Every sports fan growing up in the Bay Area in the 70's, (like me) will never forget Bill King.
Bill King was and is the greatest local sports broadcaster ever to grace the airwaves. To this day, his incredible legacy will forever be ingrained into the SF-Oakland media landscape.
I was thinking about King and how he'd react to the current state of radio/TV play-by-play announcers. The overt homerism, the constant booster club style. Yuck.
Sure, we live in a different era. The business has changed. I know. I know. I don't think Bill King would have been affected by this new era. Bill would still have done it his way only because there was no other way to do it. That's why Bill King was so beloved by Bay Area sports fans--he was so damn honest and forthcoming that he didn't have to back down. When someone, some team, some coach, manager screwed up, King would never sugarcoat, truly, he did tell it like it is.
I can't believe its been nearly six years since King's passing. I still remember him calling the Immaculate reception. I can hear him barking out at NBA ref, Ed Rush and literally calling out a fan in Seattle, courtside, where a thrown bottle of vodka hits King on the sleeve. I can recall his hysterics of the holly-roller play in San Diego when Stabler did his thing.
Nobody around these days comes close to the greatness of King. Lon Simmons, (retired) comes close. Hank Greenwald was special. Ted Robinson and Roxy Bernstein are pretty solid and consistent. Jon Miller is talented, but remarkably overrated. Ken Korach keeps it simple and straight and never fails to give the score. Greg Papa's "Touchdownnnnnnnnnnnnn Raiders" shrill rings hollow when the team is down 24-3 in the 4th quarter. Tim Roye? Are you kidding me. And please, don't even mention that shill, Fitz...
Beyond his on-air gleam and cachet, (he did all three sports--A's, Raiders and Warriors) King was a complete gentleman on and off the mike. He was a big opera and ballet fan. He could wax, poetically, about the best Italian restaurant in the city. If he never knew you and you chanced on a conversation with him on the field during batting practice, he'd speak to you like he knew you for years. Bill had no aura nor entourage. He was simply Bill.
I recall the time we spoke at great length at the Coliseum a few years before his death. I was talking to him about how all the homers had overtaken the business. He told me a funny story.
Early in the "Billy Ball" days of the A's, Dwayne Murphy hit a game-ending homer. King called the play in his familiar lucid tones, just happy enough, but not hysterical to the tone of absurdity. Later that day in the dugout, Murphy heard the call in the post game highlights. He called over king and chided him for not "being too excited."
King told Murphy to come over to a corner of the clubhouse. "Young man, you just paid me the greatest compliment."
Bill King. Class, dignity, and professionally, the best that ever was.
Holy Toledo!
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Very well written article. Sure do miss him. Thanks for sharing your memories and thoughts.
ReplyDeleteRich,
ReplyDeleteI remember going to A's games, listening to Bill call the game on the radio. I got so caught up in Bill's play by play I had forgotten I was in the stadium.
408er
I spent many teenage hours listening to Bill call W's games during the seasons of the franchise's downhill toboggan run from the NBA title.
ReplyDeleteI hoped for rain delays when Bill was on the mike. I particularly relished his forays into the great expanse of Russian! history. A Renaissance man for our time.
Bleacher Dave
He was very good, but to say he wasn't a homer is showing either your own bias or ignorance.
ReplyDeleteThe only times that I remember him criticizing a ref for a bad call was when the call went against his team.
It is normal to feel that the broadcasters of our youth are better than those today. We all feel that way.
"You know I don't sugar coat things"-Eric Byrnes on KNBR last week. Today,he and Dave Benz were amazed at Lincecums regaining his fastball-like magic!..they offered NO explanation. Never,did they mention Lincecums huge weight loss last year,his weight gain of nearly 30 pounds in 7 months this year. Mind you,Lincecum once missed an all star game because of "dehydration" Oh,he surely has issues with food and intake.
ReplyDeleteBenz, and Brynes-who last year like FP said Lincecum was done as a pitcher- never brought up so obvious and serious weight fluxuations with the star pitcher..It's Taboo-another KNBR and Comcast aka KNBR TV, subject they will not talk about.
Brynes is such a scumball weazel and company man. You know he and Hammer and Griggs do a circle...He's a KNBR type to the bone.
I just had to add that above post- Brynes is the Anti-Bill King. How low sportscorps have gotten.
ReplyDelete10:49 Ignores the big difference- Bill or Lon didnt make excuses. They wouldnt say he was a gutless wonder to drop that flyball-but they didnt make EXCUSES. He should have caught it..
ReplyDeleteNOW, you have homers who make excuses. Example? Krukow last year when Posey had his frist real dip in BA, claimed that Posey "Was still getting used to wooden bats" !-lol. THAT was a doozy!
Fitzgerald? I would take up all Rich's bandwidth..the man is habitual. "Tina,the Warriors cheerleader wouldn't have dropped her POM POM",Bob,would say,"Because,uh,uh, she has PMS"!.
He talks excuses before his brain catches up..and he likes it that way!
Bill King is the symbol of East Bay sports. He called two A's dynasties, three Raider Super Bowls and was brilliant with the W's. He is Bay Area royalty and would be in the baseball radio hall of fame if the SF based media really pushed for it, as they should be doing.
ReplyDeleteBill was one of a kind. He could do it all: baseball, basketball, football. He never would have been a homer or done an afternoon talk show like their current GSW accouner has, "Chuckles".
ReplyDeleteI said after he passed away it would have been a class move for the Coliseum Complex and their three tennants to erect a statue of Bill King in the walkway between the two facilities as the storyteller for many years of East Bay Sports.
ReplyDeleteRich, great article about Bill. One great sports tonsil was Russ Hodges, how you can you forget him? He was paired with Lon for years.
ReplyDeleteYou're comparing Roxy Bernstein to Bill King? Did he pay you to say that?
ReplyDeleteWe were lucky in the 70's as kids. We actually "listened" to the games. I mean on the edge of the seat listening to Warriors basketball. He would get as excited if it was Rick Barry or "Downtown" Freddy Brown dropping 50 points.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started about the Raiders. That's been well chronicled by NFL Films. Second to none.
R.I.P. Bill.
Three thoughts in honor of the Eastbay Three:
ReplyDelete1) Rich, it was probably one of his two 1981 walkoffs, either against the Red Sox (after Eck, then the Sox starting ace, gave up the tying bridge piece to Tony Armas with 2 outs in the 9th) before the strike, or the first game after the strike against the Angels on a Fireworks night. Bill's first year with the A's was Billyball's 2nd year and only Mr. Martin's most successful team, the Yankees, finished ahead of them in the AL.
2) Let's give well-wishes to the biggest Bill King fan in NFL history - Steve Sabol, Mr. NFL Films himself, who is fighting a tumor as he prepares to induct his dad Ed into Canton OH.
3) There's a Facebook page called 'Remembering Bill King'. Please feel free to 'like' it!
To the poster who wrote, "He was very good, but to say he wasn't a homer is showing either your own bias or ignorance," let me say this:
ReplyDeleteAlong with Vin Scully, there has never been a more "play it straight down the middle" broadcaster than Bill King. The other night I was watching the NFL Network and they were doing a documentary on the 1980 San Diego Chargers. There were some highlights shown from a game against the Raiders that season, and what radio sound bites did they utilize for Kellen Winslow's touchdowns? Not those from the Chargers' play-by-play voice. They were instead all from Bill King's Raiders broadcast of the game, and by the excitement in his voice, you would have believed that HE was the Chargers' radio broadcaster. That's what kind of pro he was. He exhaulted in great performances, whether it was for his team or the opposing squad. If you ever tuned in to a Raiders or Warriors game late, like during the post-game show, you could never tell by his voice if they had won or lost until you finally heard the score. If I tune in to the postgame of a Giants brodcast late, I can tell in a half a second if they lost by the forlorn voices of their homer braodcast team. Quite the opposite of the sublime Bill King.
As far as his berating of refs, he hated incompetence and would call it out. End of story. I heard him berate refs for calls that went in the Warriors favor, and anybody who is of a certain age and listened to all those games on the radio in the 70's (they weren't on TV much so radio was how you followed the team) would tell you the same thing.
He was a local treasure and I don't care if he's in the HOF or not. They didn't extend the honor of bestowing it to him while he was alive so to me, it's too little too late. He wasn't a self-promoter or a gimmicky broadcaster and he didn't have national aspirations, so that meant his exposure to the rest of the country was not broad. All he was in the end, however, was a pro's pro, and just about the best radio sports broadcaster this country ever produced. Like many who listened to him with great regularity, I always say that baseball was his third-best sport, and football, his second (yet he was marvelous at both.) He was flat-out, however, the greatest radio broadcaster of NBA basketball that ever lived, and you had to listen to him describe a game to know what that means.
I am in total agreement regarding his prowess in the respective sports. Rapid fire, staccato, in his description of hardcourt action: painting a tense tapestry in setting up a game-ending exploit by George Blanda: leisurely as he offered up historically-weaved stories for fans waiting the resumption of a rain-delayed A's game.
DeleteMy most definitive recollection of King can only be recalled in a paraphrase; "George Blanda has just tied the Bay Area into knots from it might never extricate itself from again!"
Extricate? Enough said!
As a Bay Area native who moved to LA as a kid, I loved Chick Hearn, even though he announced for our rivals (the Lakers). Cut from the same cloth.
ReplyDeleteWhen Golden State Warrior Sleepy Floyd went for something like 25 points in ONE QUARTER of a playoff game against the Lakers, Hearn was going crazy! "Give it to Sleepy. Give it to Sleepy!... If you want meat, you go to the meat market. Give it to Sleepy!!... and he SCORES AGAIN over Jabbar! The Good Lord and his 12 Disciples couldn't stop Floyd tonight!"
He supported the Lakers, but he supported his fellow man, the truth, and basketball, first.
Darby O,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't have said it any better myself. I also grew up as a child of the 70's, fell asleep many nights listening to Bill King call a Warriors game. He was flat out the best basketball announcer in broadcasting history. His Raiders work was also second to none.
Its pathetic and embarrassing that he isn't in any HOf. I'm not going to discredit the fine work of gentleman that have been inducted since Bill's passing, but Bill was just as important and the fabric of our community as Harwell/Niehaus/etc..to their communities. And for my money, as good as they were, they couldn't hold a candle to Bill.
Rich, thanks for the article. Brings back wonderful memories.
I enjoyed King as a basketball announcer (never heard him do football, not a Raiders fan) but did catch him doing baseball, mainly A's broadcasts. Just my baseball preference, but I think he talked too much, and too fast for baseball.(Papa does so too). I prefer the take it easy, mellow baseball style of Lon Simmons, Ken Korach, Jon Miller etc.
ReplyDeleteI remember Bill King being interviewed many,many,times by local sports anchors..and quoted by sports writers.
ReplyDeleteBob Fitzgerald? never seen him even mentioned by another local sports entity. He has no credibility with local sports writers or broadcasters. Imagine that- 15 years as Warriors PBP..and he's a nobody,his opinions on the team he covers not asked for and the ones he makes on his sports show ignored.
He must feel incredibly frustrated and humiliated.
I heard the cretinous Fitz interview ex-NBA'er Jon Barry on his KNBR show yesterday, and as the segment concluded, "Giggles" nonchalantly tossed out how they should get on the links the next time Barry was in town, and you could sense in Barry's voice an aprehension -- he didn't want to outright say, "Get lost, tool," but you got the feeling that was where he wanted to go with it. Fitz was just trying desperately to show that he rolls with guys like Barry (or thinks he does.) Could you imagine Bill King behaving in such a way? Each time I have to listen to that duplicitous, back-stabbing (ask Papa), scumbag Fitz, it makes me yearn for the greatness of Bill King even more. I truly loathe that guy.
ReplyDeleteI've been a Warriors season-ticket holder for several years and I received a call last week from their ticket office about re-upping and I said I was going to wait and see if Lacob has the integrity to fire Robert Rowell and Bob Fitzgerald before I commit to another season. Needless to say, the silence on the other end of the phone was deafening...
In the words of Horatio Sanz:"The best in the business Bill!"
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't just the 70's. It was the 80s 90s and 2000s. His last memorable broadcast for me was the deciding game 5 against the red sox in ALDS. " Base's loaded, two outs, the A's 90ft away from tying and 180 from the promised land. Terrence Long at the Plate, and the pitch, Outside ball one..The A's have set themselves a delicious table for victory." the problem was TLong Struck out! My wife married me cause of Bill King. I went to Gonzaga U in the early 1990's. Local TV never had Raiders on the Radio, so every Sunday I had to drive 75 miles into Idaho to pick up a 100watt am out of Plummer. Station had such bad ratings that they simulated the entire KFI Broadcast including local weather and Bill King's Rock Honda copy. The woods of Northern Idaho are still echoing Holy Toldeo!!" May he rest in peace.
ReplyDelete