Paul Olden - On Script and Off, Giving Voice to the Yankees

Paul Olden, the Yankees’ public-address announcer since 2009, says that preparation is important to avoid mispronouncing a player’s name, and that he is free “to change stuff the way I would say it.”

The day after the Boston Marathon bombings, the New York Yankees honored the fallen in a pregame ceremony at their stadium in the Bronx. The task of leading the fans in this tribute went to Paul Olden, the team’s public-address announcer. He felt something was missing, though.

Not long before game time, word came that the sports announcer Pat Summerall, once a star kicker for the New York Giants, had died. The script that the Yankees’ marketing department handed Mr. Olden focused solely on Boston. While there was obviously no equivalence between that monstrous event and the death of Mr. Summerall at 82, Mr. Olden sensed a rewrite was in order.

“I said, ‘Hey, this guy was big in New York,’ ” he recalled over lunch at the Yankee Stadium branch of the Hard Rock Cafe. “So they went upstairs and wrote up a remembrance that I read. I said, ‘We can’t delay it a day. We have to recognize him today, and we’ll just do it before Boston.’ ”

So it was written. So it was done.  read full article in The NY Times