Longtime Dodger announced for S.F.

Ron Fairly, who spent most of his 21year playing career with the Dodgers and broadcast games for the Giants in the late 1980s and early 1990s, died Wednesday after a long bout with cancer. He was 81.

Fairly was an Angels broadcaster before joining the Giants’ booth in 1987, the year they won their first division title since 1971.

Fairly stayed with the Giants through the 1992 season, when the Peter Magowan ownership arrived and reshuffled the broadcast team, and moved to the Mariners, for whom he called games for 14 seasons.

During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck 30 years ago this month and interrupted the A’sGiants World Series, Fairly was in the Giants’ booth. He was with the Mariners when a 1996 quake interrupted a game at Seattle’s Kingdome.

“I should be in Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” Fairly said in a 1996 Chronicle interview. “I’m the only announcer who was on the air at the time of two earthquakes that postponed games.”

Regarding the Seattle quake, Fairly said, “This was only 5pointsomething. Hell, we had aftershocks that big after the ’89 quake. This was not a sharp jolt like the one we had in ’89.”

Fairly was the Giants’ lead broadcaster in 1987 and 1988 and then worked alongside Hank Greenwald after Greenwald returned from a twoyear stint with the Yankees.

Throughout his time with the Giants, Fairly called games at Candlestick Park.

“You’d have all your notes set in the booth,” Fairly said of the cold and windy stadium in a 1999 Chronicle interview. “But if you left the window to the field open, not only would infield dust blow into the booth, but if someone opened the back door, a gust of wind would blow your notes all over the place.”

Fairly was born in Macon, Ga., on July 12, 1938, and raised in Southern California.

He signed with the Dodgers out of USC and made his bigleague debut in 1958, the first year the Dodgers and Giants played on the West Coast.

Fairly, an outfielder and first baseman, was a .266 hitter with six teams and appeared in 15 games with the 1976 A’s. He was a twotime AllStar and played in four World Series, all of them with the Dodgers.

Fairly is survived by sons Mike, Steve and Patrick and his grandchildren, and was preceded in death by his wife, Mary.

Martha Jane Stanton / San Francisco Giants 1992 Giants broadcaster Ron Fairly interviews Giants coach Dusty Baker on July 9, 1992, prior to a game against the Expos at Candlestick Park.