Howard Kellman is the most trusted sports voice throughout “Hoosier Country.”
The numbers Kellmen continues to accumulate in his time spent in the press box at Victory Field in Indianapolis are herculean, and likely never to be duplicated. Looking forward to calling the action for the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate Indians in the 2025 baseball season, Kellman surely has earned consideration for recognition in Cooperstown, New York, at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
This past July, Kellman called his 6,850th Indians game. That’s well past 300,000 innings of hits, pitches, and catches registered by the Indianapolis club. The numbers continue to pile up.
With the World Series in the books, and as the City of Los Angeles preps for a victory parade for their beloved champion Dodgers, and eligible players today are free agents, there’s a quiet but amazing baseball tale ongoing in America’s Heartland. Longevity in any profession today is not nearly at the service time level as when Kellman was welcomed aboard by the Indians’ ownership back in 1974.
Kellman, a Brooklyn, New York native, has rapidly reached legendary status in his association with generations of Indianapolis baseball fans.
Baseball Hall of Famer Connie Mack, who managed the Philadelphia Athletics for a half-century, is soon to share service time with one club as Kellmen. Longevity for Kellmen and the Indians can be summed up in a word—loyalty.
“The Indians hired me right out of college (Brooklyn College). They had an opening, and I sent them a tape of me calling an inning of play-by-play from a Yankees broadcast booth in 1973,” Kellman said during a phone conversation with The Epoch Times earlier this week.
The persistence shown by Kellman to land employment in professional baseball should serve as a model for those today wanting to get “a foot in the door” in the game. He recalls sending out over 100 letters to teams at all levels in the minor leagues. Of his bulk baseball mailings, Kellmen received 25 answers, and of those three clubs had broadcast openings.
The catalyst that allowed Kellman to get his demo tape to prospective employers was the late New York Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner.
“I wrote him a letter,” explains Kellman, who this past July 4 had the broadcast booths at Victory Field named after him recognizing his long association with the club. “Steinbrenner allowed me to use a vacant broadcast booth at Yankee Stadium, so I could practice my play-by-play. Indianapolis asked me to send them a tape. It was a Yankees-Boston Red Sox game inning that I recorded, that I sent to Max Schumacher.”
Schumacher, who began his career with the Indians in 1957 as the club’s ticket manager and worked his way up to chairman of the board and president, hired Kellman. Summing up his time in Indianapolis since making his move west as “working out beautifully,” Kellman doesn’t hesitate in saying spending his entire adult life for one employer is something he wouldn’t change.
Shoehorned between receiving a myriad of awards, stemming from being selected Indiana Sportscaster of the Year in 2002 to having Mayor Joe Hogsett declare July 1, 2017, Howard Kellman Day in Indianapolis, there have been “cups of coffee” on the MLB level. The first radio assignment for an MLB club came during the 1984 season with the Chicago White Sox.
“That was the first time I did big league games,” explains Kellman of his three-game assignment. “The Dodgers were retiring Don Drysdale’s uniform number that weekend. Drysdale was a White Sox broadcaster at the time, and he was in Los Angeles that weekend.”
There have also been work coming from the Yankees, the club he grew up cheering for, and which he attended Game 3 of the 1964 World Series when they hosted the St. Louis Cardinals. For the past three seasons, Kellman has been called off the radio play-by-play bench to fill in for New York. This past season, it was on Sept. 20 in Oakland, California, the first game of the final home series of the A’s in that city before a planned relocation north to Sacramento, that Kellman called the action along the Yankees’ broadcast network.
Another accomplishment of Kellman’s outside of his Indians’ work is being the only radio broadcaster to have called Yankees and New York Mets games. In 2014, an unexpected dispatch came from the National League club in Flushing, Queens.
“I had no ties with the Mets,” says Kellman when getting the request to fill in with the broadcast team. “It came as a complete surprise. Josh Lewin, who at the time was the Mets’ number two guy on radio, and he was working football one weekend, so Howie Rose (Mets play-by-play radio voice) recommended me to WOR Radio Program Director Tom Cuddy. He asked me to send him a recording of my broadcasts. Tom liked it, and I did three Mets games in Atlanta, in September 2014.”
For all the career fulfillment that the MLB gigs have brought Kellman, calling his time in Indianapolis as having a “wonderful situation here,” there isn’t a hint of personal or professional regret in Kellman’s voice when reviewing his career. He talks of not ever having a reason to leave Indianapolis.
Since 1990, in baseball’s off-season, Kellman has been calling high school basketball and football weekly games on TV. Drop into his schedule traveling as a professional speaker, sharing stories from his baseball experiences with life lessons outside ballparks, and Kellman happily remains as busy as he wants to be.
“I’m a storyteller,” declares Kellman. There are a million stories I have to share. At first, I was nervous. But, broadcasting enhances speaking.”
Having the luxury of controlling his own professional destiny for close to a half-century; choosing his employer, his home city, and scheduling, sums up Kellman’s life well lived. Familiarity has its rewards, and the Indianapolis Indians have been only too welcoming in keeping their association with the same radio voice for almost 50 seasons.
