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Curt Gowdy Dies
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: February 21, 2006
Curt Gowdy, the Wyoming-bred outdoorsman whose voice defined big-game network television sportscasting during the 1960's and '70's, died yesterday. He was 86.
Gowdy, an avid outdoorsman, was host of a show on ABC.
Mr. Gowdy died at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., after a long battle with leukemia, said a spokesman for Mr. Gowdy's son, Curt Jr., the executive producer of SportsNet New York.
Nicknamed the Cowboy, Mr. Gowdy was the quintessential generalist of the pre-cable-television era, serving as the No. 1 announcer at NBC Sports for many of the premier events in baseball, football and college basketball.
He was not a lyrical larger-than-life announcer but a plainspoken low-key listen who modeled his objective style on that of the great announcer Red Barber, who called games for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
"I'm no cheerleader," Mr. Gowdy once said. "Besides, you have to instill confidence in your listeners."
In an extraordinary run that showed his multisport versatility, he called 7 Super Bowls from 1967 to 1979, 10 consecutive World Series from 1966 to 1975, 12 Rose Bowls, 24 N.C.A.A. men's basketball championship games and 7 Olympics. ABC Sports had wooed him to be the first play-by-play announcer for "Monday Night Football," but NBC would not release him from his contract.
While most of his network assignments were for NBC, he was the host of "The American Sportsman" for ABC. The program played to his lifelong love of the outdoors (a state park is named for him in Wyoming) and served as a counterbalance in pace and content to the high-adrenaline games he called. With no one keeping score, Mr. Gowdy hunted and fished for 20 years with the likes of Bing Crosby; the bandleader Phil Harris; the actors Peter O'Toole and Robert Stack; former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn; and the former Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, one of his closest friends.
"Harris was an excellent wing shot," Mr. Gowdy told The New York Times in 1984 before the program's 20th and final season. "Some years ago, we did a pheasant-hunting show in Nebraska, and he showed up with a 28-gauge Winchester pump. When our Nebraska host saw it, he said, 'Mr. Harris, I'm not being smart, but these Nebraska pheasants are big and tough and you can't bring them down with that little thing.' He was wrong."
Curtis Gowdy was born in Green River, Wyo., where his father, a Union Pacific Railroad superintendent, taught him to hunt and fish.
"I was a very lucky guy," he said in 2002. "I grew up in Wyoming. My father was the best fly fisherman in the state. We had free access to prime-time fishing and hunting. The outdoors was a way of life for me. I should have paid them to host 'American Sportsman.' "
At the University of Wyoming, he was an accomplished basketball and tennis player. A spine injury cut short his Army Air Corps service, enabling him to start his sportscasting career on a radio station in Cheyenne, Wyo. He made his debut standing on a wooden grocery crate, calling a football game between two six-man teams.
Success in Cheyenne led him to Oklahoma, and at a propitious time: Bud Wilkinson was coaching the University of Oklahoma football team and Hank Iba was coaching the basketball team at Oklahoma A&M, which became Oklahoma State.
But it was in New York that Mr. Gowdy truly learned his craft. In 1949 and 1950, he was Mel Allen's partner on Yankees radio broadcasts on WINS-AM. Recalling those years in Curt Smith's book "Voices of the Game," Mr. Gowdy said Mr. Allen taught him "how far from a hotshot I was."
"Timing, organization, reading a commercial — I had so many bad habits, but Mel's polish helped me learn," Mr. Gowdy said. Rather than linger as an apprentice to the popular Mr. Allen, who died in 1996, Mr. Gowdy wanted to be a baseball team's lead announcer. So he left for Boston, where he called Red Sox games for the next 15 seasons.
Perhaps his most memorable moment as the voice of the Red Sox was his call of Ted Williams's final at-bat in the major leagues, on Sept. 28, 1960:
"Everybody quiet now here at Fenway Park after they gave him a standing ovation of two minutes knowing that this is probably his last time at bat. One out, nobody on, last of the eighth inning. Jack Fisher into his windup, here's the pitch. Williams swings — and there's a long drive to deep right! The ball is going and it is gone! A home run for Ted Williams in his last time at bat in the major leagues!"
Mr. Gowdy also famously called the Jets' victory in Super Bowl III in 1969 over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts; the game demonstrated to National Football League stalwarts that the upstart American Football League was its equal.
A few months before, Mr. Gowdy and his partner, Al DeRogatis, were involved in the infamous "Heidi" game. The Jets were ahead of the Oakland Raiders, 32-29, with 65 seconds left when NBC, at 7 p.m., switched to a scheduled showing of a film about the Swiss girl Heidi. The Raiders went on to score two touchdowns to win, but Mr. Gowdy's final calls were heard by no one.
"I didn't know we were off the air," Mr. Gowdy said in an interview with The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "When the game was over, I was packing to get out of there, and the stage manager yelled at me, 'Hey, you've got to do those two touchdowns again!' " Mr. Gowdy quickly returned to the booth to reconstruct his call, which ran on NBC's news programs and on the next morning's "Today" show.
In 1970, he became the first sports broadcaster to win the George Foster Peabody Award. But five years later, NBC forced him off the baseball beat, replacing him with Joe Garagiola a month after Mr. Gowdy called the 1975 World Series. The network denied that its decision had resulted from an accusation by an American League umpire, Larry Barnett, that Mr. Gowdy and Tony Kubek, his broadcast partner during the Series, had partly been responsible for threats on the lives of Mr. Barnett and his family. The announcers, especially Mr. Kubek, said that Mr. Barnett had failed to call interference on a Cincinnati Reds pinch-hitter in Game 3 of the Series against the Red Sox.
Without baseball, Mr. Gowdy fulfilled his NBC contract by calling football and other events before leaving the network to call baseball for CBS Radio.
In later years, he was the host and producer of "The Way It Was," a public television series in which a panel of former players reminisced about great games. He also provided historic commentary for the HBO sports program "Inside the NFL."
Mr. Gowdy became wealthy through his ownership of five radio stations, a business that he started to pursue when a back problem kept him from working for part of the 1957 baseball season and made him wonder if he would return to sportscasting, his son Curt Jr. said. Mr. Gowdy is also survived by his wife, Jerre; another son, Trevor; a daughter, Cheryl Ann; and five grandchildren.
In 2003, Mr. Gowdy returned to Fenway Park to call a Red Sox game against the Yankees as part of an ESPN promotion that brought back great broadcasters. He thought at the end of the game that he could have done better.
"We'll give you another chance," ESPN's Chris Berman said.
"Call me back," Mr. Gowdy said.
Published: February 21, 2006
Curt Gowdy, the Wyoming-bred outdoorsman whose voice defined big-game network television sportscasting during the 1960's and '70's, died yesterday. He was 86.
Gowdy, an avid outdoorsman, was host of a show on ABC.
Mr. Gowdy died at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., after a long battle with leukemia, said a spokesman for Mr. Gowdy's son, Curt Jr., the executive producer of SportsNet New York.
Nicknamed the Cowboy, Mr. Gowdy was the quintessential generalist of the pre-cable-television era, serving as the No. 1 announcer at NBC Sports for many of the premier events in baseball, football and college basketball.
He was not a lyrical larger-than-life announcer but a plainspoken low-key listen who modeled his objective style on that of the great announcer Red Barber, who called games for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
"I'm no cheerleader," Mr. Gowdy once said. "Besides, you have to instill confidence in your listeners."
In an extraordinary run that showed his multisport versatility, he called 7 Super Bowls from 1967 to 1979, 10 consecutive World Series from 1966 to 1975, 12 Rose Bowls, 24 N.C.A.A. men's basketball championship games and 7 Olympics. ABC Sports had wooed him to be the first play-by-play announcer for "Monday Night Football," but NBC would not release him from his contract.
While most of his network assignments were for NBC, he was the host of "The American Sportsman" for ABC. The program played to his lifelong love of the outdoors (a state park is named for him in Wyoming) and served as a counterbalance in pace and content to the high-adrenaline games he called. With no one keeping score, Mr. Gowdy hunted and fished for 20 years with the likes of Bing Crosby; the bandleader Phil Harris; the actors Peter O'Toole and Robert Stack; former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn; and the former Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, one of his closest friends.
"Harris was an excellent wing shot," Mr. Gowdy told The New York Times in 1984 before the program's 20th and final season. "Some years ago, we did a pheasant-hunting show in Nebraska, and he showed up with a 28-gauge Winchester pump. When our Nebraska host saw it, he said, 'Mr. Harris, I'm not being smart, but these Nebraska pheasants are big and tough and you can't bring them down with that little thing.' He was wrong."
Curtis Gowdy was born in Green River, Wyo., where his father, a Union Pacific Railroad superintendent, taught him to hunt and fish.
"I was a very lucky guy," he said in 2002. "I grew up in Wyoming. My father was the best fly fisherman in the state. We had free access to prime-time fishing and hunting. The outdoors was a way of life for me. I should have paid them to host 'American Sportsman.' "
At the University of Wyoming, he was an accomplished basketball and tennis player. A spine injury cut short his Army Air Corps service, enabling him to start his sportscasting career on a radio station in Cheyenne, Wyo. He made his debut standing on a wooden grocery crate, calling a football game between two six-man teams.
Success in Cheyenne led him to Oklahoma, and at a propitious time: Bud Wilkinson was coaching the University of Oklahoma football team and Hank Iba was coaching the basketball team at Oklahoma A&M, which became Oklahoma State.
But it was in New York that Mr. Gowdy truly learned his craft. In 1949 and 1950, he was Mel Allen's partner on Yankees radio broadcasts on WINS-AM. Recalling those years in Curt Smith's book "Voices of the Game," Mr. Gowdy said Mr. Allen taught him "how far from a hotshot I was."
"Timing, organization, reading a commercial — I had so many bad habits, but Mel's polish helped me learn," Mr. Gowdy said. Rather than linger as an apprentice to the popular Mr. Allen, who died in 1996, Mr. Gowdy wanted to be a baseball team's lead announcer. So he left for Boston, where he called Red Sox games for the next 15 seasons.
Perhaps his most memorable moment as the voice of the Red Sox was his call of Ted Williams's final at-bat in the major leagues, on Sept. 28, 1960:
"Everybody quiet now here at Fenway Park after they gave him a standing ovation of two minutes knowing that this is probably his last time at bat. One out, nobody on, last of the eighth inning. Jack Fisher into his windup, here's the pitch. Williams swings — and there's a long drive to deep right! The ball is going and it is gone! A home run for Ted Williams in his last time at bat in the major leagues!"
Mr. Gowdy also famously called the Jets' victory in Super Bowl III in 1969 over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts; the game demonstrated to National Football League stalwarts that the upstart American Football League was its equal.
A few months before, Mr. Gowdy and his partner, Al DeRogatis, were involved in the infamous "Heidi" game. The Jets were ahead of the Oakland Raiders, 32-29, with 65 seconds left when NBC, at 7 p.m., switched to a scheduled showing of a film about the Swiss girl Heidi. The Raiders went on to score two touchdowns to win, but Mr. Gowdy's final calls were heard by no one.
"I didn't know we were off the air," Mr. Gowdy said in an interview with The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "When the game was over, I was packing to get out of there, and the stage manager yelled at me, 'Hey, you've got to do those two touchdowns again!' " Mr. Gowdy quickly returned to the booth to reconstruct his call, which ran on NBC's news programs and on the next morning's "Today" show.
In 1970, he became the first sports broadcaster to win the George Foster Peabody Award. But five years later, NBC forced him off the baseball beat, replacing him with Joe Garagiola a month after Mr. Gowdy called the 1975 World Series. The network denied that its decision had resulted from an accusation by an American League umpire, Larry Barnett, that Mr. Gowdy and Tony Kubek, his broadcast partner during the Series, had partly been responsible for threats on the lives of Mr. Barnett and his family. The announcers, especially Mr. Kubek, said that Mr. Barnett had failed to call interference on a Cincinnati Reds pinch-hitter in Game 3 of the Series against the Red Sox.
Without baseball, Mr. Gowdy fulfilled his NBC contract by calling football and other events before leaving the network to call baseball for CBS Radio.
In later years, he was the host and producer of "The Way It Was," a public television series in which a panel of former players reminisced about great games. He also provided historic commentary for the HBO sports program "Inside the NFL."
Mr. Gowdy became wealthy through his ownership of five radio stations, a business that he started to pursue when a back problem kept him from working for part of the 1957 baseball season and made him wonder if he would return to sportscasting, his son Curt Jr. said. Mr. Gowdy is also survived by his wife, Jerre; another son, Trevor; a daughter, Cheryl Ann; and five grandchildren.
In 2003, Mr. Gowdy returned to Fenway Park to call a Red Sox game against the Yankees as part of an ESPN promotion that brought back great broadcasters. He thought at the end of the game that he could have done better.
"We'll give you another chance," ESPN's Chris Berman said.
"Call me back," Mr. Gowdy said.
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