Wilson “Bud” Foster was born in Seattle and hoped for a career as a professional baseball player. That didn’t pan out, so after a couple of years in college, Foster gave broadcasting a try.
He wound up in Alaska, where he got Fairbanks station KFAR off the ground. While in Alaska, Foster broadcast baseball and football games via re-creation, and did play-by-play of all sorts of local sports events.
When World War II broke out, Foster became a war correspondent with NBC, initially covering the Aleutian Islands campaign. Foster would go on to cover the US Marine Corps landings at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa, sustaining wounds at Okinawa that ended his wartime journalistic career.
In 1945, Foster arrived in Oakland to become the voice of Oakland Oaks baseball on KLX. The Oaks and the cross-bay rival San Francisco Seals competed in the Pacific Coast League, which enjoyed regional dominance before the arrival of Major League Baseball on the West Coast in 1958.
Foster was a popular figure on local radio, becoming station manager of KLX in 1954. A 1955 Oakland Tribune column said “Foster manages to please the hyper-critical and sometimes hyper-sensitive Acorn fans season after season”.
In addition to Oaks broadcasts, Foster was heard on San Francisco 49ers radio coverage and many other West Coast sports broadcasts.
After the Oaks moved to Vancouver, BC to start the 1956 baseball season, Foster began to be seen on television, delivering sports updates on KTVU and later KGO-TV. He kept his hand in radio, broadcasting the 1960 World Series on KNBC at a time when he was providing regular sportscasts on the station.
Foster handled University of California football and basketball play-by-play for several seasons, and joined the broadcast team for the Oakland Raiders when the team was launched in 1960.
In 1968, Foster became co-owner and sports director of a new UHF television station in San Francisco, KUDO.
In 1978, after a few years on the sidelines, Foster made a comeback, broadcasting Oakland A’s games on KNEW.
Bud Foster died in 1988 at age 73.