Dick Allen at U.S. Cellular Field in 2012, commemorating his MVP season.
By George Castle – CBM Historian on December 30, 2016
The Chicago Baseball Museum is presenting classic interviews from the archives of CBM historian George Castle’s “Diamond Gems” syndicated weekly baseball radio show, which aired from 1994 to 2010.
In this edition, interviews all-time baseball announcer Harry Caray conducted in spring training 1972 in Florida and early in the season in Chicago are featured. Two superstars who’d go on to earn honors in ’72 are queried: the White Sox’s Dick Allen, the eventual American League MVP, and the Phillies’ Steve Carlton, the National League’s Cy Young Award winner.
Renowned as a play-by-play Pied Piper who helped revive the White Sox then, Caray was also known as a good interviewer. He taped the segments and syndicated them around the country to radio stations. Scott Nelson, the Cubs’ longtime director of baseball operations until 2012, discovered several cassettes of Caray interviews at a sports collectors’ show in the late 1990s. A number of the interviews were replayed on Diamond Gems.
“The Diamond Gems Flashback” also features photos of the interviewees from the one-of-a-kind Leo Bauby Photo Collection, emphasizing Chicago baseball. Many photos are available to the general public directly on Ebay via seller name Soxphotos soxphotos | eBay.
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