Bay Area Radio: Frick Award Goes To Bill King

Bill King

Legendary broadcaster Bill King, whose voice was so familiar to the sports fans in the San Francisco Bay Area, was elected the winner of the 2017 Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting, the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced on Wednesday.

During the 1980s, the late King was ubiquitous, serving as the radio voice of the A's, Raiders and Warriors, including handling all three jobs from '81-83. He was most known for his basketball broadcasting, calling the Warriors' first NBA championship in '75, plus several Super Bowl-winning Raiders teams. But King always said his first love was baseball, and nobody prepared to call that game harder than King.

MLB.com reports the silver-goateed and handle-bar mustachioed broadcaster was a renaissance man who lived on a houseboat off the shores of Sausalito, Calif., a beatific town across the bay from San Francisco's famous Fisherman's Wharf. He was known for broadcasting games wearing sandals, shorts and a T-shirt, often sunning himself in the empty stands before Spring Training games at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. King was also as comfortable with the arts as he was in sports.

King passed away only a week after doing his last broadcast of the 2005 A's season. He had hip and knee problems all that season, and at 78, was restricted to calling only the home games at what was then simply known as the Oakland Coliseum. He went in for knee surgery and suffered from an embolism, a blood clot that caused his death.