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What baseball fan doesn't get goosebumps when hearing, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" Who--hockey fan or not--doesn't feel a little bit giddy whenever they hear Al Michaels shout, "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" Who doesn't grin when they hear Univision sportscaster Andres Cantor demonstrate his lung capacity by bellowing, "Gooooaaaal!" And who can forget "The Play" in the Cal vs. Stanford game when the Bears came back to win in the final seconds--bowling over a trombone player in the process? From an admittedly scratchy recording of Babe Ruth's memorable World Series home run in 1932 to the dramatic penalty shootout win in the 1999 Women's World Cup, And the Crowd Goes Wild captures history's greatest sports calls.
The two CDs accompanying this collection feature 47 original sports calls, including Franco Harris making the "Immaculate Reception," Secretariat winning the Triple Crown, Lou Gehrig saying goodbye, Buster Douglas upsetting Mike Tyson, and Mark McGwire beating Roger Maris's single-season home run record. The book sets up each event with capsule explanations, accompanied by stock photographs. Narrated by Bob Costas, And the Crowd Goes Wild will entertain any sports fan. --Sunny Delaney
From Publishers Weekly
Following in the footsteps of his own bestselling We Interrupt This Broadcast, radio veteran Garner has put together this gift-perfect compilation of 47 of the most memorable sporting events ever broadcast on radio or TV. This coffee-table-sized volume includes a foreword by Hank Aaron and an afterword by Wayne Gretzky. It also features two accompanying audio CDs that combine sturdy backstory narration of each event by Bob Costas with snippets of the original broadcast. From Babe Ruth's called shot in the 1932 World Series to the U.S. women's 1999 World Cup soccer victory, Garner's collection is a diverse sampling of the century's most significant sporting moments. The book itself benefits from a generous dose of outstanding photographs. The CD set is at once more compelling and more uneven than the text and photos. Some of the events--such as the showdown between Magic Johnson's Michigan State and Larry Bird's Indiana State in the 1979 NCAA basketball finals--were historically important but didn't have any defining, dramatic moments for a sportscaster to sink his teeth into. The best selections combine passionate announcing--Russ Hodges screaming, "The Giants win the pennant!" after Bobby Thomson's homer lifted the Giants over the Dodgers in 1951-- with an improbable outcome--like Billy Mills's miraculous run to victory in the 1964 Olympic 10,000 meters--to create a familiar tingle down the spine. (Dec.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Assembled by Garner (We Interrupt This Broadcast), this book-and-CD set, is an excellent concept. The text and plentiful photographs in the book provide background for the broadcast calls presented on the two CDs of celebrated sports events, from Babe Ruth's "called" shot to Brandi Chastain's winning penalty kick. Each call on the CDs is further set up by announcer Bob Costas's narration. The execution, however, raises questions. The selections themselves are idiosyncraticAwhy include obscurities like Billy Mills's Olympic gold medal, for instanceAand heavily weighted toward recent times (85 percent of the events are post-1960, 60 percent are post-1970). More troubling is that some events are more conducive to short clips than others. There is no climactic moment to relive in the Jets' upset win in Super Bowl III, so the clip is of little interest although the event was certainly noteworthy. Furthermore, not all the broadcasters are equally compelling, so some clips of exciting finishes are fairly dry. Finally, it would have been nice if the narration and the calls had been arranged on separate tracks because when going back for a second time, a listener might want to skip Costas's fine narration and just listen to the original call. Despite these caveats, the concept is unique enough to recommend this book for all general sports collections.AJohn M. Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Camden, NJ Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Fans Wept. The Crowd Cheered. The Announcers Went Wild. You Just Had To Be There. And You Can Be. In words and images--and on two audio CDs narrated by award-winning sports journalist Bob Costas--And The Crowd Goes Wild brings to life the spine-tingling moments that brought us to our feet. From bleachers to box seats to living room sofas, devoted fans and casual observers yearn for the thrill of last-minute heroics, underdog victories or the crowning moment of a champion's career. And The Crowd Goes Wild recounts forty-seven of the most memorable moments in sports and spotlights the photographs that tell the stories. Accompanying the book, two digitally mastered CDs contain over two hours of audio, including the actual calls of the announcers who were just as excited, surprised and awestruck as the fans. Their words--and the emotional charge in their voices--take you back to the heart-stopping thrill of the event, when an athlete triumphed...and the crowd went wild!
Book Info
A collection of the most memorable moments in sports history, retold in chronological order. The two CDs are audio recordings of the actual events as they happened. Available only as part of a boxed set with the sequel, And The Fans Roared, a collection of spine-tingling sports broadcasts featuring broadcasts from boxing to baseball on audio CD. DLC: Sports--History.
About the Author
Joe Garner is the New York Times bestselling author of We Interrupt This Broadcast and is a twenty-year veteran of the radio business, including eleven years as an executive with Westwood One. His expertise on the media's coverage of major events has been featured on the Today Show, CNN, CBS Up-to- the-Minute and hundreds of radio programs nationwide. We Interrupt This Broadcast was also a bestseller in the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today. Bob Costas holds twelve Emmy awards--eight as outstanding sports broadcaster, two for writing, one for his late night interview show Later...with Bob Costas and one for his play-by-play broadcast of the 1997 World Series. He has been named "National Sportscaster of the Year" seven times by his peers. He has been with NBC Sports since 1979 and has covered every major sport, including the Olympics. Costas is a frequent contributor to NBC as a reporter and interviewer on the network's primetime news magazines.
Excerpted from And the Crowd Goes Wild : Relive the Most Celebrated Sporting Events Ever Broadcast (Book With 2 Audio CDs) by Joe Garner, Bob Costas, Wayne Gretzky. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
from the Introduction In the history of sports, there are a few events that are legendary, identifiable by a simple two- or three-word phrase or even a single number: "The Called Shot," "The Catch," "The Hail Mary," "The Immaculate Reception" and "Number 715." Just mention these to any sports fan worth their TV remote and subscription to Sports Illustrated and they know where they were when they saw it or heard about it. This book and CD compilation is a collection of magical moments from this hallowed category of events. They are spine-tingling outcomes: the buzzer beaters, the last-second goals, the stunning upsets, the come-from-behind victories. Moreover, this collection tells the stories behind them. These are moments that we hold in such regard and remember with such clarity, it's as if they happened only yesterday.... This book is also a tribute to the sportscasters, the play-by-play guys, the storytellers in the booth who give voice to our exhilaration in victory and to our disappointment in defeat. It may be my broadcasting background, but I believe that a large part of why we remember these extraordinary athletic moments is due to the way we heard them. These talented broadcasters have provided a dramatic soundtrack to the moments we hold in almost magical regard. Who can separate the memory of Bobby Thomson's miraculous "Shot Heard 'Round the World" from the genuine, raw excitement of Russ Hodges' lyrical anthem, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" It was perfection in its honest emotion and complete spontaneity. Not even Oscar-winning composer John Williams' stirring Olympic Fanfare and Theme could underscore the stunning victory of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team at Lake Placid as well as the passionate voice of Al Michaels shouting, "Do you believe in miracles?! Yes!" On December 20, 1980, the NBC television network opted to broadcast a Jets- Dolphins game without the benefit of announcers. The experiment failed. The network realized what the fans already knew--the announcers were invaluable. They painted pictures in our minds when radio was king, and on television, they articulate our shared emotions as we watch extraordinary moments unfold before our eyes. It has become popular these days to rank the greatest athletes or the greatest athletic moments. My goal with this book was simply to provide you with a scrapbook of memories of some of the most remarkable events in sports, told in stories, pictures and sound, just the way you remember them. Where they rank and how they measure up is for you to decide. I admit that within the first minute of starting this book, one thing became glaringly apparent. I was only going to be able to scratch the surface in terms of the events included, and I apologize if I have omitted your favorite moment. Without exception, though, these events have stood the test of time. I promise you more than a few exciting moments and I hope you enjoy reliving them all over again--or for the very first time.
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