St. Louis Cardinals: Did Dizzy Dean come in from the radio booth to pitch a game for them?

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: A team's radio announcer came in to pitch the final game of the team's season.

Criticism of professional athletes by announcers put an interesting spin on a traditional retort that people being criticized often use, which is the classic "could you do any better?" In the case of sports announcers, though, the one doing the criticism often was once a professional athlete, and often legitimately could have done better when they were younger! Therefore, quite often the playing career of the media member is put on trial when they criticize current players. In October 2010, when Brandon Marshall of the Miami Dolphins was criticized by NFL Network analysts Sterling Sharpe, Mike Mayock and Solomon Wilcots (all former NFL players) over his conditioning, Marshall retorted, "But again, those guys never coached, and I don't honestly think that those guys were elite players, including Sterling Sharpe. I know he's done some good things, but from my understanding, he's not a Hall of Fame player." When Sharpe was Marshall's age, he actually had a better resume (by 26, they were both named to two Pro Bowls, but Sharpe also was a first team All-Pro while Marshall was "just" a second teamer), but imagine if the 45-year-old Sharpe could actually back up his criticisms of the 26-year-old Marshall on the field? That's just what St. Louis Cardinal legend Dizzy Dean did on the last day of the 1947 season when he came out of retirement for one last game just to prove a point.

Read on to see what happened!