The Voice That L.A. Loved

When Chick Hearn broadcast his first Los Angeles Laker game, March 21, 1961, John F. Kennedy had been in the White House for two months and a day, Mayor Norman Poulson ran Los Angeles City Hall, “West Side Story” was soon to dominate the Oscars and Bobby Lewis topped the charts with “Tossin’ and Turnin.”

Hearn, 85, the L.A. Lakers’ only play-by-play announcer, died Monday. He called games for 42 seasons, first at the state-of-the-art Sports Arena in Exposition Park. In 1967, he moved with the team to the Fabulous Forum, the house that Jack Kent Cooke built. In 1999, he switched to Staples Center, where this year he broadcast the Lakers’ third consecutive championship.

Hearn told the world when Elgin Baylor scored a club-record 61 points in the 1962 NBA finals against the hated Celtics, a Laker record that still stands, and when Jerry West threw in his half-court shot to tie the third game of the NBA finals against the New York Knicks in 1970.

He gave “the word’s-eye view” of the 1971-72 season, when the Lakers won 33 straight games--still the longest winning streak in professional sports history--and their first National Basketball Assn. championship.

He covered Hall of Famers--Baylor, West, Gail Goodrich, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--and future Hall of Famers--Magic Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal. He was the link from Tommy Hawkins, a 1961 Laker who is now a Dodger vice president, to Kobe Bryant, the game’s brightest young star.

Anyone who has ever listened to a Los Angeles Laker game has heard the rapid-fire delivery of Hearn, but basketball wasn’t the only sport he broadcast. After moving to Los Angeles in 1956, he broadcast USC football and basketball. During a career that spanned more than half a century, he also did Nevada-Las Vegas basketball, golf’s PGA Tour, the first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight, the Rose Bowl, professional tennis and WNBA Sparks games. Even “Bowling for Dollars.”

Hearn might never have called a Laker game if he had won the job as the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals. That spot went to the late Jack Buck, also a Hall of Fame broadcaster. That was in 1954, and the rest is Southern California history.

A lot comes and goes in Los Angeles--term-limited and increasingly anonymous politicians, hot and then cold television stars. Chick Hearn was a keeper.