Brian Damage
11-11-2010, 12:57 PM
Dave Niehaus, the Mariners broadcaster since the team's inaugural 1977 season, has died, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He was 75.
Niehaus died Wednesday of a heart attack at his home, the story says. While the team has had 17 managers and hundreds of players, Niehaus was the only original employee of the organization remaining, the article notes. "From now on, there will be just two eras of Mariner baseball," Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn said, "the Dave Niehaus era and everything else."
Niehaus started in broadcasting when he quit his job as a short-order cook and landed a job as an NBC page, working the quiz show "Truth or Consequences" and shows for Bob Hope and Dinah Shore, the article notes. After serving in the Army, he was hired by KMPC in Los Angeles working as a weekend sports reporter, and in 1966 got a job broadcasting L.A. Rams football games, the article notes. On Dec. 18, 1976, he was introduced as the Mariners announcer, it said. In 2008, he was indicted into the broadcasters wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It was that year, the story says, that Niehaus said he never planned to retire.
http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwire/2010/11/mariners-broadcaster-dave-nieh.php
http://www.americansportscastersonline.com/images/DaveNeihaus.jpg
Niehaus died Wednesday of a heart attack at his home, the story says. While the team has had 17 managers and hundreds of players, Niehaus was the only original employee of the organization remaining, the article notes. "From now on, there will be just two eras of Mariner baseball," Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn said, "the Dave Niehaus era and everything else."
Niehaus started in broadcasting when he quit his job as a short-order cook and landed a job as an NBC page, working the quiz show "Truth or Consequences" and shows for Bob Hope and Dinah Shore, the article notes. After serving in the Army, he was hired by KMPC in Los Angeles working as a weekend sports reporter, and in 1966 got a job broadcasting L.A. Rams football games, the article notes. On Dec. 18, 1976, he was introduced as the Mariners announcer, it said. In 2008, he was indicted into the broadcasters wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It was that year, the story says, that Niehaus said he never planned to retire.
http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwire/2010/11/mariners-broadcaster-dave-nieh.php
http://www.americansportscastersonline.com/images/DaveNeihaus.jpg