All A’s In Life: MLB Team Honor Broadcaster Monte Moore With Hall Of Fame Induction
If veteran broadcaster Monte Moore is doing the telling, stories swapped at the Athletics Hall of Fame induction on Sept. 13 will include baseball, family and church — sometimes all at once.
The familiar, folksy voice of the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics — the MLB team’s previous homes before their current, temporary stint in West Sacramento, Calif. — will be inducted into the A’s Hall of Fame along with pitchers Tim Hudson, Barry Zito and Mark Mulder.
The longtime Church of Christ member who turned 95 on July 28 spent more than 20 years on the mic for the A’s. The three hurlers combined for 19 seasons on the mound.
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Moore’s three children and his 92-year-old twin sisters are among those flying in for the festivities. Deonne, his wife of 64 years, died in 2016. The guest list reads like a stroll through Cooperstown — Reggie Jackson, Tony La Russa, Rollie Fingers and a host of others.
Jackson and Moore have some history. In 1973, before Game 7 of the second World Series Moore broadcast for the A’s, he arrived at the ballpark early in the morning with his three kids — Bruce, Deonna and Donnie.
“In the mail was a letter, addressed to me, that said, ‘Reggie Jackson will be shot dead today during the ballgame,’” Moore said.
Moore took the letter to A’s owner Charlie Finley, who called the FBI. Agents were dispatched around the ballpark. The Series continued, and the A’s defeated the New York Mets.
Moore still has the commemorative bat with his name on it given to him by the FBI and signed by several major-leaguers, including Jackson, who played for the team in Kansas City and Oakland.
‘3,200-something’
Finley became sole owner of the A’s on Dec. 19, 1961. That night, he heard Moore doing a broadcast for the Kansas City Steers, the city’s short-lived professional basketball team.
The pair had never met, but the next day, they rode the same elevator to a press conference announcing the franchise sale. A mutual friend introduced them, and Finley asked, “Hey kid, how’d you like to be my broadcaster?”
Ahead of the team move in 1968, Finley sent Moore to Oakland to hire a stadium announcer and speak to civic clubs, often with the legendary Joe DiMaggio, touting the great things the Athletics would bring to the Bay Area.
Moore spent two decades broadcasting games on radio and later television, including the three World Series on NBC, which he calls “the highlight of my career, even though I did get to do quite a few years with the A’s on a daily basis.”
Quite a few years and quite a few games — “3,200-something,” he says.
That streak was almost broken when daughter Deonna was born midseason in 1964, arriving six weeks early.
The A’s had just finished a road game when Moore returned to the hotel, and a guy at the front desk said, “Hey, Mr. Moore, we’ve got a call for you.”
On the line, a doctor in Kansas City informed Moore, “Unless I miss my guess, you’re going to be a dad in just a little while.”
“Oh, my goodness! I’m in a hotel in Chicago!” Moore recalled, chuckling.
A friend knew a mail plane pilot who flew from Chicago to Kansas City every night. Moore rode with him to Kansas City, where neighbors met him at the airport and took him to the hospital.
“Then I had to get back to Chicago for an afternoon game,” he said, still laughing.
Ultimately that game was rain delayed so the streak stayed alive, though Deonna Moore Shake, longtime faculty member and former women’s basketball star at Abilene Christian University in Texas, has been teased by family her whole life for almost breaking her dad’s streak.
She recalls the many ways her parents worked to include the whole family in Moore’s career and travels.
“When they would play the Angels, we’d get to go to the series. We’d stay at the Grand Hotel and hurry Mom and Dad through breakfast so we could go to Disneyland,” Shake explained. She and older brother Bruce, both in upper elementary grades, left for the park on their own — before cell phones.
Dad’s priorities
Back home, on Sundays, they headed to church at the San Leandro Church of Christ, where Moore taught Bible class and served as a deacon. Shake said the building was much closer to Oakland and the ballpark than was their home in Lafayette, Calif.
“Many times, we packed extra clothes, Hot Wheels, Barbies and often had an extra player or announcer who liked to go to church in our car and went straight to some home ballgame,” Moore explained. “It showed Dad’s priorities — being part of church communities even on game days.”
That commitment extended to road games, where he tried to go to church on Sunday mornings before an afternoon or evening game, often catching a ride to the ballpark with a church member.
Over time he got acquainted with some of the preachers on the road trips. He recalled one trip to Detroit when he had been invited to preach at a Church of Christ about 20 miles away.
“I got to church and opened my briefcase, and I had left all my notes from my study the night before in the hotel. So, I had to tell those people, ‘We’re going to get through this thing, but you may hear some strange parts of the Gospel — my notes were going to be really good!’”
He did his best, and a deacon gave him a ride to the game.
‘A special life’
The uniqueness of it all was not lost on Shake and her brothers.
“I could see how much effort Mom and Dad spent as a team, partnering as parents,” she said.
During the season her mom had no family around to help. They were all in Oklahoma.
“Dad made his career part of our lives. It was definitely a special life. He took my brothers and I separately on a road trip — usually to Kansas City so we could see grandparents and an aunt and uncle for a while.”
Eventually he arranged for the whole family to go to spring training for a month.
“Mom homeschooled in the morning, and we played all afternoon. And that was before homeschooling was a thing,” Shake said. “Then Dad would get off work, and he’d hit fly balls to us on the golf course.”
Just the A’s
After retiring from the A’s in 1988, Moore bought KTIP radio in Porterville, Calif., where he trained young sportscasters. He still did the Game of the Week for NBC and USA cable networks and broadcast local sports, including Deonna’s basketball games. He was on the air when she scored her 1000th point for Porterville’s Monache High School.
Though he lives now in a retirement community in Porterville, he still reads the announcements each Sunday at the Porterville Church or Christ where he served as an elder for many years. Son Donnie lives nearby, and family members celebrated the voice of the A’s with banana splits on his 95th birthday.
Just the A’s. That’s what the team is called these days while they languish in Sacramento after leaving Oakland for Las Vegas and a yet-to-be-built stadium.
Moore is not excited about the team’s current transition.
“I think it’s a dumb thing they ever moved out of Oakland,” he said in a recent telephone interview. He’s still folksy and straightforward.
“They’re going to be two years getting that ballpark built, and in the meanwhile the A’s are playing in Sacramento, which sounds awfully strange to me.”
This article was originally published at The Christian Chronicle.
Cheryl Mann Bacon is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University. Contact cheryl@christianchronicle.org.