Meet the loudest fan a Washington baseball team ever had

— Joseph O’Connell, Gaithersburg

One fan’s enthusiasm can cause another fan’s annoyance. Such was the case with Bruce S. McAllister, a polarizing figure in the baseball history of at least two cities. Before being called “the Howling Marine,” McAllister was known as “the Human Screech Owl.”

That was back when he lived in Pennsylvania and attended Pittsburgh Pirates games. McAllister was a die-hard Bucs fan. He wasn’t like those silent fans who are content to quietly fill in their scorecards. No. By his own admission, McAllister was “a crazy fan.”

The sound McAllister made when rooting for his team — and against its opponent — was variously likened to a “foghorn,” a “thousand stuck pigs” and a “cross between the bark of a trained seal and the cry of anguish of a wounded jungle cat.”

The noise was so loud and annoying that the Forbes Field management banned him from the park. His screech was going out over the radio. According to the Milwaukee Journal, protests from the fans lifted the ban. (Fans and radio broadcasters weren’t the only ones alienated by McAllister. In 1941, his wife filed for divorce, citing his preference for the team over her. She had other reasons. The Milwaukee Journal reported that she claimed McAllister subjected her to “cruel and barbarous treatment and indignities.”)

In World War II, McAllister rejoined the Marine Corps. He was posted to Quantico, allowing him to attend Senators games at Griffith Stadium on Georgia Avenue NW.

“The fans have seen many a player started on the trip to the showers by his thunderous heckle,” the Evening Star reported.

Master Sgt. McAllister was eventually posted to the Pacific, where he served as a quartermaster. In a letter to the Star from Guam, he wrote: “My voice may carry into the radio microphone so strongly that I become a part of all broadcasts. That’s the radio’s fault … When I go to a game I just let myself go.”

He said he made many fans at the ballpark, including team owner Clark Griffith, George Marshall, the football team owner, and various senators.

“Of course I made a few enemies too, among them a high ranking military man and a high government official (now deceased),” he wrote. “They were tired old men who didn’t understand my exuberance and loyalty to the Senators, the Redskins and everything in general pertaining to the City of Washington.”

As in Pittsburgh, the team temporarily “silenced” McAllister — unfairly in his view.

“I never used profane nor obscene language,” he wrote. “I never baited the umpires and I never consumed liquor in the ballpark.”

McAllister was still around in 1950, when he sat behind President Harry S. Truman at a Senators-Athletics game. His proximity to the president did not lessen McAllister’s enthusiasm, or his “total nerve warfare,” as the New York Times described it. Truman and Vice President Alben W. Barkley “chuckled over McAllister’s brazen howls,” the Times reported.

That same summer, McAllister competed in a charity yelling contest at Griffith Stadium against big-mouthed comedian Jerry Colonna. It was a tie. Both men received medals reading “For outstanding achievement in the science of yowling.”

Not everyone was impressed. The Star published a letter from “Disgusted Anti-Noiser” who said McAllister must surely be in pain, as “no normal, healthy grown-up would ever emit such noises. Not even in a ballpark! But, perhaps, I am misinformed as to his age; and maybe he simply needs to be burped or have his diapers changed.”

McAllister died in 1991 in Fort Myers, Fla., and was buried there, silenced at last.

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