COMMENTARY
By DANIEL DULLUM
Sports Radio Service

REPORTER’S NOTE: I had every intent to have this completed a while back, but immediate duties upon returning to the Arizona desert intervened. Thank you for understanding.

SACRAMENTO – It was a great way to wrap up my vacation trip around the western United States – congregating on Aug. 10 with my SRS colleagues at Chop’s Steakhouse across the street from the state capitol for another rousing edition of the SportsTalk podcast.

Food and service was outstanding (highly recommended), the show went well, but it just wasn’t the same without an old friend and valued colleague.

George Devine Sr. passed away in July at age 74. He was always great to visit with, a fountain of knowledge in many areas, and his contributions to SportsTalk were always worth tuning in to hear. One of the highlights of my annual visits to the Bay Area used to be a chance to reconnect with George Sr. It was always a treat to see that smile and a, of course, a fresh pun in that easy-going voice of his to go with it.

“It’s hard to put in words what George Sr. meant,” Michael Duca, SRS colleague and official scorer for MLB, said. “George Sr. was, like his dear friend Sam Goldman, from another era, a time when people helped each other without reservation, without a second thought about what it might mean for themselves.

“George would do anything to make you feel comfortable in the press box, and do anything to make you feel like you belonged. If you wanted to talk history, George could talk history. If you wanted to talk real estate, George could teach you real estate – he wrote almost a dozen books on the subject. He passed away on the day his final book was released.”

George was one of the first media types I met when I began covering Bay Area sports in 2001. He was nothing less than supportive over the years. For example, after reading my feature on legendary Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell, he told me he kept a copy of my story in his copy of Harwell’s memoir. When George gave a compliment like that, it was only because he meant it. He didn’t toss around undeserved kudos.

George was also an all-around historian not restricted to sports. He once shared with me an essay he wrote about Bay Area radio in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a treat to read and I know he enjoyed composing every word. That always seemed to come through in his writing.

Before the appetizers arrived, my colleagues offered their own memories of George Sr.

Charlie O. Mallonee: “Whenever I would go into a press box and George was there, he was the first guy I sought out to say ‘hi’ to. I knew George was excited about being there, he was happy to see other people, and you felt like, ‘OK, I’m home. George is here.

“Now, I miss him not being there. I was at a game a couple of weeks ago and it hit me – George isn’t here. That’s sad for me. I loved his work because it was always enthusiastic. He was a positive guy and positive reporter. In sports, that’s not always the easiest thing to be.”

Jerry Feitelberg: “It’s hard to talk about George not being here because he was such a great presence in the press box. I loved seeing him there because George was from my era. He went to Marquette when they were the Marquette Warriors. He was always fun to talk to, very knowledgeable on sports and we’d talk about the old Boston Celtics. It was always good just to talk to him. Then, when I saw him do broadcasting, he was fabulous. He really knew how to broadcast well.

“Not having him around for the podcasts is just a huge hole and I don’t think we can fill it.”

Lee Leonard, executive producer of Sportstalk: “I first met George when I got in the business back in 1983 and he’d been doing this since the late 1960s. He took me under his wing as one of the veteran good guys. He talked to me about interviews, going to batting practice, going in the clubhouse and meeting guys.

“George was always a very comfortable guy to work with and I always enjoyed his jokes! He covered the A’s for us, and hosted many Sportstalk shows. He was a fountain of information and he’ll be sorely missed, along with Gary Araki, Ken Gimblin, Joe Cronin.”

Among other things, George Sr. enjoyed a good pun, and many bad ones. But with his delivery (among other things, he did commercial voiceovers as well as national radio hotline reports), even the bad puns sounded like poetry.

Duca: “At the memorial service, there was a stack of blank cards and a request for people to write their memories of George for a family memory book. I pointed out that the perfect Sunday morning was getting to AT&T Park at 10 a.m. and sitting at the ‘old farts’ table’ in the press room with Kenny Gimblin and George Devine, listening to Kenny remember when Al Davis was human, and listen to George ‘puntificate’ on almost any subject.”

“George had a command of the English language that was beyond all reason. The last thing I remember hearing George saying, we were walking in the outfield at AT&T Park, and he walked by a stand where they were serving bacon-wrapped hot dogs, and he leaned over and asked the server, ‘Are they kosher?’

That will suffice as the final word. Sportstalk goes on, of course, but it won’t be the same.

TAGS: Sports Radio Service,George Devine Sr.SportsTalk,Daniel Dullum