Gil Santos "retiring"

[Sean Smyth]

On Fri, 1/9/09, Howard Glazer <hmglaz@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> It happens to just about everyone once they reach their 60s
> or 70s, whether
> you talk for a living or not. Dick Stockton's work
> during the baseball
> playoffs was painful to listen to, and he's definitely
> lost a step as an NFL
> play-by-play man too. As with Santos, the voice is still
> there, but the
> sharpness isn't.

As much as I can sense Gil has slipped recently, and it breaks my heart to say that, as much of it nowadays has to do with broadcast position -- they are practically up in Siberia in some of these facilities -- and the spotter. A good spotter can save an announcer plenty of times. Age isn't the only factor.

* * *

On an unrelated sidenote, Gil's WBZ profile says/said he was the voice of Penn State games on the radio -- I'm presuming this was sometime in the 1980s. Anyone know exactly when? Any clips floating around in broadcast land? Googling didn't provide me much more detail. I'm guessing it was in the mid-1980s, because Fran Fisher retired not long before then, and Gil was back to doing Boston College games in the late '80s or early '90s.