Leo Lassen, Seattle Rainiers’ Mr. Baseball

   May 15, 2019 1:16 am  2 Comments

Leo H. Lassen was born in Marathon County, Wisconsin, in 1899. He moved to Seattle when he was a child. As a young man, Lassen worked as an office boy at the Post-Intelligencer and later a sports editor at the Seattle Star.

In 1931, when a broadcasting position became open in Seattle, Lassen moved from sports writer to the announcer’s chair. Leo was great at announcing Seattle home games, but where he really was outstanding was his ability to effectively “re-create” the action to his listening audience for the out of town events. Most listeners did not know that for those games, Leo was only reading from a ticker tape. This baseball legend passed away on December 5, 1975.

Author: Bruce Caplan

Bruce Caplan is a Seattle native with very eclectic interests. Back in the 70’s he was the sponsor of a 40’s music radio show on KXA in Seattle. When he watched the movie Titanic staring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck in 1953 Caplan became fascinated with the horrible tragedy. In 1996 his book on the subject was released. It’s now in the 20th printing. A decade ago Caplan began to do a weekly radio show on KIXI. The program is called Radio Trivia and he weekly brings to his audience the best of the best of the comedies from the golden age of radio. Because of Caplan’s interest in true crime, he began a second program on KIXI called Crime Club. On this show he often discuses events with authors of books on criminal subjects and weekly plays the great radio mysteries from long ago. Bruce has lectured throughout our nation and on scores of cruises. His greatest thrill is searching through the goldmine of radio gems of mysteries and comedies from yesteryear and bringing them back to an eager audience of young and old. --- View other articles by Bruce Caplan

2 thoughts on “Leo Lassen, Seattle Rainiers’ Mr. Baseball”

  2. I lived in Seattle as a youth and was a Baseball fan. The 1951 team with Jimmy Rivera, Walt Judnick, Al Lyons, George Vico and Elmer Singleton etc etc coached by Rogers Hornsby introduced me to the inimitable Leo (“Mr. Baseball”) LEO LASSEN. I followed him For years and, having lived in New York since 1969, remain an ardent Leo fan (“back….back. Back, and it’s over”. How nice to know he is being remembered.
    Jay C Carlisle

    Reply

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