Journal of Sports Media

Mediated and cultural depictions of sports organizations often involve the association of the sports organizations with representative individuals. As Perks (2012) suggested, that representation can take on the relationship of a synecdoche as a particular individual associated with an organization serves as a “summarizing vessel” (p. 455) for the organization. Such characterization might apply, in various circumstances, to members of sports organizations ranging from players and coaches to owners to league commissioners. Meanwhile, while media members who cover sports typically occupy positions outside of the sports organizations themselves, media members can at times become invested in those sports organizations’ identities. Perhaps most prominently, this occurs with team television and radio broadcasters, whom the teams they broadcast historically hire, employ, and pay. The relationship becomes more of a synecdoche when organizations, fans, media, and other depicting bodies designate a broadcaster as the “voice” of the team, because the concept of voice carries with it connotations of speaking on behalf of both the organization and the fans of the team. Team organizations sometimes make this connotation explicit, as when upon the passing of longtime Seattle Mariners voice Dave Neihaus in November 2010, team president Chuck Armstrong said, “This is a terrible loss. He has been the link between the fans and the team since the club was founded” (Hickey, 2010, para. 3).

Yet these connotations raise significant questions regarding representation, particularly when recognizing a team’s organization and a team’s fans as separate (though related) constituencies. One important question would ask how the identities of the voices of teams are represented and how those representations contribute to the prominent symbolic meanings [End Page 193] associated with their teams. Such meanings include what each team purportedly represents; with whom the team is characterized as identifying; and which mythologies have become prominent parts of the team’s past, present, and future identities. Analysis of these meanings could examine contemporary characterizations of sports organizations, or it could—and perhaps with more mythological significance—examine public memory of sports organizations. A second important question would ask how these characterizations of broadcasters as the voices of teams position media in general, and its individual members and institutions in particular, as significant parts of the organizations they cover and broadcast. Such interrogation includes examining the forms of authority these positions confer on the media industry within the world of sports and in U.S. society in general. Examining such a question would contribute to analysis of the interests served by positioning broadcasters as a team’s voice, particularly as that positioning might work as a synecdoche for the team’s organization and fans.

With that in mind, this analysis focuses on the case study of Red Barber, who became prominently known in the 1940s and 1950s as the voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers, before the team moved to Los Angeles following the 1957 season. Of note, this characterization differs from the broadcasting voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Vin Scully. Barber, who passed away in 1992, figures prominently in accounts of the Brooklyn Dodgers, particularly as these accounts constitute public memory of the team and what the team signifies. By existing so prominently in these accounts, representations of Barber demonstrate how, both through individual identification of the person and the connections of that individual with the team, the voice of a baseball team assists in maintaining and reinforcing the team’s cultural significations, sometimes constructed as a synecdoche of the team, while at other times constructed as a complement to the team. In the process, representations of Barber also demonstrate how connecting a team’s broadcaster as the voice of the organization and its fans to the mythology of the team, particularly as that mythology is expressed in public memory, provides a means of asserting and reinforcing the cultural authority of the media industry as accounts of public memory depict media experiences as essential components of people’s lives.