CBS executives already knew of Allen; the network's top sportscaster, Ted Husing, had heard many of his Crimson Tide broadcasts.

[4] He often did non-sports announcing such as for big band remotes, or "emceeing" game shows such as Truth or Consequences, serving as an understudy for both sportscaster Husing and newscaster Bob Trout.

[2][3][5] In his first year at CBS, Allen announced the crash of the Hindenburg when the station cut away from singer Kate Smith's show.

[6] In 1939, he was the announcer for the Warner Brothers & Vitaphone film musical short-subject, On the Air, with Leith Stevens and the Saturday Night Swing Club.

(a favorite expression of Allen's after an outstanding play by the home team), states that it was at CBS's suggestion in 1937, the year Melvin Israel joined the network, that he go by a different last name on the air.

McDonald himself went back to Washington after only one season, and Allen became the Yankees' and Giants' lead announcer,[4] doing double duty for both teams because only their home games were broadcast at that time.

Hall of Fame first baseman Lou Gehrig had been forced to retire the year before after having been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal illness.

Speaking with Allen in the Yankee dugout, Gehrig told him "Mel, I never got a chance to listen to your games before because I was playing every day.

[4] Allen's stint with the Yankees and Giants was interrupted in 1941, when no sponsor could be found and both teams went off the air, but the broadcasts resumed in 1942.

Before long Allen and the Yankees were fused in the public consciousness,[9][self-published source] an association strengthened by the team's frequent World Series appearances.

[3] Interestingly, Allen's play-by-play of the 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves alongside Boston Braves announcer Jim Britt occurred because neither Cleveland Indians announcer was selected by MLB commissioner Happy Chandler;[10] Jack Graney was ineligible due to having been a former player, and Jimmy Dudley was passed over due to a lack of experience.

In the second issue, Allen, Giant manager Leo Durocher and Hall of Fame Yankee catcher Yogi Berra were all caricatured in a baseball story, "Hex!

[12] After Russ Hodges departed from the Yankee booth to become the longtime voice of the New York (and starting in 1958, San Francisco) Giants, the young Curt Gowdy replaced him as Allen's broadcast partner in 1949 & 1950, having been brought in from Oklahoma City after winning a national audition.

Gowdy, originally from Wyoming, credited Mel Allen's mentoring as a big factor in his own success as a broadcaster and became the voice of the Boston Red Sox from 1951 to 1965.

[13] Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run off Ralph Terry to win the fall classic for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

"[23] In the early 1960s, Allen hosted the three-hour Saturday morning segment of the weekend NBC Radio program Monitor.

[6][page needed] Years later, Allen told author Curt Smith that the Yankees had fired him under pressure from the team's longtime sponsor, Ballantine Beer.

According to Allen, he was fired as a cost-cutting move by Ballantine, which had been experiencing poor sales for years[6][page needed] (it would eventually be sold in 1969).

Although Yankee broadcaster Frank Messer, who joined the club in 1968, replaced him as emcee for Old-Timers' Day and other special events like Mickey Mantle Day, the Yankees continued to invite Allen to call the actual exhibition game between the Old Timers, and to take part in players' number-retirement ceremonies.

[citation needed] Allen was brought back to the Yankees' on-air team in 1976 as a pre/post-game host for the cable telecasts with John Sterling, and also started calling play-by-play again.

He announced Yankees cable telecasts on SportsChannel New York (now MSG Plus) with Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, Frank Messer, and occasionally, Fran Healy.

In 1990, Allen called play-by-play for a WPIX Yankees game to officially make him baseball's first seven-decade announcer.

When he was reading the long list of numbers that would be spliced into sentences to announce batting averages and so on, he stopped suddenly and said, 'That's not good.'

In 1985, Allen was inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame along with former Yankee partner (and later Red Sox and NBC Sports voice) Curt Gowdy and Chicago legend Jack Brickhouse.