Wilbur “Bill” King was born in Bloomington, IL and first went on the air with Armed Forces Radio while stationed on Guam. A star high school baseball star before military service, King decided against trying to reach the big leagues as a player. Upon returning Stateside, he found work at a small station in Pekin, IL, near Peoria.
King called high school games in Pekin and Peoria. He called his first minor league baseball game in 1948 in Peoria, at the age of 19, and went on to call Bradley University basketball and University of Nebraska football and basketball games.
He moved to the Bay Area in the late ’50s, getting fill-in work on San Francisco Giants broadcasts with Lon Simmons and Russ Hodges. King’s big break came in 1962, when the newly-arrived Warriors basketball team hired him as its voice. King’s tenure with the Warriors lasted through the 1982-83 season.
In 1966, King added radio play-by-play duties for the Oakland Raiders. He was at the mic for many of the epic Raiders games of the John Madden coaching era. He called Raiders games through the 1992 season.
And that’s not all. King was convinced to become the lead radio announcer for the Oakland A’s in 1981, a job that would turn out to be the longest of his remarkable career. King was still on the A’s broadcast team when he died of complications following hip surgery in 2005. He was 78.
Longtime radio colleague Ken Korach, who wrote about King in a 2013 book, reacted to King’s death by saying, “Bill was a true icon, a renaissance man, a one-in-a-million kind of a character, and I mean that in a positive way. He was one of a kind.”
King’s distinctive voice, rapid-fire delivery, rapier-like wit and catchphrases like “Holy Toledo!” made him perhaps the most recognizable sportscaster in Bay Area history.
In 2016, the Baseball Hall of Fame recognized Bill King with its annual Ford C. Frick Award.
RELATED EXHIBITS:
Bill King: The Bay Area Radio Digest Interview
Bill King and Van Amburg: Oakland Raiders Radio Network