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Mel Allen (February 14, 1913-June 16, 1996, originally Melvin Allen Israel) was a sports announcer.
He was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He was educated as a lawyer, but his love for baseball, dating from his boyhood, led him to become first a sports columnist and then a sports announcer on the radio. However, his first broadcast was not a baseball game but a football game, between Tulane University and the University of Alabama. As a law school alumnus of Alabama, this game had a special significance to him.
In 1937, he was invited to join the CBS radio network as an announcer, and often did non-sports announcing such as big band remotes or game show announcements. Among the game shows, he did Truth or Consequences.
In 1939 he started doing broadcasts for both the New York Yankees and the then-New York Giants. Ultimately he became the main broadcaster for Yankees' games, though he also did Giant games until 1943. He was known for his "How about that?" exclamation on Yankee home runs.
In 1943 (in World War II) he entered the United States Army, and while in the service changed his name legally to Mel Allen; he broadcast on The Army Hour and Armed Forces Radio Service programs.
After returning to civilian life, he resumed baseball announcing, doing 24 All-Star Game broadcasts for Major League Baseball as well as Yankee games (including World Series broadcasts when the Yankees were in it, which was most of the years, a total of 20 World Series). In 1968 he worked Cleveland Indians games. He also did a number of football bowl games: 14 Rose Bowls, 2 Orange Bowls, and 2 Sugar Bowls.
In 1978 he was one of the first winners of the Ford C. Frick Award. (The other was Red Barber, who for some of the time served alongside Allen as the Yankees' announcer.) He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. In his later years, he was exposed to a new audience as the host of the syndicated highlights show This Week in Baseball, which he hosted from its inception in 1977 until his death.
When he died in 1996, he was buried at Temple Beth El Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.
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