The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
WFAN’s Heussler, who called Tate George’s shot, turning down his dial
Hours before the final full-time shift of his 30-year run at WFAN last Thursday, Bob Heussler considered a changing media landscape and joked that he’ll one day need to explain radio to his grandchildren.
“Let Gramps tell you what a great thing it was,” Heussler said.
Wouldn’t you tune in for that?
From making one of the most famous play-by-play calls in Connecticut sports history to serving as the thread to a sports talk show that redefined a medium, Heussler has lived the dreams of a childhood spent with a transistor radio under his pillow.
The quintessential tristate guy, Heussler was born in Brooklyn and raised primarily in New Jersey before making Connecticut and New York sports his life’s work.
Heussler, 66, who lived in Hamden for most of his adult life before moving to Stamford several years ago, has stepped down as a fulltime update anchor at The Fan. He will continue on a part-time basis, and in November he will begin his 35th season as the play-byplay announcer for the Fairfield men’s basketball team.
So Heussler is not done. He’s just dialing things down.
“It’s a major life change in that, for 45 straight years, not only have I never not had a full-time job but much of that time I worked multiple jobs,” Heussler said. “I’m not saying that’s something to be proud of, that you center your life in great part around jobs you hold, but that was the reality of it.”
For years, Heussler commuted to WFAN studios in Astoria, Queens, and later Manhattan.
“Insanity, in retrospect,” he said.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t love it, listening to Mike Francesa and Chris Russo on the way in, working with them and others on air during his shift, listening
to Joe Benigno or Steve Somers on the way home.
But for the past two years, while working from home due to the pandemic, Heussler decided his commuting days were over. WFAN last month decided to bring all update anchors back into the studio. Heussler figures that about the only thing worth fighting through city traffic for is the occasional Mets game.
“I’m not embellishing to say that I’ve done enough miles, either by car or train, for five people,” he said. “So I’m shifting gears, and I have no complaints.”
Heussler came and went from New York every day the way he came and went from his updates during WFAN’s signature program, Mike and the Mad Dog. He was the calming every-20-minutes news presence for a show that was all emotion and commotion. Francesa and Russo playfully ribbed Heussler, though, pulling the personality and emotion he used so effectively as a play-by-play voice into their afternoon drive show that set the standard for sports talk radio.
“I got to be part of the greatest sports radio program there ever was and probably ever will be,” Heussler said. “If not for Mike and the Mad Dog, and then later Mike solo, I would just be another radio update anchor. I pretty much stayed in my lane for 30 years. But those two guys loved to bust me because, I guess, they liked me.”
Heussler, a University of Bridgeport graduate, has worked at numerous Connecticut radio stations, in a variety of roles. He was the Connecticut Radio Network’s UConn men’s basketball play-by-play announcer for three seasons, beginning in 1989-90, The Dream Season.
Which means, of course, he was charged with describing the longest and most famous basketball second in state history. It was March 22, 1990, East Rutherford, N.J.
Take a listen.
And the Huskies will have exactly one second remaining in this ball game to try to pull off a miracle — just one second left. Burrell takes the ball, looking to inbound, loops it far
For UConn fans of a certain age, all or some of those words are stamped into memories of a season that set the stage for all that was to become of UConn basketball.
“What I appreciate is that call has withstood the test of time,” Heussler said. “I drove home that night thinking ‘Man, did I go over the top on that?’ Thirty-two years later, I realize why it works.
“The pitch. The emotion. I think my voice connotes how desperate the situation was in the span of as long as it takes to throw a 90-foot pass and hit a buzzer-beater. In that quick millisecond or two or three, my voice goes from desperation to elation. Somehow, I managed to actually get in some details, which I’m grateful for.”
Heussler, the longtime announcer and public relations coordinator at Milford Jai Alai, was the play-byplay announcer for the Connecticut Sun’s first 17 seasons after the franchise relocated to Uncasville from Orlando. He started calling Fairfield games in the 198334 season, first giving it up to help his late wife, Marcia, who was lost to cancer in 2011, raise their two sons and resuming it after a three-year stint on UConn.
He called Brooke Wyckoff ’s 3-pointer that sent Game 2 of the 2005 WNBA Finals against Sacramento to overtime.
His favorite moments with the Stags include the 1997 run to the MAAC championship and near upset of Vince Carter’s North Carolina in the firstround of the NCAA Tournament, and a 2007 buzzerbeater by Mike Evanovich that sent a CIT road game against George Mason into overtime. The Stags had trailed by 27 with 16:08 remaining in regulation. They won in OT, 101-96.
“To this day, it is the biggest comeback in postseason college basketball history,” Heussler said. “If you think I got excited on the Tate George call, that Fairfield game, I’ll tell you, whoa. It was historic. Now, people don’t know it — greatest comeback. It was the CIT. It wasn’t the NCAA or even the NIT. But it was something else. And I’ll tell you another person who would remember that well — Ed Cooley.”
Heussler began at WFAN on May 9, 1993, six years into the station’s all-sports format, at a time when updates were a central component of every show, before fans could tap right into the sports world from their phones. Now he’s part of that first WFAN wave exiting, one after another. Russo left WFAN in 2008 while Francesa remained. Just in the past few years, so many original voices have left — Francesa, Somers, Benigno, John Minko, Ed Coleman, and now Heussler.
“You hear from listeners, ‘Oh, it’s not the same,’” Heussler said. “Well, of course it’s not. It can’t be the same. It’s not supposed to be the same. For anybody who thinks it’s not as good, it’s a new time for a new audience. It’s clearly the next generation.”
Referred to as “Mr. Met” by Francesa and poked and prodded by Russo over all sorts of topics, Heussler oftentimes had his updates, or flashes, interrupted. It made for spontaneous back and forth that successful radio is built on.
Heussler’s broadcasted the past two years from “WFAN Stamford,” what he calls his in-home studio, during the pandemic. His commute has been cut from the reaches of the New York metropolitan area to a couple of rooms away. He’ll fill in here and there for WFAN, updates and Nets games when needed.
“I just consider myself very lucky,” he said. “I was able to take two of the great passions of my life, sports and radio, and put them together and make it work. Radio is the most personal of connections. If you’re a good radio broadcaster, you’re making that personal connection with the listener, as opposed to TV, where the pictures carry the story. The TV announcer provides the subtitles. But in radio, you are the picture. It’s almost like the pallet is the medium and you have to provide all the color.”