Birthday profile

Al Helfer

Al Helfer, American sportscaster (died 1975)

Born
September 26, 1911
Died
May 16, 1975
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1911

About Al Helfer

George Alvin "Al" Helfer (September 26, 1911 – May 16, 1975) was an American radio sportscaster. Nicknamed "Mr. Radio Baseball", Helfer called the play-by-play of seven World Series, ten All-Star Games, and regular season broadcasts for several teams (among them the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and Oakland Athletics) and the Mutual and NBC networks. He also broadcast the Army–Navy Game during the 1940s and '50s and several Rose Bowl games for NBC Radio in the 1950s. == Early life and career == Helfer was born in Elrama, Pennsylvania. He played football and basketball at Washington & Jefferson College, and took his first job as a sports reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after graduation, also calling the football games of the Pittsburgh Pirates (as they were then called) and Pittsburgh Panthers for radio station WWSW. He started broadcasting recreations of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball games in 1933. He joined Red Barber as the regular broadcast team of the Cincinnati Reds in 1935. He left Cincinnati to join CBS in 1937, working a few baseball games and a lot of football games. Helfer was reunited with Barber (who often addressed him on-air as "Brother Al") on the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasts in 1939. They worked together until 1941, when Helfer joined the U.S. Navy during World War II. When he returned the Dodgers job was no longer available, so Helfer started doing "Game of the Day" broadcasts for Mutual.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

The world when Al Helfer was born

Al Helfer was born in 1911. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1911

  • Best-selling book"The Broad Highway" – Jeffery Farnol

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Indianapolis 500 race
  • Top headlineTriangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 workers
  • Technology milestoneFirst transcontinental airplane flight (49 days)
  • World population~1.71B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam Howard Taft
  • U.S. population93.4M

1911 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Al Helfer's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19112026
Population93.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Prabook, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.