Bill King facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Bill King
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King in 1994 prior to an Athletics game at Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum.
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| Born | October 6, 1927 Bloomington, Illinois, U.S.
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| Died | October 18, 2005 (aged 78) San Leandro, California, U.S.
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| Sports commentary career | |
| Team(s) | San Francisco Giants(1958–62) San Francisco/Golden State Warriors (1962–83) Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders (1966–92) Oakland Athletics (1981–2005) |
| Genre(s) | Play-by-play |
| Sports | Major League Baseball National Basketball Association National Football League |
Wilbur "Bill" King (October 6, 1927 – October 18, 2005) was an American sports announcer. In 2016, the National Baseball Hall of Fame named King recipient of the 2017 Ford C. Frick Award, the highest honor for American baseball broadcasters.
King was the radio voice of the Oakland Athletics baseball team for 25 years (1981–2005), the longest tenure of any A's announcer since the team's games were first broadcast in Philadelphia in 1938, as well as the longtime radio play-by-play announcer for the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders football team and the San Francisco/Golden State Warriors basketball team. Earlier in his career, he had been a member of the San Francisco Giants' original broadcasting team (together with Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons) when the Giants moved west from New York in 1958, and had called University of California football and basketball games.
King was widely recognized by his distinctive handlebar moustache and Van Dyke beard, as well as his broadcasting catchphrase, "Holy Toledo!"
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Early broadcasting career
King was born in Bloomington, Illinois, and was stationed on the island of Guam at the end of World War II when he began his broadcasting career with the Armed Forces Radio Network, converting play-by-play accounts of games as they came in over the wire and broadcasting them in a manner that made it sound as if he were actually at the game. After the war, he began his professional sportscasting career in Pekin, Illinois, broadcasting high school football and basketball games as well as Minor League Baseball games. In the early 1950s, King served as the lead play-by-play announcer on WTAD 930 AM in Quincy, Illinois. He later announced basketball games for Bradley University and basketball and football games for the University of Nebraska. King moved to the Bay Area in 1958, when the San Francisco Giants hired him as an announcer.
Oakland sports
Voice of the Warriors
A major turning point in King's career came in 1962, when the Philadelphia Warriors of the National Basketball Association moved to San Francisco and hired him as their play-by-play announcer. King announced Warrior games from 1962 to 1983, through the Wilt Chamberlain, Nate Thurmond, and Rick Barry eras and the team's first NBA Championship on the West Coast, in 1974–1975.
Franklin Mieuli, the owner of the Warriors upon their transfer to the Bay Area, had worked with King on Giants baseball on KSFO and the Golden West Radio Network, serving as executive producer for the broadcasts.
King was not shy about disagreeing with the referee's calls during the course of his play-by-play work, and was a notorious ref-baiter. In his most infamous incident, he used an expletive on the air to describe a referee's call, and the Warriors were charged with a technical foul. He may be the only professional sports announcer ever charged with an infraction during the course of play.
Voice of the Raiders
In 1966, while continuing to call Warrior games, King was hired as the play-by-play announcer for the Oakland Raiders, then of the American Football League, a post he held until after the 1992 season. For a time, he commuted to Los Angeles when the Raiders relocated to Southern California from 1982–1994. He announced the Raiders' three Super Bowl victories, as well as countless other memorable games.
Perhaps King's most famous call came during the Raiders' infamous Holy Roller game against the San Diego Chargers on September 10, 1978. In the final seconds of the game, Raider quarterback Ken Stabler tossed the ball forward, and tight end Dave Casper grabbed it in the end zone for a disputed, game-winning touchdown. King's description:
The ball, flipped forward, is loose! A wild scramble, two seconds on the clock...Casper grabbing the ball...it is ruled a fumble...Casper has recovered in the end zone!! The Oakland Raiders have scored on the most zany, unbelievable, absolutely impossible dream of a play! Madden is on the field. He wants to know if it's real. They said yes, get your big butt out of here! He does! There's nothing real in the world anymore! The Raiders have won the football game! The Chargers....they don't believe it. Fifty-two thousand people are stunned. This one will be relived forever!
Another famous call came on November 8, 1970, when George Blanda came off the bench in the fourth quarter against the Cleveland Browns, threw for a tying touchdown with less than 2 minutes left, and kicked the winning field goal as time ran out. King reacted by declaring "George Blanda has just been elected King of the World!"
Voice of the Athletics
Though carrying a substantial workload as the announcer for two professional sports teams, King was persuaded by the new owners of the Oakland Athletics to become their lead announcer in 1981. King continued to call Raider and Warrior games, though he retired as the Warriors' announcer after 1983 and was fired by the Raider owner Al Davis after the 1992 season. For the first 15 years as A's announcer, King was paired with another legendary Bay Area sports announcer, Lon Simmons, with whom King had worked briefly with the Giants in 1958. He was there during the "Billyball" and "Bash Brothers" eras, as well as the Moneyball era of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Former Athletics announcer Greg Papa, who worked alongside King for 13 years, says of King:
Bill is without a doubt the best radio play-by-play announcer I have heard in all of sports. His energy, preparation, his thoroughness, his word choice—he is without peer.
Renaissance man
King was often described as a Renaissance man who was a voracious reader, loved to watch the ballet and opera in his spare time, and studied Russian history. He lived in Sausalito, California, and would often go on long sailing trips in the baseball off-season on his ketch, Varuna.
Calls and phrases
King's trademark phrase was "Holy Toledo", which he used when a stupendous event occurred for the team he was announcing for. Other well known calls is "Crazy...just plain crazy!" which he voiced when Scott Hatteberg hit his walk-off home run against the Kansas City Royals to push the Athletics’ historic win streak to twenty games. He also referred a grinning John Madden as a "slit watermelon" as a compliment when Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1977 with Madden as a coach.
Death
King died of a pulmonary embolus in San Leandro, California, on October 18, 2005, at the age of 78. Although King had long refused to reveal his age, a search of the Social Security Death Index revealed he had been born on October 6, 1927 a year also confirmed by his son, Michael.
Legacy
King is one of only three people ever awarded both a World Series ring and a Super Bowl ring. The others were Bob Sheppard, the long-time stadium voice of the New York Football Giants and New York Yankees, and sports executive Larry Lucchino.
As noted in the San Francisco Chronicle, "King was believed to be 78. The lack of knowledge of his exact age was one of the many quirks that made King one of the great characters in Bay Area sports."
Bill King was a member of the first class of inductees into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2006.
On December 7, 2016, he was named the 2017 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The NFL Network named King the #6 greatest NFL announcer of all time.
Publication of Holy Toledo
In September 2013, Wellstone Books released Ken Korach's Holy Toledo – Lessons from Bill King: Renaissance Man of the Mic. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins wrote that the book "beautifully captured" King; Lowell Cohn, of the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, said it was "soon to be a legend among sports books"; and Bay Area News Group columnist Carl Steward called Holy Toledo a "fabulous, engaging read."
