“Would the fans along the outfield railing please remove their clothes?”
During a game at Yankee Stadium in May 1946, fans in the front row of the outfield left their coats over the railing. Public address system announcer Arthur “Red” Patterson said:
”“Will the spectators in the front row please remove their clothing.”
A few years later, at Ebbets Field, in Brooklyn, public address system announcer Tex Rickards made a similar announcement:
“Will the fans along the railing in left field please remove their clothes?”
Google News Archive
18 February 1960, Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette, “Roamin’ Around” by Jack Hernon, pg. 21, col. 2:
And the voice of Tex Rickards on the PA system, asking the fans with coasts draped over the railing:
“Will the people in the left field boxes please remove their clothing.”
Google Books
The Giants and the Dodgers:
The Fabulous Story of Baseball’s Fiercest Feud
By Lee Allen
New York, NY: Putnam
1964
Pg. 7:
... and Tex Rickards, the public-address announcer who had once shouted into his microphone, “Will the fans along the railing in left field please remove their clothes?”
Sports Illustrated
Originally Posted: April 10, 1989
THE MOUTHS OF BABE . . . . . . and Yogi and Diz have produced many a malaprop
BY STEVE RUSHIN
(...)
It isn’t only baseball players and managers who possess the gift of garbled gab. Tex Rickards, the longtime public-address announcer at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, gave life to the most banal of ballpark announcements. When a stray child was found in the park, Tex intoned, ‘‘A little boy has been found lost.’’ And when fans used the top of the leftfield fence as a coatrack, Tex set them straight by asking: ‘‘Would the fans along the outfield railing please remove their clothes?’‘
Baseball Nerd by Keith Olbermann
Posted on July 12, 2010 at 9:56 pm
MORE ON BOB SHEPPARD AND PUBLIC ADDRESS ANNOUNCERS:
(...)
A few fans sitting front-row in fair territory had draped their overcoats over the then low fence in the outfield. The next day, the papers all reported that the Yankee Stadium announcer had inspired a roar of laughter from the crowd by intoning “Would the fans sitting in right field please remove their clothes…”
Remarkably, not one of the eight or nine beat reporters – who used to fight each other for details in a way we can’t comprehend today – said who the PA announcer was! This was the first hint that his anonymity was being protected for some reason. Later evidence proved the reason was obvious: it was Yankees’ Public Relations man Arthur “Red” Patterson, and the writers certainly weren’t going to tick off their official conduit to the club by publicly humiliating him by name.
A year or two later, Tex Rickards, the Dodger PA announcer whose style would be the exact opposite of Sheppard’s (earthy, gravelly, sitting not in the press box but next to the Dodger dugout, often wearing a team jacket reading “Dodger Announcer”), made the exact same mistake. Rickards’ version of “will the fans sittin’ in the outfield please remove dere clothes” has gone into history. Patterson’s is an almost forgotten footnote – except he did it first.
Baseball-Fever.com
Thread: 1923 Yankee Stadium 3D Renderings
mjrbaseball
09-01-2010, 06:05 AM
Nice job with the signs, bk ... especially the brass plaques by the door.
Regarding the megaphone, here is what this year’s Yankees Media Guide says about them. (It’s in an article about the predecessors to Bob Sheppard.)
(...)
Extolling Sheppard’s longevity, Carney told Doherty that “Bob’s been around forever. He followed Red Patterson, who was the club’s Public Relations Director and also did the P.A.”
Carney’s words give not only the answer but may also explain the mystery. Sheppard’s predecessor was widely but anonymously quoted in the newspapers for an infamous gaffe he made during a Yankees-Philadelphia Athletics game on May 31, 1946. “Will the spectators in the front row please remove their clothing…” he began, with the rest of his announcement: “from the front railing,” drowned out by the crowd’s laughter.
The story got into the papers, but the identity of the speaker did not. Of course, it didn’t. The writers didn’t want to embarrass their main conduit for information about the club!