Pioneering Trio Made KMOX the Sports Voice

Few of today’s baseball fans are aware of the rich radio play-by-play history in St. Louis. In the early days of the business, three men made names for themselves on KMOX. All three men were in their late 20s when they arrived at the station.

Bill Mack is credited with establishing the station’s “Hot Stove League.” When he joined the KMOX staff at the age of 27, Mack, whose given name was William McCaslyn, was among the station’s more resourceful individuals. He was the first radio staffer to provide coverage from major league baseball’s off-season camps.

He traveled south, dividing his time between the winter camps of the Browns and the Cardinals, but he maximized his income by selling the reports twice, once to KMOX and once to the Sporting News. Mack would telegraph his reports to the station early each evening for broadcast on the station’s 10 p.m. news, which was the equivalent of today’s late news on television.

Mack became known as “Skipper” on the Hot Stove League, where he would answer questions mailed in by listeners. His unique approach to sports broadcasting at KMOX was usurped by France Laux, who was extremely popular with listeners. Laux took over the Hot Stove League broadcasts in 1930.

Garnett Marks was another sports voice on KMOX, but listeners could be excused for not knowing his name. That’s because sponsors were allowed to assign names to the talent, so Marks was variously known as “Rhino Bill,” “Otto Buick” and “Pierce Pennant,” with each of these names having special meaning to the sponsor.

In the early days of radio, stations would do live broadcasts of games played at the home park, but because the use of long distance phone lines was so expensive, out-of-town live broadcasts were uncommon. Instead, the station would select certain distant games and have them re-created by an announcer in the studio, using information as it came in on the sports ticker. Marks’ contract with KMOX called for him to do these recreations as well as all World Series games. A Globe-Democrat article from March 18, 1928 noted: “He will broadcast from Station KMOX a baseball game every afternoon in the week through the entire 1928 baseball season.”

Pierce Petroleum, the sponsor of the broadcasts, encouraged businesses to set up loudspeakers so customers could enjoy hearing the games. They also fielded a fleet of eight trucks equipped with loudspeakers to drive through the streets so people could hear the games, and the “traveling relay stations” would be made available to “all hospitals, charitable institutions, parties, picnics, clubs, etc., both public and private absolutely free of charge.”

In 1929, France Laux took the seat behind the play-by-play microphone at KMOX. He became the voice of the Cardinals and the Browns over a 19 year period, and his national renown brought his assignments to do the World Series broadcasts from 1933-1938 and the All-Star games from 1934-1941. The Sporting News gave Laux its first award as outstanding major league broadcaster.

Laux worked many other sports in St. Louis, broadcasting wrestling, hockey, basketball, football and boxing. He once said he was proudest of the fact that he worked for twenty years without arguing with a player or umpire and he never missed a broadcast.

Of the three, Laux is the one whose name is remembered today. Marks left KMOX after the 1928 season to try his luck in Hollywood. He worked there for awhile as a singer, returning to KMOX in 1931 as an announcer. He was hired away by WIL in 1932 where he became the host of the daily Breakfast Club Express. Mack left KMOX in 1930, and although he did some other sports broadcasting, very little information was found about a further broadcast career. Laux left KMOX in the late 1940s and became a force on the local bowling scene, running his own bowling lanes and providing tournament reports on KMOX.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 06/02)

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