Back in the day, when Bill Wolcott was covering high school athletics, the phone would ring and Bill would answer: “Niagara Gazette sports desk, who subdued whom?”
That was the first thing Gazette alum Pat Murray recalled last week after learning that Bill had scored another scoop by announcing his own retirement in a simple, self-effacing column on the editorial page. “It often confused the coaches,” Pat recalled. “Of course, we loved it.”
Now a sports information specialist for Division I Lamar, TX, Pat also recalls how 21 years ago, Bill led him to one of the biggest news breaks of his career. Niagara Falls was playing host to World University Games baseball when Bill called Pat, WUG publicist at the time, to tell him that a player had hopped the fence at Sal Maglie Stadium and sped away in a waiting car.
A Cuban baseball player had defected. Suddenly, the event often derided as “The Obscure Olympics” went global. Pat recruited a visiting Mexican journalist to provide the translations and “Thanks to Bill, I got a tip that led to some of the best stories coming out of the Games.”
Like Mitch Albom, Bill was one of those sportswriters of such intellectual breadth that it seemed almost natural when he moved over to general-assignment reporting. He told tales of the rails between Lockport and Brockport, bristled when one of Gov. Cuomo’s musclemen ordered him out of a press “gaggle” (“Who are you?” … “Doesn’t matter who I am, go away”) and made historic poetry of the fillers that mortared newspaper pages of a bygone era, notably a riddle titled, “How Old Is Ann?”
A Lockport colleague described Bill’s presence as “astounding us daily.”
Bill first astounded Jamestown-based Base Paths almost 50 years ago, swapping scores from opposite poles of Section VI as Fridays turned into Saturdays. Bill was more than interested, he was downright curious about who had subdued whom, and how, at a time when most in the metro area looked on the Southern Tier as little more than crabgrass and cowflop.
He was at once easy-going and thorough. A national hockey publication sought to hire him, send him all over the continent, a fascinating and lucrative gig almost anyone would have pursued like a loose puck. Not Bill. He preferred the Niagara Frontier. Our gain, the NHL’s loss.
Bill liked the movies, too. He’d never forget seeing “Psycho,” playing hooky on a hockey trip to Pittsburgh. He was denied admittance the first time, having shown up eight minutes late – as a publicity ploy, Hitchcock insisted tardy arrivals be turned away.
“Nobody got into your mind like Alfred Hitchcock,” Bill would write 50 years later.
And for athletes and admirers of the language, few got into your memory like Bill Wolcott.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
Leave a Reply