I said today in my Examiner.com piece that Jon Miller is a worthy choice to enter the broadcast wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I also said its unconscionable that Bill King is not in Cooperstown.
King wasn't only a class act ON the air, but off it as well. He was a mensch. That's a Yiddish term which means "decent person." Kings' credits are too numerous to cite and knowing Bill, (which I sort of did) he could care less about awards, even something as sacred as the MLB Hall of Fame.
The moment King's passing, (Oct. 18, 2005) was announced, I was utterly stunned and shaken. I knew he was in his late 70's and had heard of his various ailments, but really, I thought he was bullet-proof. If anybody could live to 100 and beyond, it was King.
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Bill took me aside many times and we chatted about lots of subjects, sometimes little about baseball and sports. He loved the culture world and his legendary fondness of the opera and ballet wasn't over-stated. He was a connoisseur of the arts and would speak glowingly of various performances.
He loved food too. HIS food. His culinary acumen was on par with Julia Child. He could tell you how to cook the best dishes and in the next sentence recite Reggie Jackson's career highlights.
When I was working in radio in the mid-to-late 90's full time in the Bay Area, Bill once came by and told me he enjoyed my reports. Seriously now, Bill? He wasn't kidding. He didn't care that most people didn't particularly like me; he was Bill being Bill. Bill was a good person. Not just for that reason, but too many to talk about now.
I still miss Bill King. His contribution to the world of sports broadcasting will forever be cherished. His legacy will live on eternally.
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Does that mean Bill King should be in the basketball and football HOF's as well for his work with the Raiders and the Warriors respectfully? Regardless of that I agree with you that he should be in the baseball HOF, he painted a beautiful picture of a baseball game and deserves to be enshrined with all the other greats.
ReplyDeleteAlso do you agree with a certain bay area radio host that Miller got in because of the national broadcasts on ESPN and if we looked at just his work with the A's Orioles, and Giants etc. it may not of happened so soon?
I saw Ray Ratto's column in the Chronicle today in which he laments that Bill King may never receive the national recognition he deserves. To me, that is irrelevant. Those of us that grew up with him know he was the best and most versatile sports broadcaster on radio that there ever was. His voice is part of the soundtrack of our childhoods if you're 40-years-old and up. And as great as he was as a baseball broadcaster, he was in another galaxy in football and basketball. I remember listening to KNBR the night he died and many callers shared their favorite memories and some of them dated back more than 30 years, to classic lines he might have uttered during a midweek Warriors game in some lost season and may have only been recalled by a handful of people on the planet. One in particular was a caller saying that he remembered King being apoplectic about a bad call that ended a Warriors game (with the W's on the wrong side of the ledger) and after a scathing criticism of the two refs responsible, he said that they were shambling off the court, "like two sows at the county fair." Genius. The guy was such a pro.
ReplyDeleteWe've had so many crummy broadcasters of late -the incompetent Joe Starkey (ask yourself: how would Bill King have called "The Play?"), the obsequious and cretinous Bob Fitzgerald, the management suck-ups Kruk and Kuip (two colossal lightweights), and the list goes on. Ironically, the best, and most honest broadcaster on the scene these days, other than Jon Miller (who knows he has too much power to be canned) is Bill King's old broadcast partner Ken Korach. King came from another era of broadcasting - he had begun his career in the 1940's - before these guys were supposed to be dishonest marketing arms of their organizations. He would have eviscerated this group of Warrior players and management, which is why Cohan would have fired him long ago. And the Raiders? No way he would have suffered silently at their incompetence.
Miller's cachet was enhanced with his baseball work on ESPN and yes, his Giants connection. He also ONLY broadcast baseball and not other sports, (although in the late 70's, he did USF basketball) like Bill King did...Truth is King was good at ALL sports. He excelled. His work with the Raiders, A's and Warriors is HOF worth, end of story.
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