Ken Beatrice – the original sports talker for the Washington area passed away at 72 years of age on Sunday.
You’re Next – Ken’s signature greeting for the on-deck caller on his must listen radio show heard WMAL for years. These were the great years of DC sports with the Redskins in the Super Bowl and the Bullets winning the NBA title.
The “Sports Call” show was all we had in an era before 24/7 sports on the air. For a few hours every night on 630 AM, Ken talked and you listened. Ken had an opinion on everything and he was going to get that across caller’s questions be damned.
If you cared about sports, you listened to Ken’s show. It did not matter if you liked Beatrice or not, it was the only sports show on. In addition to the show, Ken did the Redskins post-game show. He was really good at that, probably better than the daily show.
Ken fashioned himself as a football scout and he loved track and field. The Boston area accent was always part of the experience. Many have mentioned the Arby’s advertisements, the jamocha shakes and the curly fries.
As a youngster I called the show, into my 20’s I called the show. It was my first exposure to sports talk radio. I even won tickets to and Orioles v Red Sox game.
Ken’s show and the gentleman sports talk host had run out of steam by 1999/2000. He moved off of WMAL and over to WTEM for a while, but the show was done by then.
Listening to Ken was a Washington tradition. It was a forerunner of my own sports radio career. Thank you for the lessons of how to do sports talk the right way.
If you are reading this and don’t know who Ken is (and even if you do), check out this article by David Nakumura of the Washington Post, Ken’s Wikipedia page, and the Post’s Leonard Shapiro has Ken ranked 3rd all-time in this column
Very nice memorial, Wayne.