Al McCoy obit

 

PHOENIX SUNS RING OF HONOR MEMBER AL MCCOY PASSES AWAY AT 91

He was not on the list.

PHOENIX — Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor member and legendary radio play-by-play announcer Al McCoy has passed away peacefully at the age of 91.

The longest tenured team broadcaster in NBA history, McCoy was widely known as the “dean of NBA broadcasters” for his years of service and unique broadcasting style. He served 51 seasons as “The Voice of the Suns,” calling his first game on September 27, 1972 and his last on May 11, 2023. McCoy’s unforgettable calls of the most memorable moments in Suns history, including three trips to the NBA Finals, and his trademark phrases from “Shazam!” to “Zing Go the Strings” to “Heartbreak Hotel” have cemented his legacy throughout Arizona and the NBA. His distinctive voice, vivid descriptions and deep knowledge of the game created a unique style that remained a staple for more than five decades. McCoy will forever be known as the Voice of the Phoenix Suns.

His many contributions to basketball and sports broadcasting were recognized when he received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. The first play-by-play announcer inducted into the Arizona Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2004 and a 2009 inductee into the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame, McCoy earned the team’s highest honor when he became the 15th person inducted into the Suns Ring of Honor in 2017.

Born April 26, 1933, in Williams, Iowa, McCoy’s interest in radio broadcasting began at the age of seven, while his first radio job came in 1951 in Webster City, Iowa as a freshman at Drake University. He arrived in Arizona in 1956 to do play-by-play for the Triple-A Phoenix Giants baseball club, a move that would forever shape his life and career. McCoy was preceded in death by his beloved wife (Georgia), a Valley artist who passed away in 2012. He is survived by his three sons and their wives, Mike (Tonya), Jay (Jennis) and Jerry (Teri) and seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Funeral services are pending.

The McCoy Family: “As a father, he taught us the value of respect, loyalty, hard work, and love – both on and off the court. His passion, dedication and kindness touched countless lives, and while he may be gone, the impact he made will be felt for generations to come.”

Phoenix Suns Owner Mat Ishbia: “From his first call in 1972 to his last in 2023, Al McCoy was there for every defining moment in our history. He was the heartbeat of our organization, a cherished friend, a mentor to many and a legend whose voice brought countless unforgettable moments to life for generations of Suns fans. We are heartbroken by the passing of our beloved Al, the voice of the Phoenix Suns for over five decades. Our thoughts go out to Al’s family, friends and to our entire Suns community.”

Phoenix Suns Head Coach Mike Budenholzer: “We lost one of my heroes. I can still hear Al’s voice in our living room and backyard calling the plays of Sweet D, Westy and Double A … SHAZAM!!! He brought the Suns into my life, like he did for generations of kids across Arizona. Al was an icon and he will be missed.”

Phoenix Suns All-Star Devin Booker: “I had the privilege of Al McCoy narrating the first eight years of my career. He was inducted into the Ring of Honor my second season, and it was then I really understood what a special talent he was. And over the course of my career, I’ve learned what an even more special person he was. We will miss Al, and I am so glad our legacies in Phoenix are forever connected.”

Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor Member Steve Nash: “I got to work with the great Al McCoy for 10 incredible years. His energy and spirit were unmatched and I’ll never forget all the conversations and laughs we shared. He was the teammate that never wore a jersey. He loved his Phoenix Suns as much as anyone and his legacy will endure the generations of Suns fans to come. Lots of love to the one and only Al McCoy."

Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor Member Charles Barkley: “This is a sad day for the Suns and the Suns family. Al McCoy represented everything that is great about Phoenix, the Phoenix Suns and people who love basketball. I was blessed and honored to work with Al and I’m gonna miss him.”

His fast-paced, classical broadcasting style coupled with his colorful use of catchphrase to distinguish plays has proven influential to a generation of sportscasters, such as lead NBA on ABC play-by-play announcer Mike Breen, who remarked of McCoy as "one of my heroes" during live ESPN coverage of the 2021 Western Conference Finals. Steve Albert said "I put him up there with Vin Scully and Ernie Harwell, and all the greats, all the legends."

McCoy is a Curt Gowdy Media Award winner and a member of the Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor. Despite these accolades, The Arizona Republic would later detail the circumstances leading to his forced displacement to the back of the Suns arena upon his final season, after 50 previous seasons on the floor next to the Suns players' bench in a courtside spot once-named "the best seat in the house" in his own Ring of Honor speech.

Born in 1933 in the small town of Williams, Iowa, Al McCoy grew up on a farm outside the area with no electricity or running water throughout his early childhood. To entertain himself as a boy on the farm, he would often read comic books or listen to his family's battery-powered radio.

At an early age, he became enamored with both the local and nationally-syndicated sportscasts picked up through the area's AM radio frequencies. The sounds of golden-age broadcasters like Bert Wilson, Don Dunphy, Bill Stern, along with Pat Flanagan, Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray, would propel his childhood imagination, provide future inspiration and fuel a lifelong passion for sports and broadcasting. As a growing boy, he would sometimes prop himself on the farm's fence posts and broadcast fantasy play-by-play for a crowd of the family's pigs and cattle, imagining himself at Chicago Stadium, Madison Square Garden or famed Boston Garden.

In 1945, he attended the World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers. In the fall of 1948, he attended his first National Basketball Association (then-known as the National Basketball League) game as the Waterloo Hawks hosted league-MVP Don Otten's Tri-Cities Black Hawks, and would soon witness George Mikan play in-person during another game in Waterloo. He continued to scan the radio dial every night to hear the Joe Louis big boxing fights of the era, Cubs broadcasts, national football, basketball, or any and every other sport he could get tuned through his receiver. Concurrently, as an active youth with a basketball hoop now-propped up in a tree on the farm, he made the starting line-up of his high-school basketball team for three seasons, playing the position of point-guard. His high school Coach Chuck Lovin remembered McCoy as a "good shot" who was "intense" about everything he did in high school, from athletics to school plays.

Around the same span of time, at the age of 14, he began playing jazz piano in a variety of local and touring small-piece and big bands at local area dances in the midwest-territory for extra income, a side-gig he would continue throughout college that would routinely have him home by 2.a.m. for 7 a.m. classes. One memorable night, he played as a sideman to famed jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge, who remembered and recognized him immediately upon their second meeting many years later, as McCoy attended a concert alongside Al Bianchi & John MacLeod following a Phoenix Suns game.

Also during his freshman year his first job in radio was at KJFJ in Webster City, Iowa, and he was soon hired by WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, working the night shift where was subsequently told by the person who hired him that he did not have a future in broadcasting, demoted from "on-air" talent and moved to production staff.

Shaken by the experience, but undeterred from following his childhood dreams, McCoy left WHO for smaller family-run station KWDM to strengthen his play-by-play for a variety of different sports. Amidst transition, he first encountered Chick Hearn, then-broadcaster for Bradley University, at a Bradley-Drake basketball game. The two would remain friends until Hearn's passing in 2002, buying each other dinner when either were in Phoenix or Los Angeles for their future respective NBA teams, often reminiscing on their early days broadcasting in the midwest. McCoy would later credit Hearn along with Marty Glickman as “blazing the trial” for basketball broadcasters in his Naismith Hall of Fame speech.

He would eventually move from Iowa City, to WJJD in Chicago, to WHLD in Niagara Falls where he commenced broadcasting a “Steve Allen-type” piano-meets-disc jockey show for Buffalo, New York that was rejected by WHO. Three weeks after moving to Niagara Falls amidst a decade of constant transition and upheaval, he found stability in the form of Georgia Shahinian, born Koharig Shahinian, meeting her at a birthday party for a mutual friend. The two soon found themselves inseparable, and quickly became a daily part of each other's lives.

As his radio contract in Buffalo was set to expire, McCoy got a tip from New York Giants play-by-play broadcaster Russ Hodges that the team would be relocating to San Francisco as their Triple-A farm team moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Both men felt McCoy had a good shot of securing the job. With major life decisions to be made quickly, Georgia & Al McCoy were soon wed, hitching their lives on a trailer attached to his '54 Ford with no air conditioning, headed southwest in the summer of 1958.

With the Phoenix Giants, McCoy broadcast the only baseball game in history to be postponed due to grasshoppers, who collectively gathered around all the surrounding sources of light and placed the ball park in a shroud of darkness. McCoy described exiting the ball park grounds as “like driving around in snow. There'd be a drift of grasshoppers in the street. you'd start sliding around.”

 

McCoy was occasionally visited during Phoenix Giants broadcasts by then-San Francisco Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who often told McCoy he would become the next “Voice of the Giants” in Major League Baseball. When the job was eventually offered, talk of a potential move of the team away from the west coast caused McCoy to decline, believing it to not be the “right fit.” During another period in time when the Giants job was again presented, McCoy briefly contemplated broadcasting both Suns and Giants games, planning to make a decision later, but was ultimately glad he did not. He would eventually one day fill-in as play-by-play for the San Francisco Giants for one single game, during a night the Suns were not playing.

The Triple-A team would also eventually leave Phoenix for Tacoma, WA due to a dispute over construction of a new ball park, while McCoy remained in Phoenix. Once the park was built, the team returned. In the interim five years without the Phoenix Giants, McCoy became "One of the Good Guys", a DJ on KRUX 1360 AM. While on KRUX in the 1960s he also did play-by-play for ASU Sun Devil's football and basketball. On local television stations KTVK and KTAR-TV, he did ring announcing work for boxing fights held at Phoenix Madison Square Garden, and also some professional wrestling commentary for the regional territory.

McCoy parted ways with the Phoenix Giants three years after their return to Phoenix in 1966. He would eventually return to baseball some 32-years later with the Arizona Diamondbacks during the club's first season in 1998, paired with Joe Garagiola.

As the Western Hockey League expanded to Arizona in 1967, McCoy also began broadcasting for the Phoenix Roadrunners during the Giants' off-season. Less experienced with hockey, McCoy served as a color-commentator for two seasons before learning to do play-by-play for the ice on-the-fly after his broadcaster partner Jim Wells fell through a shower door. McCoy found he enjoyed doing hockey play-by-play, and Wells' agreed that it would be a better fit if they switched roles after his recovery.

 

 

Sports commentary career

Teams  

Phoenix Giants (1958–59, 1966–69)

Arizona State Sun Devils (1960–1966)

Phoenix Roadrunners (1967–1972)

Phoenix Suns (1972–2023)

Arizona Diamondbacks (1998–2001)

Genre    Play-by-play

Sports  

Basketballbaseballice hockeyfootballboxingpro wrestling