Hank

“H” is for Hank,

‘Mister Greenwald’, to you;

A finer sportscaster,

No fan ever knew.

Eerie coincidences and the swift, almost instantaneous travel of information these days generated a jarring, and then saddening, emotional response yesterday. One moment we were surfing the ‘Net, looking for some reference to a Bay Area radio station that’s gone through more name changes than did Elizabeth Taylor. The next we found ourselves at the short Wikipedia bio of Hank Greenwald, the Giants broadcaster we remember most fondly. And we noted that both birth and death dates had been posted for Hank. Momentary surprise-- He’s passed away? Why hadn’t we heard?—gave way to sudden astonishment: October 22, 2018? Why, that’s—that’s—that’s today!

And so, the witty, erudite, and always engaging Hank Greenwald has passed on after 83 years. If you’re a fan of a certain age, there’s a Giant-sized hole where your heart should be this morning.

Hank—he borrowed the name from his boyhood hero, Hank Greenberg, out of love and because it sounded more euphonious than “Howard”-- started with the Giants in 1979, took over the lead broadcast duties in 1982, left briefly after five years to do New York Yankees games, then returned in 1989 and was the voice of the Giants until his retirement in 1996. He called the “Will Clark Game” that clinched the pennant in the 1989 NLCS, the World Series earthquake that shook Candlestick Park a week later, commiserated with us fans after the Giants won 103 games in 1993 but missed the postseason, and made a place for himself among the many great Bay Area sportscasters past and present. The Giants knew they needed a great one to succeed Hank—no one could replace him—and that’s how we got Jon Miller. And we know his heart aches this morning along with ours.

If you weren’t around then, you maybe can’t imagine the shock Giants fans felt when, after the false-hope 1978 season, the team announced it was terminating its contract with good old KSFO, which had held the broadcast rights since the team came to town, in favor of something called KNBR. And worse, that we would no longer hear the friendly baritone of Lon Simmons calling the games. Like KSFO, Lon was family, a link to those glory days. He’d taken over as lead voice after his legendary partner, Russ Hodges, retired in 1970, and in recent years he’d worked with the young Al Michaels and with Joe Angel.  Now all that was changing. Lindsey Nelson, whom we know only for his loud sports jackets and his Notre Dame affiliation, would be doing the games. (A stranger?) And his new sidekick would be some guy named Greenwald.

In perhaps his first interview with the San Francisco press before starting his new job, Hank tried to assuage the concerns of Giants fans. Allowing that Nelson could be a tad homerish when it came to the Fighting Irish, Hank said Lindsey was an outstanding baseball announcer and knew the game well. As it turned out, he was right, but still, Lindsey Nelson was never really “ours.” Taking over in 1982, New York native and Syracuse grad Hank became ours, and right quickly. 

“Lindsey told me, ‘Don’t ever get caught up with wins and losses. If you do, and you’re announcing a bad team, you’ll sound like they play,’” Hank said, and that was put to the test early as he announced for some b-a-d teams in the mid-1980s. While never an overt homer, Hank could affect a bemused, affectionate tone in those days, speaking of the Giants as you would your erring but still-lovable second cousin. As one fan observed awhile back, “The worse the Giants were, the more entertaining Hank became.”  Some classic Greenwald-isms from those lean years:

“Herndon seems to be bothered by insects at the plate. I don’t know what species it is. (Pause) Maybe it’s an infield fly.”

“Coming to bat for the Phillies is a pinch-hitter, Dave Shipanoff. Let me spell that for you: D-A-V-E."   

“(Pitcher) Andy McGaffigan is batting .068. He’s got one of those Bingo averages.”

“Cincinnati at Pittsburgh, a doubleheader, was rained out. (Pause) They’ll play four tomorrow.”

Regarding would-be slugger Hector Villanueva, listed at 6-1 and 220: "Even if he hit .300 he wouldn't be hitting his weight."

In those days Hank lived in Glen Park, perhaps the balmiest neighborhood in San Francisco and one that, in the 1980s, was still family-friendly. When we first started looking at houses in the City, in 1986, that’s the neighborhood we chose, and it was painful to find that we were close, but not close enough, to affordability (affordability, in those days, meaning $159,900. For a house. But we digress.)  As with so many transplants, Hank loved the City, and he loved its idiosyncratic weather. “In the winter,” he remarked, “the good news it’s always somewhere around 58 to 62 degrees. The bad news is, it’s exactly the same way in the summer.”  And like a lot of San Franciscans, he was decidedly, well, ambivalent about his workplace, Candlestick Park. Hank was close enough to the tragedy and heroism of the 1989 earthquake to be permanently affected by it, but his inimitable dry humor emerged intact.  “The fact that Candlestick survived,” he noted, “was a bit of a disappointment.”

The “Greenwald-isms” above and others for which he is remembered were usually delivered in a casual, offhand manner, like Shakespearean asides, and that made them twice as funny when you heard them. On paper, without his trademark timing and pauses, they may not come across, but still—

                Ron Fairly: The Giants should try to trade for (Mark) Portugal.

                Hank: While they’re at it, they can trade for Spain.

Or his most-quoted line, regarding ace relief pitcher Bruce Sutter. "Three more saves and he ties John the Baptist."

In our post awhile back about the late Lon Simmons, we noted how blessed Bay Area fans have been with Hall-of-Fame-quality sports announcers. Hank knew them all. His close friend was Bill King, about whom he said, “He was the essence of what a sportscaster should be. He had the ability to capture what was happening and enable listeners to see it as vividly as if they were in the arena themselves.”  And while few would include his 1980s partner Ron Fairly in that group, Hank had a real affection for the former Dodger, and said, “Fairly would get emotional about baseball and its significance. Ron knew it was a generational game.”  Our opinion was then, and is now, that the Greenwald-Fairly team was one of the best we ever heard.

Hank retired at 61, after the 1996 season, a long, dreary, injury-marred affair that saw the Giants finish dead last, losing 94 games, with Candlestick having been renamed “3Com Park.”  Ground had yet to break on the new ballpark. It must have seemed like a good time to get out. Hank observed that he wasn’t getting any younger:  “I don’t mind turning 50,” he said. “It’s just at the beginning of the season I was 43.”

In later years, Hank went through his share of health challenges but retained his love of baseball and of books; his passion for reading, for the written word, couldn’t help but inform and sharpen his erudite but immediately relatable commentary and speaking style. Of late he took up using a cane fashioned from a Louisville Slugger; “I burned ‘Hank Greenwald’ onto the bat,” he said, “in case I forget my name.”

Hank Greenwald epitomized the old saying, “If you love what you do for a living, you’ll never work a day in your life.”  We Giants fans were and are blessed that such a bright and generous soul shared that love with us for too short a time. He deserves consideration for the broadcaster’s wing at Cooperstown, but we’ll let Hank have the last word on that, too:  “I like to tell people that I finally found something I'm really good at, and that's retirement.”

So long, Hank. It’s been good to know you.