BOSTON – Ned Martin, the radio and television voice of the Boston Red Sox for 32 years, was remembered by friends and colleagues for his gentle wit, his love of baseball and his trademark call "Mercy."

Martin died Tuesday, one day after attending the Ted Williams tribute at Fenway Park. He was 78.

Martin collapsed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport after a return trip from Boston, en route to his home in Clarksville, Va. Martin's daughter, Caroline, said he apparently was stricken on an airport shuttle bus that was taking him from the terminal to the parking lot where he had left his car. She said he was traveling alone.

The cause of death was not immediately known. "Ned was just a wonderful man and broadcaster," said Ken Coleman, one of his former Red Sox broadcast partners who visited with him at the Williams tribute. "I loved the guy. We just enjoyed being with each other.

"He had a style all of his own. He was marvelous." Martin called Carlton Fisk's home run to win Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, Carl Yastrzemski's 3,000th hit in 1979, and Roger Clemens' first 20-strikeout game in 1986. "Ned was certainly the most literate of all broadcasters," said WEEI baseball broadcaster Joe Castiglione, who remembered Martin as a Hemingway scholar. "He captured the romantic and poetic aspects of the game probably as well as anybody." Martin began his career in 1956 covering minor league baseball in West Virginia. He joined Curt Gowdy in the Red Sox booth in 1961 and stayed there for the rest of his career. He retired in 1992.

He announced the AL playoffs on CBS radio four times and worked the 1975 World Series on television for NBC. The Red Sox inducted Martin into their Hall of Fame in 2000. At Monday's tribute, Martin joined Yastrzemski and journalist Peter Gammons on Fenway Park's infield to discuss their memories of Williams as part of the official ceremony.

Castiglione said Martin was "chipper" and in good health Tuesday morning when they talked. While in Boston, Martin saw old friends and two of his children who live on Cape Cod, he said. "He was truly a modest individual. He was never bigger than the event," Castiglione said. "People trusted him. He never covered up. He just was very honest and very descriptive."

The Duke graduate also was a talented football announcer and did play-by-play for the Boston Patriots in 1965, Harvard, Dartmouth and Yale. Martin served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II and fought at Iwo Jima. Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

The Assoicated Press – July 2002