Versatile sportscaster voice of big moments
Signature ‘Oh, my!’ calls etched in soundtrack of sports generation
Dick Enberg, the sportscaster known for his warm voice and signature expression “Oh, my!” when beholding a game-winning home run or a brilliant volley at Wimbledon, died on Thursday at his home in the San Diego enclave of La Jolla. He was 82.
His lawyer, Dennis Coleman, said Enberg had been scheduled to fly to Boston on Thursday to meet his new grandson. His body was found after family members could not reach him and contacted someone they knew in the San Diego area to check on him, Coleman said.
Few sportscasters were as versatile or as educated as Enberg, who earned a doctorate in health science at Indiana University. Working, in succession, for NBC, CBS and ESPN, he called Super Bowls, baseball and basketball games, Olympic events, golf and tennis tournaments, and boxing matches.
He also hosted game shows and delivered heartfelt essays during sportscasts about athletes overcoming physical and emotional challenges. And he worked with partners as diverse as the erudite Bud Collins on tennis and the eccentric Al McGuire on college basketball.
By 2015, he had winnowed his oncefrenetic network schedule to calling only San Diego Padres games, an apt final chapter for someone who had once imagined himself playing right field for the Detroit Tigers.
“On one hand, I don’t want to give it up,” he told the San Diego UnionTribune near the end of his next-tolast season with the Padres.
“My dream was to die in a booth. I’d like to keep going until my head hits the table and I say, ‘The Padres win the World Series.’ And then, on the other hand, it’s an old cliché, but the guy on the deathbed has never said, ‘I wished I’d worked more in my life,’ and it kept resonating with me.”
Enberg was a local sportscaster in Los Angeles calling UCLA men’s basketball games when he was catapulted onto the national stage.
Under John Wooden, the Bruins were in the midst of an extraordinary period in which they won nine NCAA men’s championships in 10 seasons and Enberg called eight of them.
In what he called his most memorable game, No. 1-ranked UCLA, led by the centre Lew Alcindor (later to be known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), faced the No. 2 University of Houston, with its star, Elvin Hayes, at the Houston Astrodome on Jan. 20,1968.
As millions watched on TV, Houston broke UCLA’s 47-game winning streak with a 71-69 victory.
It proved to be his launching pad as well. While Enberg continued to broadcast UCLA games for several more years, he was heading toward a long run as a network sports star when NBC hired him in 1975.
He took a circuitous route to call baseball — or sports at all. While attending Central Michigan University, he sought a job as a custodian at the campus radio station.
During the job interview, the station manager noticed that Enberg had a good voice and hired him to be a disc jockey. Several weeks later, he was the sports director. And later, while earning a master’s degree and then a doctorate in health science at Indiana University, he began calling the Hoosiers’ football and basketball games.
Don Ohlmeyer, the former executive producer at NBC Sports who died this year, said that Enberg did more than pepper his play-by-play with his trademark expression.
“He’s fantastic at being able to put an event in its historical context,” Ohlmeyer told the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame’s website. “For an event like Wimbledon, there was always that air of respect in his voice without in any way being obsequious, and that’s a tough thing to pull off.”