Holy Toledo: Bill King closer to Baseball Hall of Fame induction

The late Bill King, remembered in L.A. for his years doing play-by-play on Raiders games, will be on the ballot to possibly be named winner of the 2011 Ford C. Frick Award honored to excellence in broadcasting in baseball.

King, who called games for the Oakland Athletics for 25 years starting in the early 1980s up until his death, was among the top-three vote getters during September's online fan voting for the award on the Baseball Hall of Fame's Facebook page.

Tom Cheek, who called games for the Montreal Expos and Toronto Blue Jays for 31 years (the last 28 with the Blue Jays), received the most fan votes (11,661). King got 4,758 votes, and Jacques Doucet, who spent 34 years as the French play-by-play man for the Expos, was third with 2,715 votes.

The three will be automatically on the final 10-name ballot for the award, which will be announced in the near future. The winner is picked by a 20-member group that includes Dodgers' Hall of Fame broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin.

King, who died in 2005 at age 78, finished first in the '05 and '06 online fan voting for the award, but did not make it the last three years.

King joined the Raiders in 1966 and stayed with the team through 1992. For 10 years, he flew down from his home in Salsalito to L.A. doing the games for KFI-AM in L.A., as well as broadcasts back to the Oakland market. The Raiders left L.A. back for Oakland after the 1994 season.

Read this piece that Bruce Magownan did recently on him for the Contra Costa Times (linked here).