Rest In Peace, Bill King
Today marked the passing of one of the greatest sports announcers ever to have lived. And that's not just my point of view: Anyone who ever listened (and I mean really listened) to Bill King has been moved by his passion and his ability to bridge the monumental gap between the minute details of a sporting event and the ears of the fan who longed to witness the match first hand but, due to the constraints of life, is forced to make out words through the scratchiness of a cheap radio and imagine.
Bill King had the unique gift of not only capturing and describing the action on the field, but also of somehow capturing and conveying the context, the emotion and electricity in the stadium, and using his voice to thrust that emotion and excitement directly into the gut of his listeners.
To refer to Bill King as a "sports announcer" is extremely dismissive of the man's character and breadth of knowledge. He was an incredibly well educated individual, with interests that spanned the world of arts as much as it did sports. Perhaps that is why he was able to bring out the art of the sport, and why he was so artistic in the prose he chose to convey it. It was far more than his signature "Holy Toledo!" on incredible, unbelievable plays or occurrences, though that is a perfect example of how he was able to bring his listeners into the game. "Holy Toledo!" conveys nothing. There is no description of the play, no commentary of the situation, no added information whatsoever -- but somehow, when Bill brought up the sacred city in Ohio, it always made me stand up and cheer, hoot and holler as if I were there at the game, because I felt like I was. And yet, "Holy Toledo" is not how I'll remember Bill King the most. What I will remember is how Bill always had the perfect thing to say, the perfect word, even if nobody had used it in 20 years; the perfect analogy ("The A's offense, just like Lazarus, rising from the dead!"), the perfect words to fit the situation.
I don't want to be too over-the-top cheesy with this, but in truth, there are actually a couple of ways in which Bill King filled in part of the cultural gap created by my father being an immigrant. Nothing against my father at all; he just had no knowledge of baseball, and English being his third language, his vocabulary was never SAT material. Most kids growing up here have their fathers take them to the game and help them understand, appreciate, and come to love it. I did not have that from my father, but I felt like I did have it from Bill King. Impressive, for a man I never even saw in person (and rarely saw through any medium!). He was a teacher, a mentor and even to some extent a role model, in his openness of his reactions and his criticisms to some of the uglier sides of professional sports.
Bill King was an amazing individual. Thank you for your years of service, of putting not just your voice but your whole self out in the open for everyone to share.
