“I wasn’t too big on telling people, ‘This guy’s now hitting .202,’ ” said the broadcaster, Bob Wolff, now 92 years old. “I’d look for human-interest stories all the time to keep people listening to the game. I’d just say, ‘Well, folks, it’s 17-3,’ and they knew which team was losing.”
Wolff’s curiosity sustained him for 15 years in this city, and many more elsewhere in a professional journey that wound through Madison Square Garden and continues today for News 12 Long Island. His 74-year career is the longest in sports broadcasting history, as certified by Guinness World Records.
And, incredibly, Wolff recorded and retained almost all of it.
“He was an archivist at heart, in the best sense of the word,” said Gene DeAnna, the head of the recorded sound section of the Library of Congress. “He was not a hoarder, that’s not what I mean. He was systematic, organized, and had this sense of the future and the sense of the importance of his legacy to keep it and to take care of it, and we are very grateful that he did.”
Wolff has donated about 1,400 audio and video recordings, consisting of well more than 1,000 hours, to the Library of Congress, which will honor him in a ceremony next week.
Much of the material, DeAnna said, comes from an era when broadcasts were erased or not recorded at all. Wolff called some of the most memorable sports moments of the last century, including Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and the Colts-Giants N.F.L. championship game in 1958. But the jewels of the collection are his interviews.
The subjects in Wolff’s trove range from Babe Ruth and Connie Mack to Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, plus Vince Lombardi, Joe Louis, Jim Thorpe and nearly every other major sports celebrity to cross his path. He was a pioneer in the creation of pre- and postgame shows, which he syndicated to various teams for their local broadcasts.
“In the early days, the people doing interviews, for the most part, were former athletes,” Wolff said. “They were people who had spent their time answering questions because they were stars, and had never asked a question in their lives.”
Wolff wanted to be a baseball star, but broke his ankle in a rundown play as a freshman at Duke. He turned to broadcasting for WDNC in Durham, N.C., in 1939, and soon found a winning formula for his interviews: start with an offbeat, relaxing question; move to something newsworthy; finish with a question that focuses on a source of pride for the subject.
Wolff said he always wanted the interview to be appealing to the audience and enjoyable for the athlete, but he was no pushover. He once approached Ted Williams for an interview, and Williams, noticing the microphone, scowled at Wolff and muttered to himself. Wolff later chastised Williams, who made him a deal: the next time they met, if Williams had a certain batting average, he would do the show.
Williams, indeed, had met his high standards when he next encountered Wolff. But he had also just sworn off all interviews in another of his famous feuds with the Boston news media.
“Ted, you told me this with a handshake, but I read about what happened in Boston, and if you live up to your deal with me, as a reporter, I’ve got to ask you if you have any remorse,” Wolff said he told Williams. “But you’re a friend of mine, and if you want to bow out, we’re still friends. But if you want to go on, I’ve got to ask you the questions.”
Wolff said Williams did not hesitate.
“What time’s the interview?” Williams said. “Ask anything you want.”
Wolff, speaking over the phone from his home in South Nyack, N.Y., is known as a gentleman of the press corps; the stories behind his stories remain vivid. The interviews are compelling historical documents, and Wolff preserved many of the early ones on 16-inch lacquer discs — slices of sports’ oral history on pizza-size records.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/sports/baseball/bob-wolff-a-broadcaster-who-saved-his-work-has-much-to-share.html?partner=rss&emc=rss