He’s Finally Made It to the Big A, and Is Earning Straight A’s

Ken Wilson, the Angels’ new television announcer, almost joined the club in 1977 after getting job offers from both the Angels and the Seattle Mariners, then an expansion club, on the same day.

The Mariners won out, and Wilson, now 43, spent five seasons with them, then three with the Cincinnati Reds and the last six with the St. Louis Cardinals before signing to do Angel play-by-play for both KTLA and SportsChannel.

Originally from Detroit and a Michigan graduate, Wilson started his baseball announcing career in Hawaii, where he moved after college.

Wilson got a job as a disc jockey at a rock station and was also selling beverages in the stands at Hawaii Islander games when the team’s announcer, a fellow by the name of Al Michaels, gave him a job in the broadcast booth.

Wilson was still in Hawaii in late 1976 when he got a call from announcer Dick Enberg, who was then with the Angels.

“He called out of the clear blue,” Wilson said. “He was in Hawaii on vacation and said he was just calling to say he liked my work.”

Wilson, who had sent audition tapes to Seattle and the Toronto Blue Jays, both expansion clubs, learned a few weeks later that the Angels had an opening because Dave Niehaus was headed for Seattle.

In the meantime, on his own, Wilson flew to Los Angeles to attend the baseball winter meetings at the Los Angeles Hilton in early December of 1976 and do a little politicking.

Showing some initiative, Wilson went to a nearby hotel where Les Smith, one of the six managing general partners of the Mariners, was staying and called Smith’s room.

Wilson was a bit surprised to find Smith in his room and was stunned by his response.

“This is incredible,” Smith told him. “We’re listening to your audition tape at this very moment. Come on up.”

Also in Smith’s room was Dick Vertlieb, who became the expansion team’s first general manager, and the late Danny Kaye, another one of the managing general partners.

“I was absolutely flabbergasted,” Wilson recalled. “I couldn’t believe this was happening.”

The three men interviewed Wilson and said they would be in touch.

He went back to Hawaii and on Dec. 19, 1976--”It’s a day I’ll never forget,” Wilson said--Vertlieb called to tell Wilson the club was interested, and he’d get back to him.

Then, 15 minutes later, Wilson got a call from Stan Spiro, then general manager of Angel flagship station KMPC. He, too, was interested in hiring Wilson.

So Wilson again, on his own, flew to Los Angeles to meet with Spiro.

The Mariners somehow got word of Wilson’s Los Angeles meeting and cried foul.

They said they had first call on Wilson’s services, and because Angel and KMPC owner Gene Autry also owned the Mariners’ flagship station, the Angels acquiesced.

Had things gone a little differently, this could have been Wilson’s 15th season with the Angels, rather than his first.

With the Angels, Wilson is paired with Ken Brett, and they seem as if they have been working together for years.

Brett, after four seasons on radio, is hardly the same announcer who at one time struggled dreadfully with play-by-play. The former pitcher has found a groove as a television commentator. He comes across as relaxed, insightful and even a little humorous at times.

One problem with this team is their first names.

“I have always called my partner by his first name, but I realized this could create a problem,” Wilson said. “We’d be saying, ‘Well, Ken, what do you thing about this?’ ‘Well, Ken, I think this’ and back and forth.”

So in spring training Wilson began calling Brett by his nickname, Kemer, which has been with him since infancy when older brother John wasn’t able to say Ken.

KMPC’s Jim Healy, for one, has complained that using Kemer is juvenile.

Maybe Wilson should have tried Shoeless, which was Brett’s nickname for years after he signed his first baseball contract with the Boston Red Sox and showed up his first camp in bare feet. Problem was Brett’s new winged tips were killing his feet.

“We’ve discovered our voices aren’t very similar, so we’re just calling each other Ken,” Wilson said.

At least no one is calling these two Ken and Barbie.

Actually, what viewers are calling these two are good. The Angels may be struggling on the field, but they have a winning team in the television booth.

It’s been Nothing But Confusing at NBC these days.

For one thing, the network has been misleading viewers in promoting its NBA telecasts. It will say a game starts at 9:30 a.m., PDT, when actually that is the starting time for the pregame show.

It’s an old television trick, designed to draw viewers in a little early.

What it indicates, though, is that NBC must not have much confidence in “NBA Showtime.” Thus, it tries to deceive viewers into watching it.

Also, NBC toyed with viewers on “NBA Showtime” last Saturday. Instead of having co-host Bob Costas, right at the top of the show, ask partner Pat Riley about the possibility of his taking the coaching job with the New York Knicks, Costas said, “We’ll deal with that sometime this weekend.”

So the probing questions weren’t asked until Sunday.

And speaking of Riley, taking the Knick job, as expected, would seem to be the right thing for him. Riley reached star status as a coach. It’s doubtful he ever could do the same as a broadcaster.

TV-Radio Notes

SportsChannel will be offered to all cable subscribers on its 67 affiliates free of charge for four days, beginning next Thursday. During that time, there will be the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals and a Dodger-Met game. . . . SportsChannel has had some recent programming problems. Because of Dodger or Angel telecasts, the pay service has had to delay hockey telecasts or put them on a spillover channel, as is the case with tonight’s Minnesota-Edmonton game. About half of SportsChannel’s affiliates offer a spillover channel. These systems are able to show a baseball game, such as tonight’s between the Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, on SportsChannel’s regular channel and a hockey game live on the spillover channel, which is available free of charge to all subscribers.

It’s no secret that SportsChannel Los Angeles and its parent company, SportsChannel America, have had financial problems. One sign of trouble at SportsChannel America is that, beginning next Wednesday, it is dropping its “Sports Nightly” news show because of cost considerations. Meanwhile, Prime Ticket’s “Press Box” news show, which made its debut in October and already has had more than 150 installments, is becoming a viewing habit for more and more sports fans.

Thanks to NBC, TNT and Channel 9, there will be eight NBA playoff games on television over the next four days. Tonight at 5 on TNT, it’s Chicago and Philadelphia, with Pete Van Wieren and Hubie Brown reporting, followed at 7:30 by the Lakers and Golden State Warriors on both Channel 9 and TNT. Viewers can pick Chick Hearn and Stu Lantz on Channel 9 or Bob Neal and Doug Collins on TNT. . . . Saturday’s NBC doubleheader, beginning at 10 a.m.--not 9:30, as NBC claims--has Boston at Detroit and Portland at Utah. The announcers for the first game will be Marv Albert and Mike Fratello, with Ahmad Rashad the courtside reporter. The crew on the second game will be Tom Hammond and Phoenix Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons, with Joel Meyers working courtside.

Sunday’s NBC doubleheader has Chicago and Philadelphia in the opener and the Lakers at Golden State in the nightcap. Albert, Fratello and Rashad will work the first game, with Dick Enberg, Steve Jones and Meyers at the second. . . . TNT offers Portland-Utah Sunday at 5 p.m., with Neal and Collins reporting, and then Boston-Detroit Monday at 5, with Van Wieren and Brown.

Gabe Kaplan is taking Monday and Tuesday off next week to compete in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, and Super Dave Osborne, of all people, will fill in for him on KLAC’s “Sportsnuts.” Kaplan won a poker tournament in 1980 and pocketed $180,000. . . . NBC appears to be trying to lure another big-name coach into the broadcast booth. The New York Times reported that Giant Coach Bill Parcells was given an audition as a football analyst. That probably isn’t good news for Bill Walsh. . . . CBS has no baseball game this weekend.