Idiots Write About Sports

I miss you already, Bill.
Update: OK, I’ve had some time to gather my thoughts into something that is hopefully both coherent and non-idiotic… but I make no promises.
I’ve had the great fortune to spend my entire life within earshot of two of the three greatest radio play-by-play men of the past half-century — Vin Scully and Bill King. (The third, Ernie Harwell, I got to listen to during the occasional CBS Radio broadcast.) In fact, my family moved to the Bay Area at the start of Bill King’s second year broadcasting Oakland games, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s the only voice of the A’s that I’ve ever known. And I can’t articulate how much I’m going to miss hearing him.
When my wife and I got the chance to move back to the Bay Area last month, we looked forward to a number of things — proximity to friends and family, the opportunity to return to a part of the world we enjoyed living in… and Bill King on the radio, describing another A’s game. We moved back just in time to catch the last few games of the season and we got treated to some classic King moments…
• The mischievious wit: It was the last Saturday game of the season, a just-playing-out-the-string affair from Safeco Field. Since there was no TV telecast that day, Ray Fosse joined King and Ken Korach in the booth.
“The unholy trio, together one last time in 2005,” Korach said.
“The unholy trio on the holy flagship station,” King instantly shot back — a reference to the mid-season format switch of 610AM from rock ‘n roll oldies to an all-olde-timey-religion format.
• The admirable ability to say what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted: The final broadcast of the year featured highlights from the 2005 season, including an extra innings A’s win over the New York Mets. King despised these interleague games — just absolutely hated them, to the point where he wouldn’t even travel with the team on to NL cities. Still, there was the clip of him, calling that A’s-Mets game with typical enthusiasm.
“You sounded pretty excited there,” Korach teased. “For an interleague game.”
“Well,” King said, “it’s still baseball.”
Which calls to mind a time in the 2002 season, when the A’s were about to depart on a road trip to the outer reaches of the NL Central. “Ray and I will be heading to Pittsburgh and then Cincinnati after this game, Bill,” Korach said, followed by the iciest pause I ever hope to hear.
“You have a real good time,” King said.
The King-Korach tandem was a fantastic radio team. I got to listen to Ken Korach speak at a Baseball Prospectus event in 2004. Korach, as it turns out, grew up in Los Angeles, where he was able to pick up the occasional radio signal from Northern California and hear Bill King broadcasting Warriors games. King was one of the people Korach idolized — Scully and Chick Hearn were the others — and I can only imagine how equally terrifying and thrilling it must be to get a chance to work with someone who inspired you to follow a particular career path.
“He was the greatest sportscaster I ever heard,” Korach says in this wire story. “He brought an immense amount of passion and dedication to every broadcast and touched so many people.”
Anybody who can make that claim has lived a damned complete life. It was a privilege to listen to him.