Bob Murphy, an Original Voice of the Mets, Dies at 79

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: August 4, 2004



Bob Murphy, who brought a sunny disposition and "happy recaps" to Mets television and radio broadcasts from the team's first game in 1962 until his retirement last season, died yesterday at a hospice in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 79.

The cause was lung cancer, the Mets said.

Murphy was as much an original Met as Al Jackson, Jay Hook or Don Zimmer, and he lasted longer with the team than any player, manager or owner.

He was hired in 1962 by the Mets' owner, Joan W. Payson, after his two-year announcing stint with the Baltimore Orioles, and he was teamed with Ralph Kiner and Lindsey Nelson. It was a tape of his call of Roger Maris's 60th home run against the Orioles in 1961 that piqued Payson's interest in him.

Murphy was part of a generation of announcers - along with Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell, Harry Caray and Jack Buck - who built their reputations in radio and whose voices became intimately linked to their teams.

Murphy's upbeat style was especially useful in the Mets' early years, when they were awful, but he was also behind the microphone for the Mets' World Series triumphs in 1969 and 1986, and for their World Series losses to the Oakland Athletics in 1973 and to the Yankees in 2000.

Murphy's uncritical approach occasionally stamped him as a homer who strained to offer kind explanations for the team's miscues.

But he simply preferred to paint cheerful verbal portraits of the game. In a 1994 interview he said that his mentor, Curt Gowdy, with whom he called Boston Red Sox games in the 1950's, told him, "Let's announce like we're friends, just talking to each other."

His geniality seldom faded, but one day in the early 1990's he showed, what was for him, nearly blasphemous frustration at the end of a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets were leading by 10-3 in the ninth and the Phillies scored six runs without a sharply hit ball.

"Line drive - caught!" he said, relieved. "The game's over. The Mets win it. A line drive to Mario Diaz. They win the damned thing!"

He also made the call of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner's famous error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the Mets and Boston.

"And the pitch by Stanley," he said. "And a ground ball trickling - it's a fair ball. Gets by Buckner. Rounding third is Knight. The Mets will win the ballgame."

Last September, for Murphy's finale, the Mets reunited him on television with Kiner. At one point, Kiner said to Murphy, "Remember when you said, 'Bob Aspromonte's parents are here, and they're high and outside?' ''

Born in Oklahoma, Murphy studied petroleum engineering and called sports at Tulsa University. Ben Henneke, the college's radio director at the time, recalled in The Tulsa World that Murphy was determined to succeed although he had a "weak voice and raw techniques.'' He added, "He needed a lot of help."

While in college, he called minor league hockey and baseball games, and after he left without graduating, he began calling University of Oklahoma football games when the renowned Bud Wilkinson was coaching the Sooners.

Murphy developed a friendship with Gowdy when they called minor league baseball in Oklahoma, and Gowdy invited him in 1954 to be his partner on Red Sox games, which he broadcast until 1959.

"Curt was a marvelous teacher," Murphy said. "I had a southwestern twang in Boston. With his support, I did a lot to clean it up, practicing word for word. Now people peg me as having come from somewhere in the Midwest."

After working for the Orioles, he joined the expansion Mets, who won only 40 games and lost 120 in their first season. Murphy and Nelson would switch between radio and television, and formed a team that lasted through 1978, then Nelson took a job with the San Francisco Giants.

Murphy shifted entirely to radio in 1981, a move forced by Mets management but one that he eventually embraced. In later years he worked with young partners like Gary Thorne and Gary Cohen.

In recent years he had problems with his throat, frequently having to clear it, which caused him to break his rhythm. He sat out for more than a month during the 2001 season with pneumonia. Less than two months ago, he announced that he had cancer.

Murphy is survived by his wife, Joye; his son, Brian; his daughters, Kevin Murphy, Kasey Murphy and Kelly Morris; and his stepdaughters, Patricia Haft and Penny Haft.

How positive was Murphy? In his acceptance speech for receiving the 1994 Ford C. Frick Award, which placed him in the Baseball Hall of Fame's broadcasters' wing, he used the word wonderful eight times, fun six times and marvelous five times, according to The Record, in Hackensack, N.J.

"I am known for ending many broadcasts with the happy recap," he told the crowd in Cooperstown. "This recap is by all odds the happiest of all happy recaps."