In his feature story on Chuck “Bobo” Brayton following the legendary baseball coach’s death on March 28, 2015, SportspressNW.com writer Howie Stalwick provided a thoughtful summary of Bobo’s remarkable career. One sentence in particular made me smile:
Brayton’s gravelly voice could often be heard on radio commercials during WSU baseball broadcasts. Listeners are still recovering from the sound of Brayton’s truly horrendous Mexican accent in commercials for a Mexican restaurant.
At the beginning of every season, Bobo would come into the studio to record a new batch of radio spots for our baseball sponsors. Stalwick’s story reminded me of another article, written by John Blanchette in the April 11, 1990 edition of The Spokesman-Review, on the occasion of Bobo’s 1000th win:
Take away the 999 wins and Chuck “Bobo” Brayton still has a place in the hall of fame of the mind’s eye.
Maybe you’ve never seen him in uniform, never seen one of his baseball teams play at Washington State. Maybe you’re on the road to Lewiston or Walla Walla on a Saturday afternoon, changing the dial when the oldies radio station segues into static and coming up between innings of a ball game out of Pullman.
“Hey!” booms a voice bereft of even a hint of a Spanish accent. “Que pasa, muchachos? You like Mexican food?”
For all we know, Bobo Brayton would sound like another Pavarotti if his vocal cords weren’t made out of barbed wire and the words weren’t filtered through all the pebbles stirred up by his plow and his infield rake the last 40 years.
Que pasa? It’s just Bobo, on call for baseball. You can see him charging into the studio in his batting helmet and low-stirrup socks to cut these tapes for the local flower shop (“Tell them Bobo sent you!”) and the campus ice cream store (“Mmmmm!”)
John Olerud, Jr., the best player in Bobo’s bulging scrapbook and possibly the most stoic as well, was about to put his name on a major league contract last summer when the reporters gathered for his press conference launched into their best Bobo Brayton-for-Arby’s impersonations. Olerud betrayed a smile and quickly hid it behind the sports page.
Bobo’s spots for Cougar Baseball sponsors are fondly remembered by them, and more than a few still cherish the bat (pictured at left) that they received during the 1989 season, signed by Bobo and members of that year’s team, including MLB notables, John Olerud, Aaron Sele, Tom McGraw, and Mark Small.
Recording Bobo was always a production in itself. I’d load a new 12-inch reel of tape onto the machine, punch “record” and “play” at the same time, and let it run non-stop until Bobo had recorded all the necessary scripts. The good “takes” would then be dubbed to their assigned tape cartridges for airplay. During one such session, Bobo was having a heckuva time getting through the scripts I’d written for Alex’s Restaurante; some of his botched attempts to get the menu items right were truly hilarious. So, after all the commercials had been transferred to carts, I went back to the original reel and patched together some of the funniest outtakes. These became the basis for a short “behind the scenes” audio feature I put together as a souvenir for Bobo. It played between games during a double-header against Gonzaga one afternoon, broadcast on the air and over the loudspeakers at Bailey Field. When it ended, everyone in the stands clapped for Bobo, who acknowledged the applause by walking onto the field and doffing his baseball helmet. I still smile at the memory.
For fans of Bobo who’d like to hear his voice again, here’s that audio feature.
