I, and legions of others, had to say goodbye this week to an old friend. In my case, literally.
Hank Greenwald passed away on Monday at the age of 83. There will never be another cut from that same cloth.
I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist. I was a huge sports fan, but after age 11 or so, I gave up any thought of ever being a sports announcer as a career. I made pictures — not words. And then I listened to Hank Greenwald and Bill King do a San Francisco Warriors basketball game. They made pictures with words.
You could close your eyes and see the game. And it made me reconsider.
I got to know Hank when I was a fledgling sports reporter at KCBS Radio. He adopted me. I’d sit and listen to him tell the story about how Richie Guerin, then the coach of the St. Louis Hawks of the NBA, got so mad at him that he came over during a time out and yanked Hank’s tie so hard that his chin hit the table.
Hank always wore a tie. I don’t think in all the years we spent time together I ever saw him without a coat and tie. He felt that it was professional, and despite his quick wit, you had to always be professional.
He was opinionated and single-minded. If you were his friend he never wavered. If you didn’t meet his high standard of character, you were persona non grata. Just ask Barry Bonds.
Hank thought of Bonds as rude and insensitive and when Bonds rudely brushed him aside when asked to do a post-game interview, Hank never used him on the post-game show again. Bonds was a marvelous player. But on the Hank Greenwald scale, that was only part of the equation.
Hank was also a radio guy through and through. He hated television because there were too many graphics that needed to be acknowledged and promos that needed to be read. It just got in the way of telling the story of the game.
It was because of Hank’s distaste for TV types that this neophyte was able to break into television.
I was having lunch with Hank, and Franklin Mieuli, the then-owner of the Warriors, and Hank said, “I just turned down a job at KPIX, why don’t you call this guy?” I did, and have been yammering on television about sports for the last 50 years. All because Hank Greenwald hated it and was generous enough to throw it my way.
Hank was a storyteller — a funny one. I had the opportunity to sit next to him doing Giants games one year and it was a nine-inning (or more) laugh fest in every one of the 50 games we did together.
The broadcast booth at Candlestick Park sat right above an area where cannabis smoking was an ongoing respite for the freezing fans. The pungent smoke would sometimes seep into the booth. One night in about the fifth inning of another cold and boring night of baseball, Hank said, “I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot better than I did when I walked in here.”
There was a time when there were two players with basically the same name. Scott Service was once a pitcher for the Giants and Scott Servais was an infielder with the Cubs. When Servais doubled off of Service I said, “How do you like that, two guys on the same field both named Scott “Service,” and Hank said, “Yeah but only one of them is service with a smile.”
Hank’s gone but the stories live on. They broke the mold.
I’ll miss you Hank.
Barry Tompkins is a longtime sports broadcaster who lives in Marin. Contact him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.
