Nationals to Salute a Voice From Washington's Baseball Past

Their friendship spans more than 50 years, going back to the day a 15-year-old, sports-crazed Wilson High School sophomore picked up the telephone and cold-called the home number of the radio and television voice of the old Washington Senators. The ambitious teenager wondered that day in 1956 if he could spend the summer by his side in the Griffith Stadium broadcast booth as a spotter and stat man, more than happy to go for coffee and Cokes between innings.

Phil Hochberg, now a longtime Washington communications attorney, lived a few blocks away from Senators play-by-play man Bob Wolff in Northwest Washington back then. One of Hochberg's high school buddies had performed the same duties for Wolff the previous year but had other plans that summer. The job was open, and Wolff told Hochberg to come over to the house for a chat. The interview obviously went well and Hochberg got the job, along with a cherished friend for life.

In addition to his day job in the practice of law, Hochberg moonlighted for many years as the stadium public-address announcer for the Senators (1962 to 1968) and the Washington Redskins (1962 to 2000). He's still a frequent visitor to the ballpark, and last summer suggested to Washington Nationals President Stan Kasten that the team might consider honoring Wolff, now 88 and still doing nightly sportscasts for a Long Island cable television station.

On Saturday night, the Nationals will do just that before the team takes the field against the New York Mets. Bob and Jane Wolff, his wife of 64 years, and many members of his family will be at the stadium for a pregame ceremony to announce that the home-team broadcast booth at Nationals Park will be named in Wolff's honor.

"Phil brought to our attention what Bob was up to and where he is these days," Kasten said this week. "We kicked it up to [principal owner] Mark Lerner, who grew up here and remembered listening to Bob. He thought it was a great idea to do something, and that's basically how all this happened."

Wolff, who called Senators games from 1947 to 1960, has already been inducted into the broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. But in a recent interview, he also described this latest in a long list of honors for a man who began his professional career as sports director for Washington's WINX radio in 1946 as "something very special for me and for my family."

"It really is sort of a shock, and certainly not something I applied for," Wolff said. "It was totally unexpected and very much appreciated."

For a generation of longtime Washingtonians, Wolff was clearly a much-appreciated voice of calm and good cheer at a time when the Senators played some of the worst baseball in the sport's history, finishing last or next to last in the American League in nine of his 14 years in the booth. He also endeared himself to generations of New York sports fans as the longtime voice of Madison Square Garden, handling games for the Knicks and Rangers, shuttling between Washington and New York starting in 1954, and still doing the occasional feature story for the MSG Network.

"Doing the Senators, Bob was always factual, always optimistic, but never a homer," Hochberg recalled. "He was a counterpoint to [fellow broadcaster] Arch McDonald, who was a Northern version of Red Barber. Bob really was the consummate professional in everything he ever did."

Baseball historian Curt Smith, author of "Voices of the Game," once described Wolff in a 1995 interview as a broadcaster who "speaks in sentences and full paragraphs. His voice is erudite but not unapproachable. He has a sense of humor -- with the old Senators, he had to -- and he was always honest. There is no phony baloney with Bob Wolff."

For a number of years, Wolff estimated he handled the play-by-play calls for as many as 250 games a year, including the national Mutual Radio broadcasts of Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series and the 1958 NFL championship game between the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts, considered by many as the greatest pro football game ever played. He even did the Westminster Dog Show, joking once that he went backstage to give the four-legged participants a "pup talk."

This was Wolff's call in the ninth inning of Larsen's masterpiece against the Brooklyn Dodgers: