Bill King
Wilbur "Bill" King (October 6, 1927 – October 18, 2005) was one of the most prominent sports announcers in San Francisco Bay Area history, widely recognized by his distinctive handlebar mustache and beard and his broadcasting catchphrase "Holy Toledo!"
King was best known as the radio voice of the Oakland Athletics baseball team for twenty-five years (1981–2005), the longest tenure of any A's announcer since the team's games were first broadcast in Philadelphia in 1938. 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, had called University of California football and basketball games, and had served 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.
Read more about Bill King: Early Broadcasting Career, Renaissance Man, Famous Calls and Phrases, Death, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words bill and/or king:
“The first year was critical to my assessment of myself as a person. It forced me to realize that, like being married, having children is not an end in itself. You don’t at last arrive at being a parent and suddenly feel satisfied and joyful. It is a constantly reopening adventure.”
—Anonymous Mother. From the Boston Women’s Health Book Collection. Quoted in The Joys of Having a Child, by Bill and Gloria Adler (1993)
“No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn’t actually fall down.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)