, what a play!"
Hamilton was the1992 recipient of theBaseball Hall of Fame'sFord C. Frick Award.[1] He was inducted into theNational Radio Hall of Fame in 2000[13] and later inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.
On April 8, 2009, during the opening series against the Chicago Cubs, Houston MayorBill White dedicated Hamilton Street in downtown Houston to Milo Hamilton by renaming it Milo Hamilton Way.
Through his retirement in 2012, Hamilton had broadcast major league games in 59 different ballparks.[14]
Hamilton was elected, as part of the inaugural class, to theHouston Astros Hall of Fame in 2019.
His wife of nearly 53 years, Arlene, died at age 73 in February 2005. The couple had two children: Mark and Patricia. The Hamiltons’ daughter, Patricia Joy Hamilton Watson, a formerDelta Air Lines flight attendant, died on July 10, 2006, in Atlanta, three weeks after suffering astroke.[4]
On October 7, 2007, Hamilton suffered a heart attack while eating lunch with his son in Houston. He was taken toHouston Methodist Hospital in theTexas Medical Center, where doctors discovered that one of his coronary arteries was 99 percent blocked. Hamilton underwent a successfulangioplasty and recovered to return to his sportscasting career.[15]
Hamilton died on September 17, 2015, at the age of 88 after havingchronic lymphocytic leukemia since 1974.[16] For the rest of the season and through their playoff run, the Astros added a patch with Hamilton's initials on their uniforms.[17]
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