Kirk at 21:41, 24 August 2023

2023-08-24T21:41:33Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:41, 24 August 2023
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			[Sometime in the early 1970s (spring 1972?) Dick Wright was invited out to Reardan to speak at something like an atletic banquet. In his speech he referred to the Washington State B Basketball Tournament as the Reardan Invitational.]

	'''January 31, 1991 Spokesman-Review Page 23:'''		'''January 31, 1991 Spokesman-Review Page 23:'''
	<blockquote>		<blockquote>

Kirk at 21:13, 24 August 2023

2023-08-24T21:13:08Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:13, 24 August 2023
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	'''January 31, 1991 Spokesman-Review Page 23:'''		'''January 31, 1991 Spokesman-Review Page 23:'''
	<blockquote>		<blockquote>
	[[file:1991-01-31-sr-p23-dick-wright-pt1.jpg\|thumb\|right\|200px]]~~‘Blow~~ the whistle, you ~~busher’~~		[[file:1991-01-31-sr-p23-dick-wright-pt1-1600.jpg\|thumb\|right\|200px]]
			[[file:1991-01-31-sr-p27-dick-wright-pt2-1600.jpg\|thumb\|right\|200px]]
			''Blow the whistle, you busher!''

	'''The Right Stuff'''		'''The Right Stuff'''
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	This is Dick Wright.		This is Dick Wright.

	''...Frederickson is absolutely hammered		''...Frederickson is absolutely hammered on that play and there's no call and that's the way it goes when you're in the other guy's gym...''
	on that play and there's no call and that's
	the way it goes when you're in the other
	guy's gym...''

	It’s lunch hour at a downtown sandwich		It’s lunch hour at a downtown sandwich
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	homer.”		homer.”

	''...St. Mary's comes down, ~~Caveness~~		''...St. Mary's comes down, Cavenesspushing a pass — and it’s a throwaway! That's the way, Caveness, we like that...play...''
	~~pushing~~ a pass — and it’s a throwaway!
	That's the way, Caveness, we like that...
	play...''

	Well, yes he is.		Well, yes he is.
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	them through Bulldog eyes.”		them through Bulldog eyes.”

	''... Danny White checks into the game ... not		''... Danny White checks into the game ... not the Dallas quarterback ... just a guy named ... Danny White.''
	the Dallas quarterback ... just a guy named ...
	Danny White.''

	There is some history to this.		There is some history to this.

Kirk: initial upload

2023-08-24T19:07:34Z

initial upload

New page

'''January 31, 1991 Spokesman-Review Page 23:'''
<blockquote>
[[file:1991-01-31-sr-p23-dick-wright-pt1.jpg|thumb|right|200px]]‘Blow the whistle, you busher’

'''The Right Stuff'''

[photo]

[photo]

Veteran broadcaster Dick Wright makes no apologies for seeing a game through Bulldog eyes.

Staff photos by Colin Mulvany

'''Broadcaster paints colorful local picture'''

By John Blanchette

Staff writer

The voices of the night gang up at 7:30 or
8 o'clock, doing their best to nudge golden
oldies and call-in crazies off the dial for a
few hours, at least.

The shots go up and the signals fade in
and out at the whim of the wind and the
wires overhead. The notion of basketball on
the radio seems almost quaint anymore —
aren't everybody’s games on TV? — and
sometimes the voices are indistinguishable.
Who's playing? Who’s winning?

But then a weird skip on a starry night
might bring in a Chick Hearn, telling us
how James Worthy’s pump fake put his
defender “‘in the popcorn machine.” Turn
the knob and we've landed in Utah, we
know, because Hot Rod Hundley is going
into oxygen debt describing John Stockton
“on the dribble drive, leap-and-leaner,
good.”

These are voices with a signature, a style
— something sticks out from all the other
drones and sucks you into even the most
humdrum game. You can’t mistake these
guys. Crank the dial once more and ...

''“Blow the whistle, you busher!”''

You can’t mistake this guy, either.

This is Dick Wright.

''...Frederickson is absolutely hammered
on that play and there's no call and that's
the way it goes when you're in the other
guy's gym...''

It’s lunch hour at a downtown sandwich
shop and two towering college kids are
hunkered over the counter. Marty Wall and
Jason Rubright, two young basketball
players at Gonzaga, are talking about the
Bulldogs’ game the previous night at Oregon
State — travel squad limitations having
forced the team to leave these two behind in
Spokane.

“Did you listen to it on the radio?” Wall
asks another customer.

Uh-huh.

“Let me ask you — when you listen to
Dick Wright, can you understand what's
going on?”

Pretty much.

“Not understand him, I mean. It’s like,
well, the guy is just the most incredible
homer.”

''...St. Mary's comes down, Caveness
pushing a pass — and it’s a throwaway!
That's the way, Caveness, we like that...
play...''

Well, yes he is.

But he is not a one-trick pony. He is a
sporting man about Spokane, and if there is
a team or a coach or a cause in these parts
he hasn’t touched during the course of his 63
years, then it’s their fault and not his.

The story of Dick Wright, as they say,
could fill a book — one he’s in the process of
filling himself. Don’t bet against publication.
Promoter, salesman, broadcaster, cajoler,
entrepreneur, ad man, writer, raconteur,
flack — Wright has launched some mighty
balloons and seen his share deflated, too. If,
as he says, “I haven't been the greatest
success in the world,” then he’s survived like nobody’s
business. He’s been on the air for 30 years
— for one team or another, on one station or another,
AM, FM, all around the town.

To raise eight children, he hustled a buck where
he could, but hustled for other people’s kids, too.
He’s still serving on the State B Tournament steering
committee that brought the event to Spokane
more than 30 years ago, and once spearheaded a
drive that raised nearly $100,000 and saved Spokane
city league sports one year when the money
had run out.

He’s called games for Whitworth and Spokane
Falls, the GSL and Border League, the Spokane
Indians and B schools from Oakesdale to Ocean
Shores. His voice — the clipped, mellow bass that
washes up in measured waves from extreme low
tide — has been heard over KZUN, KHQ, KGA,
KSPO, KXLY, KRSS, KXXR and other stations
long, and sometimes best, forgotten.

Dick Wright has been associated with more K’s
than Nolan Ryan.

But for the last eight years, he’s been the basketball
voice of Gonzaga University — again, on a
variety of stations.

And so for the last eight years, his most audible
— if not visible — public profile has been that of
Dick Wright, homer.

Guilty as charged.

“When I do Gonzaga games,” he admits, “I do
them through Bulldog eyes.”

''... Danny White checks into the game ... not
the Dallas quarterback ... just a guy named ...
Danny White.''

There is some history to this.

Dick Wright got out of the service in 1947 (“and
I was on our side”) and on the advice of a boyhood
influence named Skipper Kelly, passed up a job on
the B. A. & P. (“the Back-up And Push”) Railroad
and enrolled at Gonzaga University.

If GU had a golden age, athletically, this might
have been it. Though football had died in 1941,
Gonzaga revved up its basketball program in the
late '40s behind a shooter named Rich Evans and
won 79 games in four years. As the clock turned
1950, the Zags won their lone national championship
— an NCAA boxing title shared with Idaho
— led by a wily coach named Joey August and a
rugged light-heavyweight named Carl Maxey.

And Wright was GU’s sports publicist during
those years, though he was a good deal more.

“Frank Walters was the big post man,” Wright
remembered, “and a student, he wasn’t. I was a
pretty good student. We had a class up in room 412
with chairs, and I’d always turn mine so he could
see what I was writing.

“One day we had a test and I was late. I come in
and he is just in a sweat, because without me, he
has no chance. And he whispers, "Where the hell
have you been? If you put all I knew about this in a
peanut shell it would rattle like a BB in a boxcar."

Obviously, looking out for Gonzaga’s teams isn’t
something Dick Wright just took up in the last
eight years.

''... Mr. Referee, get them off Johnny Stockton!''

OK, for the defense — Dick Wright.

“When the person tunes into a broadcast, that’s
their ticket,” Wright reasons. “And they should be
able to enjoy the same experience — as much as a
word picture can give it to them — as the person at
the game. The people who hear the Gonzaga broadcasts
are 99.4 percent for Gonzaga.

“Now, when I did LC vs. North Central, I
wasn’t for LC or North Central, although I’m
proud to say that over the years I’ve been accused
of being partial to every high school team.”

Actually, in his days doing high school games,
Wright probably eased off the referees because he
had his eyes, mind and mouth full just keeping
track of all the different players. Back then, the
GSL radio package wasn’t just one game of three
— it was the entire tripleheader. When the Northeast
B tournament set up shop at the Falls, Wright
would do four games in a day. He’d do at least that
many in a single day of the State B — then handle
the P.A. announcing when he wasn’t on the radio.

No wonder you sometimes heard him scrambling,
“And it’s a swisher by No. 12 ... that fine
young man ... from Reardan.. . and it’s a steal!”

Wright claims he’s done more football and basketball
games than any announcer alive. If so, it’s a
wonder he still is.

A favorite — and scary — memory goes back to
1975, when he called the first game of a GSL football
tripleheader on Friday night, then dashed out
to the dedication of Reardan’s then-new football
field. The next morning, he flew to Portland and
caught a city bus out to Forest Grove for the
Whitworth-Pacific game. Afterward, it was back on the
bus route to Gresham where Spokane Falls played
Mt. Hood that night.

On Sunday morning, Wright was back on the
plane — not to Spokane, but to Kalispell, where his
uncle Art — who raised Wright after both parents
had died before his 12th birthday — had died.

When he finally returned to Spokane, he felt as
if he was having a heart attack. He wound up in
the Acute Coronary Unit at Sacred Heart and
eventually had his gall bladder removed.

''...and making the call is the referee, Stupin.
We call him Stupid.''

That one got Dick Wright in trouble and he gets
his share of glares from other referees when he’s
moved to holler from the press table. He gets no
style points for that.

He does get them for relating the score and the
time on a regular basis, which television play-by-play
has rendered a forgotten art.

As for whether he sees the games as they truly
are, well, take your radio to the gym. But let’s not
kid each other. Dick Wright is not the first
sportscaster whose word picture occasionally parts with
reality.

Wright himself remembers a boyhood listening
to the legendary Bill Stern, who once called a
University of Washington football game from “‘Husky
Stadium overlooking the Pacific Ocean.”

And if Boston Celtics announcer Johnny Most
ever makes it to the Hall of Fame, anything goes.

It was in Missoula just before Thanksgiving that
Harry Larrabee, the head basketball coach at
Southwest Texas State University, collapsed outside
Adams Field House with what was termed a
mild stroke. The Bobcats were playing in the
KYLT Classic, but Larrabee never made it inside
the gym — and on the second night of the tournament,
officials hit upon the idea of piping Wright's
broadcast of the Gonzaga-Southwest Texas game
into Larrabee’s hospital room.

“Let me talk to him first,” Wright insisted.

So the necessary introductions were made.

“Harry, you've got to understand — I’m the
Gonzaga broadcaster,” Wright told him. “I don’t
want to give you another attack. You'll know what
the score is and what you guys are doing — but I’m
the Gonzaga broadcaster.”

Gonzaga won 77-65 despite the garden variety
hacking and thugging Bulldog opponents are invariably
guilty of, and not long afterward Wright
received a note in the mail.

“I enjoyed it — you painted a good picture,”
Harry Larrabee wrote.

“And you are the Gonzaga broadcaster.”
</blockquote>
[[Category: Newspaper Clipping]]

1991-01-31-sr-p23-dick-wright - Revision history

Kirk at 21:41, 24 August 2023

Kirk at 21:13, 24 August 2023

Kirk: initial upload