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Dick Enberg (born January 9, 1935 in Armada, Michigan) is an American sportscaster. Enberg is one of the most prominent and respected play-by-play announcers in network television history, with a career spanning more than forty years. He is recognizable by his trademark exclamation, "Oh, my!"
Education
Enberg was educated at Central Michigan University and Indiana University, earning master's and doctorate degrees in health sciences at the latter institution. From 1961 to 1965 he was an assistant professor and baseball coach at California State University, Northridge.
Early career
In 1965, Enberg began a full-time sportscasting career, calling games for the California Angels of Major League Baseball, the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League, and UCLA Bruins basketball. After every Angels victory, he would wrap up his broadcast with, "And the halo shines tonight." Four times Enberg was named California Sportscaster of the Year.
In the early 1970s, Enberg hosted the syndicated television game show Sports Challenge, and co-produced the Emmy Award-winning sports-history series The Way It Was for PBS.
Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head
In the 1970 opening game in Pauley Pavilion, Oregon went into a stall against the UCLA Bruins. Dick had run out of statistics and began to fill his radio broadcast with small talk. The movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had just been released, and Enberg was humming the tune to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", but did not know the words. At the Oregon State game, many students brought the lyrics to the song. Dick promised that he would sing the song if UCLA would win the conference championship. He sang the song following the final game of the season. The event was recorded in the Los Angeles Times and was later recounted in the book Pauley Pavilion: College Basketball's Showplace by David Smale. During the 2006 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship broadcast, there was a short feature on the event.
NBC
In 1975, Enberg joined the NBC television network. For the next 25 years, he broadcast a plethora of sports and events for NBC, including the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the U.S. Open golf championship, college football, college basketball, the Wimbledon and French Open tennis tournaments, heavyweight boxing, Breeders' Cup horse racing, and the Olympic Games. While on The NFL on NBC, Enberg called eight Super Bowls, the last being Super Bowl XXXII in 1998.
Current roles
Enberg was hired by CBS in 2000, and now calls that network's NFL and college basketball action, and the U.S. Open tennis tournament, as well as contributing to coverage of The Masters and PGA Championship golf. Since 2004, Enberg has served as lead commentator for ESPN2's coverage of the Wimbledon, French Open, and Australian Open tennis tournaments, and in 2006 he began calling Thursday-night NFL games for Westwood One radio.
Honors
Enberg has garnered many awards and honors over the years, including 13 Emmy Awards (as well as a Lifetime Achievement Emmy), nine National Sportscaster of the Year awards, the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Award, the NBA's Curt Gowdy Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Enberg is the only sportscaster thus far to win Emmys in three categories (broadcasting, writing, and producing), and in 1973 became the first U.S. sportscaster to visit the People's Republic of China.
Indiana University awarded Enberg an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2002.
Trivia
- Dick Enberg's surname is of Swedish origin. While starting out at KTLA-TV, Enberg was pressured into changing his name professionally to Dick Breen out of fear that Enberg would be seen as too ethnic sounding (i.e. Jewish).
- Enberg was scheduled to be the prime time host for NBC's coverage of the 1980 Summer Olympics from Moscow. After the United States opted to boycott the games, NBC decided to greatly reduce their Olympic broadcasting hours. Although Enberg now hosted a two hour wrap-up show each night, he was still given credit for being the anchor.
- In addition to his career in sports broadcasting, Enberg hosted three game shows beside the aforementioned Sports Challenge: The Perfect Match in 1967, Baffle on NBC from 1973 through 1974, and Three for the Money on NBC in 1975.
- Enberg attended a small-town high school, Armada High School, and was responsible for the naming of the yearbook, the Regit (Tiger spelled backwards), a name it has to this day.
- Enberg, penned a one-man theatrical play titled (Al) "McGuire" after his former television broadcast partner and late friend. It debuted at Marquette University's Helfaer Theater in 2005. There may be plans to take the show on the road, as it drew positive reviews as an accurate portrayal of the eccentric coach.
- In 2006, Enberg began narrating a documentary style television series for Fox Sports Net called In Focus.
- According to his autobiography, Oh My, Enberg was informed by NBC that he would become the lead play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball Game of the Week beginning with the 1982 World Series (where he shared the play-by-play duties with Joe Garagiola alongisde analyst Tony Kubek) and through subsequent regular seasons. He wrote that on his football trips, he would read every Sporting News to make sure he was current with all the baseball news and notes. Then he met with NBC executives in September 1982, and they informed him that Vin Scully was in negotiations to be their lead baseball play-by-play man (teaming with Joe Garagiola while Tony Kubek would team with Bob Costas) and would begin with the network in the spring of 1983. Therefore, rather than throw him in randomnly for one World Series, Enberg wrote that he hosted the pregame/postgame shows while the team of Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek did the games. According to the book, Enberg wasn't pleased about the decision (since he loved being the California Angels' radio voice in the 1970s and was eager to return to baseball) but the fact that NBC was bringing in Scully, arguably baseball's best announcer, was understandable. Enberg added that NBC also gave him a significant pay increase as a pseudo-apology for not coming through on the promise to make him the lead baseball play-by-play man.
External links
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