|
misterearl
Posts: 38786
Alba Posts: 0
Joined: 11/16/2004
Member: #799
USA
|
(For Anyone Who Remembers The Roar of The Garden or The Classic White Warm Up Jackets)
When the Knicks return to playoffs excellence, here is a personal wish the production values at The Garden return to excellence as well. Without the thunder sticks, artificial noise or the over-amped PA announcer on each and every basket, no matter the game situation.
An old school tribute:
Voice of New York
"But John Francis Xavier Condon is the voice of Madison Square Garden that will be remembered best. Especially at the Garden of 33rd St. John Condon was the one you heard when you were there. He was part of the soundtrack of the big basketball nights. He joined the Knicks as the old Garden’s public address announcer in 1947 and only stayed on the job for 40 years.
He was to the Knicks as the great Bob Sheppard is to the Yankees. You could not see the team without hearing the voice. Once inside the door, you did not have Glickman, or Marv, talking to you. You had John F.X. Condon.
And when it was a particularly special play, by Clyde Frazier or Earl the Pearl Monroe, by Reed or Bradley or DeBusschere, Condon would wait for the cheers to finally die in the voices of the 19,000 people, the roar from those 19,000 people that an old Philly sportswriter named George Kiseda once described as the monster of Madison Square Garden.
Then, over the P.A. system, the place still shaking, you would hear John Condon say, That was Walt Frazier! in that singsong way he had.
That was Earl Monroe. Or Dave DeBusschere. Or Dollar Bill Bradley.
When you heard ‘that was,’ Bill Bradley told me once, you knew you’d done something.
Red Holzman had first heard the voice of John Condon in the ’50s, when he would come in to play the Knicks with the old Rochester Royals. One day, long after Condon was gone, Holzman was talking about his friend, and the old man said, After a while you started to get the idea that it wasn’t officially a basket until John said it was a basket.
From the start, I just wanted to listen to John Condon, at the microphone or in the press room or anywhere.
He is gone 15 years now. He finally went into the hospital with bladder cancer and never came out. He was 75 the year he died. It had been some run for him at Madison Square Garden. He died with memories, took so much of the spirit of the place with him. If you ever heard him at the Garden, you can hear him still, that New York voice of his going to the spokes in the ceiling and back. That was Walt Frazier. That was Bill Bradley.
That was John Condon."
- Mike Lupica June, 2004
once a knick always a knick
|
