Between Innings

Somewhere in the middle of watching and recording baseball's postseason revues (the Detroit Tigers kicked the Oakland Athletics to the curb and down the manholes; the New York Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals have no intention of going that gently into that hard day's night), I managed nevertheless to catch up with a little classic radio listening. Enough to jot down a few random thoughts between now and my next serious logic chop.

▲ I'm still trying to determine the point at which Judy Canova became somebody's brilliant inspiration for The Beverly Hillbillies. When all was said and done, she was genuinely funny. (She was also, if you took a second look, a very attractive lady.)

▲ There seems no sensible reason for Milton Berle's broadcasting career, if you don't count how many people who finally made him a television hit forgot his schtick was even less intelligible than their imagination.

▲ There seems as much reason for anyone to have thought Red Skelton belonged on radio, when much is said and much is done. He was actually very good on radio, more often than not, but television was made for him. You could add that Skelton outlasted Milton Berle, but that would compare to a musician outlasting Arthur Godfrey.

I'd say some more nice things about Red Skelton, but he hated giving writers credit. And as a writer I resemble that.

▲ Anybody who bought records by Kenny Baker had no business questioning Johnnie Ray's musical credentials. Come to think of it, anybody who bought Johnnie Ray's records had no business questioning Elvis Presley's.

▲ Anyone who bought Guy Lombardo's records had no business calling Wayne King the Western Hemisphere's monopolist of schlock.

▲ Between them, moreover, Guy Lombardo and Wayne King were the best evidence (if you don't count Henry Morgan) for the defence of Spike Jones.

▲ Warner Brothers should have been hauled before the Kefauver Committee for freezing Kenny Delmar out of his right to perpetuate Senator Claghorn without their express permission.

▲ Mel Blanc's short-lived radio sitcom made one drastic mistake above all. He'd have been more believable as a salesman, not a repairman.

▲ Ozzie and Harriet weren't half as funny on their own sitcom as they were renting a room to Fred Allen.

▲ I agree. The Hummerts should have been tried by jury for murder if they were the ones who insisted on turning Lorenzo Jones from a comic serial into the unintended founding father of the type of exaggerated doom-crime-and-disaster soap personified by General Hospital come the 1980s.

▲ There is still something missing in the world when Red Barber is no longer on this island earth to call a baseball game, or talk about his garden, or anything about which Bob Edwards saw fit to ask. And there's been no valid reason to give NPR's Morning Edition the proper time of day since Mr. Barber went from our catbird seat to God's.