NW Voices: WSU’s Robertson a link to bygone era

SEATTLE — Almost everyone is gone now — except Bob Robertson.

He is the enduring voice of a bygone generation of Northwest radio and television sports broadcasting giants. Most of his peers — Ted Bell, Pat Hayes, Rod Belcher, Clay Huntington, Bill O’Mara, Bill Schonely, Ray McMackin, Pete Gross, Wayne Cody, Keith Jackson and Leo Lassen — have died or retired.

Mariners voice Dave Niehaus also remains. And in many ways, Niehaus and Robertson are kindred spirits.

Robertson, whose carrot-colored hair has turned gray and thin now, took a much different path to his Hall of Fame, however. He’s an icon to generations of sports fans, even though he spent most of his career outside the major markets.

You see his name and think: “That’s the Cougars guy with the funny sign off who has been at Wazzu forever.”

But there’s so much more to the Washington State play-by-play man than his 42-year career with the Cougars.

To know him, you need to know he temporarily stopped broadcasting this summer — the first time in 61 years — to take care of his ill wife, Joanne.

You need to hear the story about the blind boy who would sit by his side during Clover Park High School boys basketball games and made him aware that his radio audience was also sightless.

You need to know he was the last man in radio to do re-creations — where written reports were phoned in to a studio and he would call Tacoma Tigers minor-league baseball games with sound effects and his imagination.

You need to know he worked part-time jobs as a referee for the first Sonics exhibition game in Seattle; an official for Fife High School football games when Jim Lambright was the coach; and a general manager of the Seattle Rangers, a minor-league football team in the 1960s.

You need to know he nearly became the voice of the Mariners, and in many ways he is a real-life Crash Davis, the character from “Bull Durham” who pines for one last shot at the big leagues.

And you need to know that he turned 80 in March. And he’s in better shape than you are because he swims frequently, drinks a glass of Cabernet at dinner and eats a reasonably healthy diet. And he has three years left on his WSU contract.

And he has no intentions of retiring any time soon.

There are six decades of broadcast history to recap, so get comfortable.

Bellingham, circa 1948, is as good a place to start as any. Robertson spent much of his childhood in Canada, where his father, a professional baseball player with the Seattle Indians, was in the Canadian Air Force during World War II. Robertson graduated from Blaine High School and spent two years at Western Washington University before signing a contract to play center field for the Portland Beavers.

Before playing a game, he quit baseball and accepted the play-by-play job with the Wenatchee Chiefs, a minor-league baseball team.

“I don’t think too much about it anymore, but for years I wondered if I made the right decision,” Robertson said. “After I turned 30, I knew baseball was over for me.”

Next stop is South Bend, Ind., 1955, where Notre Dame hired Robertson to anchor its fledgling school-run television station. Although he spent less than a year covering the Fighting Irish, it’s one of the highlights of his career.

Next stop is Pullman, 1964, where Robertson began broadcasting football games for Washington State. It was a match made in Cougars heaven.

Next stop is Seattle, 1969, where Robertson began calling Huskies games for three years because his radio station, KVI, bought the broadcast rights to the crossstate rival.

The final stop is Pullman again, 1972, where Robertson returned to WSU. In addition to calling football games, he did play-by-play for men’s basketball until 1994, when he was replaced by Bud Nameck.

Former WSU coach Kelvin Sampson supposedly wanted an announcer who lived near Pullman. Robertson has resided in the Tacoma area since 1950. Years later, Sampson phoned Robertson and told him he had nothing to do with his firing.

“It’s not important now,” said Robertson, who received the Chris Schenkel Award from the College Football Hall of Fame in 2004. “I’m just happy to still be working.”

Between Bellingham and Pullman, Robertson has covered just about every sport — professional and amateur — in Washington and Oregon.

He’s done it all, from table tennis to hydroplanes — roller derby, the Seattle and Tacoma Rainiers, boxing, rodeo, high schools, Seattle Totems hockey, Sounders and Portland Timbers soccer, professional wrestling, Seattle University men’s basketball and Pacific Lutheran University men’s and women’s basketball.

He never broadcast a Seahawks game and never had any interest in calling NBA games, declining two NFL and two NBA jobs in the 1960s and early ’70s.

But if there’s any regret, it’s a missed chance to call major-league baseball.

Robertson recites lines from “Bull Durham” when he talks about his three-game stint in 1992 as Mariners broadcaster.

“Yeah, I was in the show,” Crash Davis said. “I was in the show for 21 days once — the 21 greatest days of my life.”

Robertson was a finalist in 1977 when the expansion Mariners chose Niehaus as their play-by-play voice. For years, Robertson believed he might be considered for an analyst position with the team, but he never got the chance.

“I had my cup of coffee in the bigs,” he said, laughing. “I had a great time. I’d still go [to the major leagues] right now if they asked, but at my age, they’re not going to ask.”

But Robertson doesn’t want anybody to feel sorry for him.

While Joanne is recovering, he’s preparing for his 43rd season with the Cougars in the fall and a return next year as the voice of the minor-league Spokane Indians, his summer job since 1999.

Robertson’s recent sabbatical from the radio booth has made him eager to get behind the microphone again, calling games like he has for 61 years and ending each broadcast with his signature goodbye: “Always be a good sport, be a good sport all ways.”

— Percy Allen/The Seattle Times

NW Voices: Seahawks’ Raible calls news and sports

SEATTLE — The phone call that would change his life rang at his house, but Steve Raible was away at a charity golf tournament in Spokane. It was June 1982.

Retelling the story 27 years later, he vividly remembers the conversation he had with his wife, Sharon, who had relayed the news to him.

She’d spoken with Pete Gross, the Seahawks’ play-by-play man, who offered Raible, a six-year veteran receiver with the team, the opportunity to join KIRO in several roles, including the team’s radio color analyst.

It was the chance of a lifetime, but there was one huge caveat … Raible would have to quit football.

“I was preparing to go to my seventh training camp with the Seahawks and I was probably in the best shape of my life,” he said.

Raible was coming off a trying season in which he had been hospitalized with a collapsed lung and played in just eight games. Now a new career beckoned.

“I had also been doing a lot of TV and radio in probably the last three, four years of my career,” he said. “I knew by then that’s what I wanted to do when I finished with football.”

The list of professional athletes who struggle with leaving their sport is too long to tally. So many hang on past their prime.

Not Raible. After Gross’ call, he talked with Sharon over the weekend, then abruptly retired from the NFL.

“I knew that football for me was a means to an end,” said Raible, a second-round pick in the 1976 draft who finished his career with 68 catches, 1,017 yards and three touchdowns. “For me it wasn’t the end. I was an OK football player. I lasted six years. I could have probably played another couple, but I also knew what my limitations were.

“I know myself pretty well, and I don’t know if I could have dedicated myself to be the kind of receiver that Steve Largent was.”

What he had was an intense desire to delve into broadcast news, an affable personality, an elegant voice and a commanding presence that endeared the Louisville, Ky., native to Seattle television and radio audiences.

Raible quickly proved he could handle much more than calling football games.

He co-hosted “PM Magazine” in 1982 with Susan Hutchison, and the next year they moved on-air to the afternoon news desk. In 1993, KIRO promoted Raible to lead evening news anchor. He has won five local Emmy Awards, including two for Best Anchor.

While Raible flourished in broadcast news, he remained with the Seahawks as a color analyst. After his mentor Gross died of cancer in 1992, the team went through three play-by-play men (Steve Thomas, Lee Hamilton and Brian Davis) before giving the job to Raible in 2004 and teaming him with Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon.

“When I’m driving on a Sunday morning from my home to the stadium after having done a full week of newscasts — three shows a day, five days a week — then on Sunday, you get to be this other person,” Raible said. “You kind of put on the pro sports hat.

“I’m pretty lucky in that I don’t have to be two different people. What’s been sort of successful for me is viewers and listeners in the community have accepted me in both those roles. Obviously, the nature of the business is a little different. Things are a little more serious on the news side most days, and on the football side, it’s exciting and it’s a game and it’s more of a show.”

Juggling both roles is no easy feat. Imagine Marv Albert reporting on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan or Anderson Cooper working the Qwest Field sidelines for NFL games.

Raible routinely crosses the line between sports and hard news while making it all seem perfectly natural.

“Some people could say you might have a conflict of interest sometimes where there’s a story you have to do about the Seahawks, which we have,” he said. “There’s been players getting in trouble with the law, and the team was getting ready to move, and people ask, ‘Whose side are you on?’

“Well, the deal is, you don’t choose sides. The deal is, you report it and people trust you enough at this point after 27 years doing the broadcast and 35 years in the market. They trust that you’re going to be straight with them, and I think that’s all you can do is be an honest broker of the information, whether it’s the news or the Seahawks.”

He learned that lesson from Hutchison, one of the many people who influenced him.

“I hope I have been a sponge for all the people that had an impact on me or who I admired,” he said. “And now I can kind of relay some of what I learned from them because that’s all I am. I’m a product of all of these people I’ve admired over the years.”

Raible’s father, Carl, a trumpet player and music educator, fostered his love for music. His mother, Lee, a homemaker and hospital volunteer, taught him to be charitable.

Raible caught the broadcasting bug his junior year at Georgia Tech after a meeting with legendary newscaster David Brinkley. Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle, color commentator and actor, advised him early in his career about preparation.

His former sports broadcast partner, Wayne Cody, who died of a heart attack in 2002, told him to make the sports broadcasts entertaining, and he’s reminded by former teammates that his job in the booth is to inform the audience.

Still it’s Sharon, his wife of 28 years, who inspires him every day. She was diagnosed with lupus more than a decade ago and he “admires her for her determination to not let it get her down.”

And then there’s Gross, the biggest influence in his broadcasting career.

“I can remember like it was yesterday that day when he called and talked to Sharon,” Raible said. “He was so insistent. He said, ‘Listen, we both know Steve is never going to be in the Hall of Fame, but if he does this he can be really, really good.’ Pete believed in me before I really believed in myself.”

— Percy Allen/The Seattle Times

NW Voices: UW’s Rondeau found his calling in sports

SEATTLE — It was never about becoming the Voice of the Huskies. Not in the beginning.

Long before Bob Rondeau thought twice about the University of Washington, it was about making enough money to put food on the table and gas in the car. It was about surviving, finding your calling and, quite literally, finding your voice.

And that’s why he climbed to the roof of the press box at Turf Paradise Race Course, a horse racing track in Phoenix, with a tape recorder in the summer of 1977.

He was 27, unemployed and disillusioned after the all-news station where he was news director suddenly folded.

“I was a little sour on the whole game and wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep doing news,” Rondeau said. “I didn’t understand fully why that didn’t work. I thought it was a great product and we did great work, so maybe this isn’t the place you want to be.”

Things weren’t going according to plan. For starters, Rondeau figured he’d use his degree from the University of Colorado to land a job as a newspaper reporter.

And when that didn’t work, he turned to radio. And when that fizzled, he flirted with his first love.

An avid outdoorsman, Rondeau considered opening a fly-fishing store and toyed with the idea of getting involved in horse racing with his father, Bill, who’d retired and bought a horse farm near Phoenix.

But something drove him to the top of the roof at Turf Paradise, where he called a couple of races beneath the hot Arizona sun.

“I went up there just to see if I could do this,” Rondeau said. “That was probably my first experience at sports broadcasting, and it was a joke. It was hard. Really hard. I had no idea what I was doing.

“When I got done with that I said, ‘I can’t do this. No way I can talk fast enough to do this.’ Fortunately, it wasn’t my last try at it.”

Later that year, Rondeau received job offers from two radio stations in Seattle. KIRO was looking for a news reporter and KOMO needed a sports director. He chose KOMO, which allowed him to work as an engineer and halftime host with legendary Sonics voice Bob Blackburn.

“That was my first real exposure to play-by-play, sitting next to Blackburn and listening to him do games,” Rondeau said. “I learned the mechanics of the game, the emotion of it. How these guys handled themselves.

“I never thought I could talk fast enough to do play-by-play. For some reason I had it in my mind that you had to be able to talk 9,000 mph. But listening to these guys, I thought if the chance were to ever come along, I might be able to do this.”

That chance came along in 1978 when KOMO landed the broadcast rights for Washington football and men’s basketball. The station hired Bruce King as the play-by-play announcer and paired him with Rondeau, who provided analysis.

Two years later, King left for a job in New York and Rondeau took over play-calling. He had found his calling.

“I can’t say growing up I dreamed about this job, but once I got in and once I started doing it, I knew I didn’t want to do anything else,” he said. “It felt right. It felt like this is what I was supposed to do with my life.”

Growing up during the 1950s and ’60s, Rondeau listened to broadcasters Dick Enberg, Lindsey Nelson, Jack Buck and Keith Jackson on the radio. But he didn’t pattern himself after them, instead developing his own style. His on-air presence is so deft, easy and quintessentially Northwestern — even if he is a Denver native — that he’s often taken for granted.

Long the underappreciated talent in a city saturated with Hall of Fame announcers, Rondeau is a broadcaster’s broadcaster, whose gift is the ability to disappear into the big moment and let the action tell the story.

Kevin Calabro can’t do that. Neither can Dave Niehaus or Bob Robertson, for that matter. Their personas can overpower the play-calling.

Rondeau gave voice to the most prominent period in UW football during the Don James era, understanding he wasn’t the star of the show Saturdays. No catchphrases and no gimmicks. Naturally quick-witted, he deftly mixes storytelling and play-calling with a skill honed by hours of preparation. And his knowledge of the Huskies is encyclopedic.

“From the technical aspect to how the broadcast sounds to the way the commercials are read and to the rundown in how the show is supposed to go, he’s very meticulous about those things,” said UW men’s basketball analyst Jason Hamilton. “He’s also very critical of himself. And for a guy that’s been doing it as long as he has, it shows he still cares.”

Looking back, Rondeau laughs when retelling the story of that first day as a play-by-play announcer.

“If I could go back and tell that kid on top of that roof anything, I’d tell him don’t be afraid of that tape recorder,” he said. “I’d tell him you might be better at this than you think you are. Give yourself a break. You can do this. Just hang with it.

“Some of the best things are what you didn’t plan on. Sometimes you can make your own breaks and sometimes you get very lucky. I’ve sure had my fair share of both. It’s been a fabulous ride and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

— Percy Allen/The Seattle Times

NW Voices: Calabro now revving up Sounders fans

SEATTLE — On a drab Wednesday night above the Xbox Pitch at Qwest Field, the radio broadcast is coming to a close as thousands of Sounders FC fans stream for the exits and pour onto Occidental Avenue South.

When engineer Lloyd Glaeser gives the nod that the microphones are dead, Kevin Calabro finally says what he’s been dying to say since the Sounders squandered a two-goal lead in the final minutes and limped away with a 3-3 tie that felt more like a heartbreaking defeat.

“Gosh dang it!” the Sounders play-by-play man blurts in his deep baritone while jabbing a fist in the air. “Man! That hurts.”

Calabro is a recent convert to the sport, and the beautiful game has engulfed him now. This new role with Seattle’s expansion Major League Soccer team has forced the former voice of the Sonics to grow as a broadcaster in ways he never imagined when he was carving out a reputation as one of the finest play-by-play announcers in the NBA.

“Were you like this with the Sonics?” asks analyst Pete Fewing, Calabro’s broadcast partner for this game.

“You know, come to think of it, yeah, a little bit,” he says, laughing. “If we were up by 18, then blew the lead and blew the game, yeah, I’d get a little salty.”

He’s reminded of the time when his off-air criticisms of the Sonics to a reporter made their way into the newspaper in 2000 and nearly had him fired if he hadn’t apologized to coach Paul Westphal and the organization.

Lesson learned, says Calabro, 53. He’s older now and a little wiser. Still, he’s as passionate as ever about the games he covers.

“I get into it,” he says. “It’s hard not to. Does that help or hurt calling the games? I don’t know. I’d like to think that if the audience hears me getting into it, then they’ll want to come along for the ride.”

Former Sonics owner Barry Ackerley and general manager Bob Whitsitt recognized that same enthusiasm when they hired Calabro in 1987. He worked alongside Bob Blackburn, the original voice of the Sonics, in an awkward arrangement in which they alternated the play-calling and analyst duties during games.

“I remember before games we’d flip a coin to decide who gets to call the fourth quarter,” Calabro says.

In 1989, he took over the play-by-play job full time in an unpopular move at the time. Blackburn remained with the team until 1992.

Over the years, Calabro, an Indianapolis native, endeared himself to Sonics fans with a bombastic delivery, homespun Midwestern storytelling and quirky street-seeped observations that spawned a slew of colorful catchphrases.

But in this new life with Sounders FC, there are no references to Miss Molly, magic carpets or flying chickens in a barnyard, staples of his NBA broadcasts.

Instead during a home match against D.C. United, Calabro’s call of the night is: “[Fredy] Montero crosses over with the left foot. Hits a bender. Gooooo-oooooal! He put some mustard on it with the left foot.”

“He’s a pro,” Fewing says. “He’s one of the best in the business. I love going to practice with him and sitting next to him. He’s asking questions all the time. He’s committed. He’s serious. His learning curve has been fantastic.

“The word on the street in the soccer community is everybody really likes him. They appreciate what a pro he is and the expertise he brings to soccer.”

The transition hasn’t been easy. Calabro admits that not every Sounders FC fan likes his play-calling and he has the nasty e-mails to prove it. Much of the criticisms were deserved, because early in the season he’d confuse goal kicks with corner kicks and the end line with the touch line.

“I’m still learning the nuances of the game and the subtleties,” Calabro says. “I don’t think I’ll get that for a while.

“I’m still trying to come up with terms to describe where the ball is.

“You know, there are no yard lines. Beyond the 18 and center field, you have no way of telling other than approximating where the ball is at for the audience.”

The fish-out-of-water analogy fits, but it’s a familiar feeling for Calabro.

After working part-time at radio and television stations in Indianapolis and studying broadcasting at Butler University, his first big break into sports broadcasting came in 1980, when he landed the play-by-play job for the Indianapolis Checkers, a minor-league hockey team, on WIBC Radio.

He knew nothing about hockey, but worked more than 100 games that season before Whitsitt, then the general manager with the Kansas City Kings, hired Calabro in 1983 to handle play-calling.

It was Calabro’s dream job. Ever since he can remember, Calabro has wanted to call NBA games. Maybe it’s because radio is in his blood.

Before Kevin’s father Paul became principal at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis, he was a radio man, working communications on a naval vessel in World War II. Paul told war stories to his sons Kevin, David and Ron, who played with transistor radio, and grew up to emulate their father.

David, a TV sports anchor in Indianapolis, pursued a career in broadcast journalism while Ron became a teacher.

Kevin pursued a life in radio. His first stint in the NBA lasted just one season because his station lost the rights to the Kings in 1984. He called University of Missouri football and men’s basketball in 1985 before being fired and moving to Seattle to work as sports anchor for an FM station.

That’s when Whitsitt called again.

During his tenure with the Sonics, Calabro dabbled with network jobs and had been linked to Mariners and Seahawks openings, but he would have been content to continue as the Sonics’ play-by-play man if the team hadn’t moved to Oklahoma City last year.

Calabro and his wife Susan didn’t want to uproot their family, so he needed to adapt. He took on the new challenge of hosting an afternoon sports-talk radio show on 710 ESPN and accepted the job as voice of Sounders FC.

His jobs give him the flexibility to call a handful of NBA games on ESPN, but the pain of giving up his dream job still lingers.

“It’s like saying goodbye to your first love,” Calabro says. “It hurts. I suspect it will always hurt. But, hey, you move on. Heck, you have to. So now I’m into MLS and the Sounders, and it’s really cool. I’m having a blast.”

And the soccer aficionados are finally beginning to embrace Calabro as one of their own. How does he know?

“I get fewer e-mails blasting me,” he says. “Either that or they just got tuckered out and tired of killing me.”

— Percy Allen/The Seattle Times

NW Voices: Current play-by-play icons unforgettable

SEATTLE — They are icons and enigmas. Everyone knows them, and yet few really do.

So I was expecting larger-than-life giants of Seattle sports radio, men with egos as large as their legendary voices.

But something different walked through the front doors of The Seattle Times lobby on that sun-drenched morning last month.

Bob Robertson was first, followed by Bob Rondeau. They crossed paths and chatted comfortably in a stairwell, showing no signs of the animosity that fuels the cross-state rivalry between the Washington Huskies and Washington State Cougars.

Minutes later, Dave Niehaus and Steve Raible, the play-by-play announcers for the Mariners and Seahawks, strolled in together looking as if they’d just stepped off a golf course.

And, finally, Kevin Calabro, the longtime Sonics voice and new Sounders FC play-by-play man, arrived.

This small exclusive fraternity was complete.

“Now that you got us all here, what’s next?” Robertson said.

What followed was a lengthy discussion about their business and the athletes and games they cover. We talked about their influences and traced the origins of some of their memorable catchphrases.

We explored how television and the Internet have changed their profession and how they manage to stay relevant while doing a 1950s job in 2009. They shared their fears about ex-jocks taking over the booth and relived their greatest and worst moments in broadcasting.

And finally they talked about the state of Seattle sports, mapping where it has been, where it is now and where it is going.

“You plan to write about all this or just videotape it?” Niehaus asked.

The short answer is both.

There are times, however, when the printed word is woefully inadequate to tell a story. This is one of those times.

Radio — the place where they live — is a far better medium for this story, but we chose video to record the very first round-table of the men who have narrated Seattle’s sports soundtrack over the past half century.

We put them on stage inside a near-empty auditorium and turned on the cameras and microphones. They sat in a semicircle — Raible, Niehaus, Robertson, Rondeau and Calabro — and fired off a steady stream of ad-libs and one-liners for almost two hours.

In a five-part series that concludes today, we posted video of our discussion on our Web site, seattletimes.com.

It had been a dream of mine for many years to gather them in one place to talk about sports, and listening to them blend their voices into a harmonious choir was like listening to jazz great Miles Davis riff alongside Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones.

I half expected alpha-dog battles between the Seattle sports radio stars, but watching them mix and mingle and take nonverbal cues from each other was like watching the original Dream Team of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan run a five-man weave.

For anyone who loves language, storytelling and sports, this was the place to be.

They shared a lifetime of stories that dripped with descriptive detail and take-you-there narratives. Their anecdotes exploded with similes and their metaphors painted a rainbow of colors to black-and-white narratives.

And the humor. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

A few jokes were deliciously off-color, but mostly they poked fun at themselves and each other.

A few insights from the discussion:

• Niehaus is hilarious. His Harry Caray impersonation is spot on and no one tells a better story.

Describing his challenge to stay connected with a young and diverse group of Mariners, the 74-year-old said: “Our clubhouse is like the Tower of Babel. You gotta take a Rosetta Stone in there, they speak so many different languages.”

• Raible has a deep admiration for broadcast history. He often paid tribute to his mentor Pete Gross, the former Seahawks voice, and broadcaster Pat O’Day. And whenever Niehaus spoke, Raible seemed to pay close attention.

During one exchange, Niehaus asked Raible: “How long did it take for you to lose your accent?”

Said Raible: “I had a little bit of one, and if we go out and bend an elbow one evening, it will sort of slide back in there.”

• Robertson, who broadcast his first game in 1948, is a reminder that Seattle became a major sports town in a relatively short span.

“It’s been interesting to see the coming of different sports,” said the 80-year-old Hall of Famer. “Now you have the growth of women’s sports at the university and high schools and even in the pro ranks. That’s a change that I’m sure back when I was doing Seattle Rainier baseball, we’d never thought we’d be reading about a women’s [softball] team going after the national championship and maybe the best athlete in town plays there.”

• Rondeau told a story of how his casual comment to a colleague in a men’s restroom ignited a “Jake Locker is leaving the UW for baseball” Internet rumor last year.

“The thirst for immediacy is much more apparent in the media world we live in today,” he said. “The Internet has replaced us [radio] in that regard, but when it comes to things like that, reporting rumors as fact, I’m OK not to be a part of that evolution.”

• At 53, Calabro is the baby in the bunch. Aside from Robertson, he’s also the most versatile. And he could probably make money reading the Yellow Pages with that rich baritone voice. He’s that good.

Over the course of two hours they concluded the NBA is not returning soon, the stadium issues at UW and WSU will not go away, 2008 was by far the worst year in Seattle sports history and television and the Internet are not going to kill radio.

“They still need us,” Raible said defiantly.

Niehaus said radio provides an intimacy with fans unlike any other medium.

“You can be creative,” he said. “Sometimes people say I’m too creative and I understand what they’re talking about. … Gene Autry [former Angels owner] used to say, ‘David you do a helluva game. Not the game I’m watching, but a helluva game.’ ”

Whenever I hear them on radio — whether I’m driving down I-5 or working in the office — I’m astonished at how good they are. Do we realize how good we’ve got it in Seattle?

Does any city have a better collection of play-by-play announcers who’ve become media treasures? I suspect not, but then I’m partial.

Since leaving that near-empty auditorium, I’ve thought a lot about our morning together. I’m reminded of the stories they told and how much we laughed. And I remember how surprisingly human they were — for icons.

Something for all

Sprint triathlon adds variety to Whisky Dick weekend//

For years, the Whisky Dick was that long, grueling monster of a triathlon, so tough that it for years served as an Ironman qualifier — and was decidedly not for beginners.

Now the Whisky Dick has sort of a companion race — sort of a little brother — that’s all about beginners.

The day before the Whisky Dick has its 27th running on Sunday, Aug. 9, the inaugural Ellensburg Triathlon — put on by the same people who put on Whisky Dick — will debut at Irene Rinehart Riverfront Park off Umptanum Road alongside the Yakima River.

Why a second triathlon? Well, this one’s a sprint triathlon — and that’s the hottest thing going in the swim-bike-run crowd, because you don’t have to spend all of your time training for one.

“If you have a sprint triathlon and an Olympic-distance triathlon in the same venue, the sprint will probably draw double the participants of the Olympic,” said Rory Muller, co-director of BuDu Racing, which has taken over much of the timing and registration aspects of the Whisky Dick from longtime race directors Vince Nethery and Tami Walton.

“Sprints are becoming hugely popular, because almost anybody can swim the 400 yards — you can backfloat, sidestroke, almost anything to muddle through. To do an Olympic (distance race), when you’re swimming almost a mile … 400 yards is just much more appealing to people.”

The Aug. 8 sprint triathlon will have a quarter-mile swim, a 13.7-mile bicycle ride and a 2.7-mile run — the latter nearly a half-mile short of a 5K. The historic distance for the Whisky Dick was always a 1-mile swim in the Columbia River, a 26.4-mile bicycle ride — including the will-killing 12-mile climb 1,900 feet up the Whisky Dick Ridge from Vantage — and an 8.8-mile run.

This year for the first time, even that historic race is getting a bit shorter.

Because of the long volunteer hours and logistical difficulty of having the road stage end in Kittitas — more than six miles from the race’s end at the fairgrounds in Ellensburg — the race course is changing this year to take that Kittitas stop out of the loop.

Instead, the cyclists will power straight on through to Ellensburg, a 28-mile ride when you cut out the side trips that had been part of the route. Then they will hit the road with a finishing 6.2-mile (10K) run that would take them out onto the John Wayne Trail, wind some through town and finish at the fairgrounds.

In addition to making the race easier for course marshals, it also makes it more spectator-friendly, since supporters can simply drive from swim start in the Columbia straight into Ellensburg, where they’ll see racers finish both the bicycle and running stages.

Of course, it also makes Whisky Dick’ historic race records obsolete.

“That was the biggest thing we had people jumping on us about: All the course records are gone,” Muller said. “It’s tough. But we’ll make new course records.”

And, presumably, set new participation standards. Nethery believes the addition of the sprint triathlon the day before will actually draw more racers and attention to the next day’s race as well — similar to Lake Chelan’s “ChelanMan Multisport Weekend,” which features sprint, Olympic and half-Ironman triathlons and has been a huge success.

“Our goal was to make the triathlon experience more accessible by adding a sprint,” Nethery said. “And at the same time we were thinking it would draw more people into Whisky Dick as well. At this stage, we’re looking at pretty reasonable numbers for the race being two weeks away, better than we have been in recent years with two weeks to go.

“Our guess is with Whisky Dick we might end up with 125, 130 competitors, which is about 25 more than we got last year, and probably about the same number with the sprint. And I think with the sprint, if everything goes smoothly and the event is a good experience, we could even see double that number next year. And if we could get the Whisky Dick up to 150 to 200 on a regular basis, that would be optimum.”

Irene Rinehart Riverfront Park is about 120 acres and features the two small Carey Lakes, one of which will be home to the swim leg.

Muller called its setting a natural draw for racers who come over from the western side of the state.

“It’s a really great course,” he said. “That Irene Rinehart Park is such a pretty little park right off the river, and you bike through the farm country, with the horse ranches and the cows, those nice rural roads. Just beautiful country.”

Early registration deadline today

Today is the last day for early-registration rates (signup fee goes up $10 after today) for either the Aug. 8 Ellensburg Triathlon or the Aug. 9 Whisky Dick Triathlon. To signup for either or both, go to www.whiskydick.com and you’ll be directed to the correct race pages at BuDuRacing.com.

Pak ousts rival at state

Nine-run sixth sends Yakima Valley into state title game//

TACOMA — Mike Archer has seen a few two-out rallies in his 26 years as coach of the Yakima Valley Pepsi Pak, but what his crew did Tuesday afternoon probably tops the list.

Maybe there was one longer, but never one sweeter.

Starting with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning with no one on base, the Pak erupted for nine runs and ran off with a 15-5 victory over the Kennewick Bandits in a loser-out game at the Senior Legion state tournament at Heidleberg Park.

“That was nice,” Archer said after the Pak ousted the Central Washington League champs. “We were due to start hitting and we sure did today.”

For the third year in a row, the Pak will play for the state championship today. But it will take two victories to earn a trip to regionals in Medford, Ore., next week.

Lakeside Recovery remained unbeaten by eliminating Twin City 12-2 in Tuesday’s late game, so Yakima Valley (42-12) will need to beat Lakeside (32-12) twice today, the first game set to start at 5 p.m.

Leading 6-5 in the sixth, Jake Fife started the big rally with a two-out double and capped it with a two-run double. In the middle of the uprising, Cory Urquhart swatted a three-run double.

The Pak piled up 15 hits with six doubles, including back-to-back RBI two-baggers by Kevin Allan and Thomas Wilcox in the first inning. Fife finished 3-for-5 with three doubles and three RBI, and Allan was 3-for-3.

“We’ve pitched and played defense the whole tournament, but we weren’t hitting much,” Archer noted. “We just told the guys it’s not a matter of how much we hit but when we hit. We hit it today.”

Pak starter Derek Welton went the distance with five strikeouts and two walks. He retired the Bandits 1-2-3 three times.

Fife, who pitched in Saturday’s state opener, is expected to get the start today against Lakeside, which outlasted Yakima Valley 4-3 in 13 innings on Sunday.

“He’s our most rested guy,” Archer said. “We’ll have to win two, but these kids won’t back down.”

Kennewick    000    300    2    —    5    11    2

Yakima Valley    300    309    x    —    15    15    0

Nelson, Hammer (4), Pentecost (6) and Driver. Welton and Snider.

Highlights: Derek Welton 7 IP, 5 K, 2 BB; Jake Fife 3-5, 3 2b, 3 RBI; Kevin Allan 3-3, 2b, RBI; Cory Urquhart 2-5, 2b, 3 RBI; Trevor Dallman 2-3, 2 RBI; Thomas Wilcox 2-3, 2 RBI.

Long balls lift AquaSox past Bears

They took a standing eight count, to use pugalistic parlance, and fought back to reach a standoff.

But the Bears were unable to withstand a later flurry of punches by Everett’s potent AquaSox, and absorbed an 11-9 defeat Tuesday night that ended the first half of their Northwest League season.

Before an announced 1,401 at sweltering Yakima County Stadium, the home team suffered its fifth straight loss to reach the 38-game mark with a 13-25 record.

The Baby Mariners (24-14), who lead the league in homers, went deep three times in the process of compiling 17 hits off four Bears pitchers. The Sox have won three straight and are 6-0 this year against Yakima.

Down 8-1 early, the Bears rallied to tie it thanks in large part to Ryan Wheeler before the Sox pulled away.

Wheeler doubled, tripled, homered and drove in five runs, raising his batting average to .344.

“All day I was looking for a ball up, and I got a few,” Wheeler said. “I slumped a little down in Salem, but I hit the ball hard. Tonight I hit the ball hard, too. Sometimes it’s a matter of luck.”

Brent Greer and Roberto Rodriguez had two hits each for the Bears. For Everett, Ryan Royster was 4-for-4 with a homer, Gerardo Avila was 3-for-4 with a homer and four RBI and Trevor Coleman added a two-run shot.

“We battled and tied it 8-8,” Yakima manager Bob Didier said, “but then their catcher (Coleman), who’s hitting a buck-52 and doesn’t have an RBI in 33 at bats, hits a two-run homer. We played well, but you don’t give up 11 runs and win a lot of games.”

Especially when the Bears, after scoring five times in the fourth inning to tie it, saw 13 consecutive hitters retired by Everett’s Christian Staehely, John Hesketh and Dan Cooper.

Staehely went 2 2/3 innings for the win (2-1) while Pedro Rodriguez, the second Yakima hurler, took the loss (1-3).

Cooper recorded his seventh save despite surrendering Wheeler’s fourth homer of the year, a two-out, solo moon shot to right in the ninth that had his teammates buzzing in the clubhouse.

The Bears began their comeback in the third inning on the first of two Wheeler rockets off the center-field wall. The first was a double that scored  Rodriguez, who had started the inning with his own two-bagger, and Greer, who had walked.

The second was a fourth-inning triple that initially froze Everett center-fielder Matt Cerione, then hit halfway up the 16-foot barrier as Cerione tumbled to the turf.

Rodriguez, who had singled home the first run of the inning, scored as did Zach Varnell, whose bunt up the first base line went for a run-scoring hit when first-baseman Avila gloved the ball but was ruled to have missed Varnell with his tag.

A fisted single to right by Greer also scored a run.

The AquaSox, who had scored 11 runs in each of their two previous games, came out swinging against Yakima starter Andrew Wolcott.

Royster’s leadoff homer ignited a five-run first inning and in the second, Avila launched a three-run bomb off the rope of the auxiliary flag pole beyond the right-center-field fence, equaling Royster’s team-high homer total of six. Coleman blasted a two-run shot to right in the sixth off Pedro Rodriguez to give the lead back to Everett at 10-8.

The AquaSox added another run off Brad Wilson in the seventh on Avila’s two-out, run-scoring double that bounced off the warning track in center.

Yakima Bears update

 Next game

Opponent: Everett AquaSox.

When, where: 7:05 p.m. today, Yakima County Stadium.

Radio: KUTI (1460).

Probable pitchers: Everett RHP Chris Kirkland (2-2, 3.95) vs. Yakima RHP Chris Odegaard (1-2, 4.50).

Notes

ROTATION CHANGES: The Bears have tweaked their starting rotation, inserting left-hander Dan Taylor in place of Brad Gemberling and, for one start at least, an arm to be determined for Ricardo Taveras.

Manager Bob Didier said Tuesday that Taveras has experienced some throwing arm discomfort of late and will probably be held out of one turn in the rotation.

Candidates to take that spot during the Everett series include Ben Dollar, Houston Summers and Brad Wilson.

INJURY UPDATE: Infielder Evan Button is scheduled to make his professional debut tonight, playing four innings or taking two at bats — whichever comes first. Button has been recovering from an Achilles injury sustained during his college career at the University of Mississippi.

Shortstop Brent Greer’s bruised right (throwing) thumb has healed nicely, but Ryan Wheeler’s right (throwing) elbow continues to keep him from playing first base. Wheeler will continue to serve as the designated hitter.

Also, Didier said catcher Tyson Van Winkle will return from long-season Class A South Bend today.

— Roger Underwood

Box score

AquaSox 11, Bears 9

EVERETT                    YAKIMA

    ab    r    h    bi        ab    r    h    bi

Royster lf    4    3    4    1    Montilla 2b    5    1    1    0

Gebbers 2b    3    1    0    0    Greer ss    4    2    2    2

Martinez 3b    6    2    2    0    Wheeler dh    5    1    3    5

Avila 1b    5    2    3    4    Conner 1b    4    0    0    0

Fuentes dh    5    1    1    1    Davidsn 3b    4    0    0    0

Jones rf    1    0    0    1    Sherlock lf    3    1    0    0

Rivero rf    4    1    2    0    Wrthngtn cf    3    1    1    0

Coleman c    5    1    1    2    Rodguez rf    3    2    2    1

Cerione cf    4    0    2    0    Kczrwski rf    1    0    0    0

Phillips ss    4    0    2    1    Varnell c    3    1    1    1

                    Corniel c    1    0    0    0

Totals    41    11    17    10Totals    36    9    10    9

Everett    530    002    100    —    11

Yakima    102    500    001    —    9

E—Davidson. PB—Coleman, Varnell. DP—Yakima 1. LOB—Everett 10, Yakima 4. 2B—Cerione, Avila, Rodriguez, Wheeler, Worthington. 3b—Phillips, Wheeler. HR—Royster, Avila, Coleman, Wheeler. S—Gebbers. CS—Cerione, Phillips, Greer.

                         IP    H    R    ER    BB    SO

 Everett

Burnett    3    6    6    6    1    3

Staehely W,2-1    2 2-3    3    2    2    1    4

Hesketh    2 1-3    0    0    0    0    3

Cooper S,7    1    1    1    1    0    2

 Yakima

Wolcott    3    9    8    6    1    1

Rodriguez L,1-3    3    4    2    2    1    2

Wilson    2    3    1    1    0    1

Suss    1    1    0    0    1    1

WP—Burnett, Wolcott. HBP—Conner (by Burnett), Sherlock (by Burnett), Gebbers (by Wolcott), Gebbers (by Wolcott), Cerione (by Rodriguez). Umpires—Aaron Roberts, Matt Mullins. T—3:00. A—1,401.

Standings

EAST DIVISION

    W    L    Pct.    GB

Tri-City (Rockies)    24    14    .632    —

Boise (Cubs)    16    21    .432    71?2

Spokane (Rangers)    14    24    .368    10

YAKIMA (D-backs)    13    25    .342    11

WEST DIVISION

    W    L    Pct.    GB

Salem-Keizer (Giants)    27    11    .711    —

Everett (Mariners)    24    14    .632    3

Eugene (Padres)    17    21    .447    10

Vancouver (Athletics)    16    21    .432    101?2

Tuesday’s results

Spokane 10, Eugene 3

Everett 11, Yakima 9

Tri-City 3, Salem-Keizer 1

Today’s games

Eugene at Spokane, 6:30 p.m.

Everett at Yakima, 7:05 p.m.

Vancouver at Boise, 6:15 p.m.

Salem-Keizer at Tri-City, 7:15 p.m.

Thursday’s games

Eugene at Spokane, 6:30 p.m.

Everett at Yakima, 7:05 p.m.

Vancouver at Boise, 6:15 p.m.

Salem-Keizer at Tri-City, 7:15 p.m.

Yakima River fishing report

YAKIMA, Wash. — Jim Gallagher from the Yakima River Fly Shop in Cle Elum sent over his latest Yakima River fishing report today (Tuesday, July 28). Here it is:

The stable summer high flows of the Yakima River have produced consistent fishing this past week. Terrestrial patterns, crane flies, summer stones, pale morning duns and yellow sallies have all taken fish on the surface. Fish have been more likely to take a dry fly in the low light periods of the morning and evening. Nymphing with large stone flies and a bead head dropper can catch fish during the heat of the day. Size 16 and 18 pheasant tails to imitate the PMD nymphs have been best. Fishing from a boat is still the best option with the high volume of water in the Yakima. The  water is clear and the weather is great. Get out and fish.

– Scott Sandsberry

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