Courtesy Washington Post

(June 4, 2009) Their friendship spans more than 50 years, going back to the day a 15-year-old, sports-crazed Wilson High School sophomore picked up the telephone and cold-called the home number of the radio and television voice of the old Washington Senators. The ambitious teenager wondered that day in 1956 if he could spend the summer by his side in the Griffith Stadium broadcast booth as a spotter and stat man, more than happy to go for coffee and Cokes between innings.

Phil Hochberg, now a longtime Washington communications attorney, lived a few blocks away from Senators play-by-play man Bob Wolff in Northwest Washington back then. One of Hochberg's high school buddies had performed the same duties for Wolff the previous year but had other plans that summer. The job was open, and Wolff told Hochberg to come over to the house for a chat. The interview obviously went well and Hochberg got the job, along with a cherished friend for life.

In addition to his day job in the practice of law, Hochberg moonlighted for many years as the stadium public-address announcer for the Senators (1962 to 1968) and the Washington Redskins (1962 to 2000). He's still a frequent visitor to the ballpark, and last summer suggested to Washington Nationals President Stan Kasten that the team might consider honoring Wolff, now 88 and still doing nightly sportscasts for a Long Island cable television station.

On Saturday night, the Nationals will do just that before the team takes the field against the New York Mets. Bob and Jane Wolff, his wife of 64 years, and many members of his family will be at the stadium for a pregame ceremony to announce that the home-team broadcast booth at Nationals Park will be named in Wolff's honor.

"Phil brought to our attention what Bob was up to and where he is these days," Kasten said this week. "We kicked it up to [principal owner] Mark Lerner, who grew up here and remembered listening to Bob. He thought it was a great idea to do something, and that's basically how all this happened."

Wolff, who called Senators games from 1947 to 1960, has already been inducted into the broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. But in a recent interview, he also described this latest in a long list of honors for a man who began his professional career as sports director for Washington's WINX radio in 1946 as "something very special for me and for my family."

"It really is sort of a shock, and certainly not something I applied for," Wolff said. "It was totally unexpected and very much appreciated."

For a generation of longtime Washingtonians, Wolff was clearly a much-appreciated voice of calm and good cheer at a time when the Senators played some of the worst baseball in the sport's history, finishing last or next to last in the American League in nine of his 14 years in the booth. He also endeared himself to generations of New York sports fans as the longtime voice of Madison Square Garden, handling games for the Knicks and Rangers, shuttling between Washington and New York starting in 1954, and still doing the occasional feature story for the MSG Network.

"Doing the Senators, Bob was always factual, always optimistic, but never a homer," Hochberg recalled. "He was a counterpoint to [fellow broadcaster] Arch McDonald, who was a Northern version of Red Barber. Bob really was the consummate professional in everything he ever did."

Baseball historian Curt Smith, author of "Voices of the Game," once described Wolff in a 1995 interview as a broadcaster who "speaks in sentences and full paragraphs. His voice is erudite but not unapproachable. He has a sense of humor -- with the old Senators, he had to -- and he was always honest. There is no phony baloney with Bob Wolff."

For a number of years, Wolff estimated he handled the play-by-play calls for as many as 250 games a year, including the national Mutual Radio broadcasts of Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series and the 1958 NFL championship game between the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts, considered by many as the greatest pro football game ever played. He even did the Westminster Dog Show, joking once that he went backstage to give the four-legged participants a "pup talk."

This was Wolff's call in the ninth inning of Larsen's masterpiece against the Brooklyn Dodgers:

"I'll guarantee that nobody, but nobody, has left this ballpark," he said as the Dodgers' Dale Mitchell was at the plate with two outs in the ninth. "And if somebody did manage to leave early -- man, he's missed the greatest. Two strikes and a ball. Mitchell waiting, stands deep, feet close together. Larsen is ready, gets the sign. Two strikes, ball one. Here comes the pitch. Strike three! A no-hitter! A perfect game for Don Larsen!"

For Wolff, it's been a practically perfect career, one that spans seven decades as a professional broadcaster ever since he came to Washington during World War II after a stint as a Navy supply officer in the Solomon Islands.

A native of New York, he had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University in 1942, where a broken ankle playing on the baseball team eventually led him to the school's radio station as the host of a variety show called "Your Duke Parade." He was commissioned in the Navy and sent to Harvard Business School and Camp Perry in Virginia (where he met Jane, a Navy nurse) before shipping overseas as a supply officer in the Pacific.

"It didn't take me long to realize that everything I'd been taught in the Navy and at Harvard didn't really apply in a war zone," Wolff said. "I started using my own rules, not Navy rules."

Wolff took it upon himself to compile his own manual on supply procedures and sent it off to his superiors in the Navy Department. Not long after, he was summoned to Washington. "I thought to myself I'm either going to be reprimanded or it was something they thought they might be able to use," he said. "They ended up publishing my book as the way to do it, and that's how I got to Washington, D.C. Very lucky."

After the war came more good fortune. The job at the radio station led to him taking his résumé -- actually his Duke scrapbook -- over to DuMont, and he was soon on the air doing sports on Channel 5.

"When I started in television, no one knew more about TV than I did because there was no TV," he said. "Another lucky break for me, and it worked out."

All three of Wolff's children were born at Georgetown University Hospital, and while he has lived in the New York area for most of the last 50 years, he still has a special place in his heart for the nation's capital.

"Everything I've ever done stemmed from Washington," he said. "It's always seemed like the turning point in my life. In many ways it was luck, or maybe fate, but the city has always been very meaningful to me. Washington to me was the start of everything I've ever accomplished career-wise and family-wise."

And so, if you're planning to go to the ballpark Saturday night, get there a little early. The ceremony honoring Wolff begins on the field at 6:40 p.m., and wouldn't it be nice to have it continue up in the television booth that will forever bear his name. Move over Bob Carpenter and Rob Dibble, give that man the microphone and let's have an inning or two of classic baseball play-by-play from one of the classiest sports broadcasters of all time.