There Was So Much More to Bill King's Life Beyond the Broadcast Booth

When the Hall of Fame presents Bill King with the Ford C. Frick award Saturday, it will be big not only for the multitude of fans that listened to him but the colleagues who worked alongside the legendary A's broadcaster.

"I think he was the very best radio sports broadcaster we've ever had in this country," NBC Sports Bay Area's Greg Papa said. "He's just a radio genius. To me, he epitomized the Bay Area as a sportscaster because he was the Bay Area. His word choice, his vocabulary, the way he was able to describe things. In so many ways he was the perfect Bay Area radio broadcaster."

King was the rare breed of broadcaster, someone versatile enough and knowledgable enough to excel at announcing three major sports - football with the Raiders from 1966-92, basketball with the Warriors from 1962-83 and baseball with the A's from 1981 until his death in 2005.

It was baseball that was nearest to his heart. And while his expertise at describing a ballgame was unparalleled, there was so much more to King's life beyond the broadcast booth. That's something current A's radio play-by-play man Ken Korach discovered in the decade he worked alongside King after joining the A's in 1995.

Korach, who chronicled King's career in the 2013 book "Holy Toledo: Lessons from Bill King, Renaissance Man of the Mic", found himself visiting art museums with King during A's road trips.

"He was a patron of the arts and the ballet, the opera," Korach said. "One thing that people may not know is that he was a wonderful impressionist painter. He painted landscapes that were absolutely beautiful, breaththaking."

Korach has one of King's paintings hanging in his den.

Like King, Papa also announced three different sports at the same time for a period - football with the Raiders, basketball with the San Antonio Spurs and baseball with the A's. When he joined the A's television booth in 1990, King was a crucial resource for him.

"When I began doing A's TV in 1990, I would listen to Bill and have a legal pad out and take notes," said Papa, who still calls Raider games. "It was better than any research I could do. He was so meticulously prepared."

Korach chuckled when recalling King's idiosyncrasies in the booth, such as insisting the window always remain open regardless of the elements.

"Even if it was December in Cleveland, and it was a Raider game and snowing and 5 degrees, the window would stay open," Korach said. "He was real meticulous with the way he would set up the table when broadcasting the game, all of the notes in a certain place. And the wind would just wreak havoc. There was one game when literally I was on the air and he just took all of his stuff and slammed it on the ground, he was so upset and frustrated."

For many years King was bypassed for Cooperstown, his excellence in three sports probably robbing him of being appreciated in one specific sport. On Saturday, he gets the ultimate tribute in being inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Korach and his wife, Denise, will be on hand for the ceremony.

"The most important thing," Korach said, "is what it means to A's fans, and fans in the Bay Area in general."

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