RIP Bill King

While I'd like to think that I knew the impact King had on the Bay Area and with sports in general, I don't. I'm too young to have really listened to King enough in order to grasp his complete resume but I will share one story I have.

When the A's were going for win 20, and they blew the lead, I was pretty pissed off. I couldn't believe that the same team that had just beaten on of the top closers in the league, Eddie Guardado of the Minnesota Twins, could lose such a huge lead against the lowly Royals. Although I couldn't stand listening to the tv announcers, I decided to see if the radio side would be any different. In the 9th inning, when Hatteberg hit that pinch-hit homer to win the game, I remember how King made sure to acknowledge that this was a game that the A's should have won in 8 and a half innings.

It may seem mundane, but even then, in a moment of overwhelming-excitement, it was King's professionalism which accentuated the point that the A's blew a huge lead. He could have been like any number of other team personalities and rambled about how the A's "just accomplished the improbable" or some hyperbole along those lines, but that wasn't Bill King; it wasn't his nature.

It was a character trait that we should all strive to have.