Bob Wolff: The broadcasting legend who has Vin Scully beat by a decade
As Vin Scully kicks off his final Dodgers homestand Monday after 67 seasons with the franchise, many will make it a point to tune in and revel in the final few calls from one of baseball’s most iconic announcers.
While Scully’s place in the pantheon of legendary broadcasters is secure, he’s also not alone in having crafted a career spanning such an impossible length. In fact, Bob Wolff, the Guinness World Record-holder for longevity in sportscasting, has the venerable Scully beat by a decade.
“I started out with two ambitions in life: One, to be an entertainer, and two, to be a baseball player,” the 95-year-old Wolff told FOX Sports during a recent phone interview from his New York home. “And fortunately, I was able to combine both of those things.
“I had no idea (I’d be on the air for this long), but on the other hand, I was curious to see if I could make it happen,” Wolff added. “In those days, there were very few sportscasters doing play-by-play, but it all came together, and I just became in demand, for better or for worse.”
Whereas Scully’s time on air essentially started with the Dodgers in 1950 after a brief stint at WTOP in Washington, D.C., Wolff took several steps on his way to making his name familiar, covering several different teams across a number of leagues.
A former college baseball player, Wolff actually got started in broadcasting thanks to a broken ankle during his time at Duke. While he was on the mend, Wolff talked his way onto an on-air job at WDNC, the CBS affiliate in Durham, in 1939, and over the 77 years since, Wolff has called 31 different sports, interviewing thousands of players and coaches.
During that time, Wolff been on hand for some of the biggest moments in sports history, including the 1958 NFL Championship Game — one regarded by many as the greatest game played — three World Series and the Knicks’ NBA championships in 1970 and '73. Wolff insists there’s no secret to his durability in the booth, nor is there animosity between himself and other greats.
“I just kept it light-hearted, fun and humorous, and I never worried about competing against anybody else, because they did it their way, and I enjoyed their way, too,” Wolff said. “And I’d call them and tell them, ‘Great job, wonderful show.’ I didn’t try to emulate them. I just said, ‘Look, if I can do the best I can in my style, then fine,’ and we all became pretty good buddies.”
Interestingly enough, however, Wolff never developed a close friendship with Scully — thanks in part to the fact that most of their work was done on opposite ends of the country.
“I’ve had a personal friendship with all the announcers because I haven’t hesitated to call them and give them suggestions or tips or tell them how great they are,” Wolff said. “They do a terrific job, and they do an even better job today. But with Vin, it was always really, ‘Hi, Vin, how are you doing?’ and then he’d leave the ballpark.
“Most of my work was in New York or with the American League,” Wolff added, “So we never had a chance to just sit down and talk about baseball together.”
Still, while the two are not close, Wolff and Scully are undoubtedly kindred spirits.
In addition to being two of the longest-tenured broadcasters to speak into a microphone, the pair also share a Nov. 29 birthday (though Wolff is seven years older than the 88-year-old Scully). Additionally, they were both on hand — and on the air — for one of the most important moments in baseball history: Don Larsen’s perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.
And while Scully’s may stand as the more memorable of the competing calls, Wolff has fond memories of his own experience at the game — an assignment he drew after executives at Gillette, then the radio sponsor of the World Series, were impressed by his call of that year’s All-Star Game at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C.
“Every time I’d go to Boston, I’d call on the Gillette people, just to have lunch with them, so at least they knew who I was,” Wolff recalled. “Then I’d tell them baseball stories, strategy, unusual things that happened to me, and at the end of it, they’d say, ‘What would you like us to do for you?’ And I said, ‘You might give me a chance on the air someday, because I think I could be of help.’”
Heading into Game 5 at Yankee Stadium, the Dodgers and Yankees were tied at two games apiece. Mickey Mantle hit a solo homer to open the scoring in the fourth, then Hank Bauer added an RBI single in the sixth to make it 2-0, and as the game wore on, Wolff realized he might be witnessing history.
“I knew by the eighth inning that everybody was now rooting for Larsen to win, just so they could say they saw such a historic event,” said Wolff, who donated his recording of the game — as well as more than 1,000 other broadcasts, to the Library of Congress. “So the crowd swelled up with every strike, and I had to go with the flow of the crowd. I thought to myself, ‘Don’t consider what you might say, just let it come bursting out.’”
However, Wolff did have to do a little thinking as the game played out. Because unlike Scully, who has long described avoiding the mention of a no-hitter as an “insult” to viewers, Wolff chose not to tell listeners directly about what was going on.
“I grew up playing baseball, my kids grew up playing baseball, and I knew at that time that, when you’re sitting on the bench, nobody talks about it,” Wolff said. “Don Larsen was the exception — he didn’t mind kidding around, speaking about it — but at that time it was a sacrilegious thing to do. You just don’t talk about it when it’s happening, and I abided by that restriction.”
Still, Wolff made it clear to listeners exactly what was taking place.
“I believe, as Vinny did, that the public should be aware of what’s happening, because I’m a reporter first,” said Wolff, who alternated with Bob Neal, calling either the first or second half of each game during the 1956 Series. “So I made up my mind at the halfway point of the ballgame to speak to the Gillette producer, Joe Nixon about it (before coming on the air).
“I said, ‘Joe, I’m going to do the rest of this game, with your permission, and I’m not going to mention the no-hitter in those words,’” Wolff continued. “But I said, ‘I am going to mention everything else, because everyone in the country and around the world needs to know there’s a no-hitter in progress. So I’m going to do it that way, and I guarantee there will be no escape from understanding it.’”
There are other similarities between Scully, who has called 20 no-hitters and three perfect games, and Wolff, as well, including the skill with which both broadcasters fill the air between plays. Over the years, Scully’s tangents during the course of games have become legendary, and in his days as a play-by-play man, Wolff often followed the same script.
“The big thing with baseball is what you do between pitches,” said Wolff, who also spent 36 years as the lead announcer for Knicks and Rangers games at Madison Square Garden. “So I knew that the more unusual my stories, the more interesting they were, the more humorous they were, the better it was going to work. And that’s what I worked at, making people want to listen, even when the Washington Senators, the first team I did, barely won a game.
“I remember I’d say, ‘Well, folks, welcome to the game. It’s now 14-2, we’re going to the eighth inning,’ and I wouldn’t say which team was winning or losing,” continued Wolff, who broke into TV in 1946 and called Senators and Twins games from 1947-61. “That’s because they already knew the Senators were losing, because that’s what they always did.”
In recent years, Wolff, like Scully, has scaled back, with Wolff now providing occasional commentary for News 12 Long Island, which originally hired Wolff as its sports director in 1986. Still, there’s little doubt as to the significance of his legacy — after appearing on air in nine different decades, he’s tough to ignore — and like us, he says he’ll enjoy watching Scully’s well-deserved final signoff.
“He always had sort of a slow, sonorous way of using his voice that took more time than a voice like mine,” Wolff said, comparing his style to Scully’s. “It’s more like listening to a serenade of a beautiful singer, so it was tough for a color man to come in with quick notes interrupting him.
“Eventually Vinny decided he would do it by himself,” Wolff continued. “And he was allowed to do so because he was so good at it that nobody wants to interrupt him, anyhow. After all, why change something that good?”
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
