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RIP Bob Wolff, 96, announcer who called Don Larsen's perfect game nationally and the Washington Senators regionally. We who are old enough remember him as the television voice of the Knicks during their championship runs and, later, the main sports guy on News 12 Long Island from its founding forward. A long and storied career that began right around the same time television did and extended, in some capacity, until very recently. Neil Best offers a fine remembrance here.
Bob Wolff was born before the first live radio broadcast of a sports event.
He began his announcing career the same spring that a sports event first was broadcast live on television.
He interviewed Babe Ruth and Jim Thorpe.
He called both a World Series perfect game and “The Greatest Game Ever Played.”
And he seemed to have a great deal of fun doing it, approaching a dream job as if it all were a happy dream, making friends across several generations of athletes, coaches, executives, fans and colleagues.
To say that Wolff, — who died Saturday at the age of 96 according to News 12 — had a heck of a run would be to understate the obvious. He liked it so much that he worked deep into his 90s, cementing his status as the longest-working sports broadcaster in history.
Wolff was born in New York on Nov. 29, 1920, and attended Duke on a baseball scholarship. When he broke his ankle during a rundown in 1939, he tried his hand at the radio business, and succeeded.
From 1947-60 he was the voice of the Washington Senators, during which he enhanced broadcasts of mostly losing teams by interviewing baseball’s biggest names, past and present, including Ruth, Connie Mack, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker. He even was able to tame the famously cranky Ted Williams.
More importantly, he had the foresight to keep and organize the recordings, hundreds of which he later donated to the Library of Congress.
During that period he also did national work, including radio calls of Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yankees in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series and the Colts’ overtime victory over the Giants in the 1958 NFL Championship Game.
Wolff lived for many years in South Nyack, New York, but he worked at News 12 Long Island, starting in 1986, usually getting a ride to work from his wife, Jane, whom he married in 1945. He also did commentary for News 12.
Wolff was honored by the baseball and basketball Halls of Fame, is in the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame and was an inducted into Madison Square Garden’s Walk of Fame.
Many baby boomer-era Knicks fans recall him as the TV voice of the team during its championship era in the early 1970s.
Two of Wolff’s favorites from that era: The 106-105 victory over the Cincinnati Royals on Nov. 28, 1969, that gave the Knicks their then-record 18th victory in a row, and the Nov. 18, 1972, victory over the Bucks in which the Knicks scored the final 19 points to win, 87-86, at the Garden.
Another of his signature events was the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which he called for more than three decades.
But the Larsen game, in which he followed the tradition of the time and refused to use the words “no-hitter” or “perfect game” as the day unfolded, remains his signature moment.
One of Wolff’s sons, Rick, is an author and weekend morning radio host at WFAN. |
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