Remembering Dick Enberg

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

I’ve been missing Dick Enberg for a while now.

NBC Sports’ Dick Enberg in the play-by-play booth at Rich Stadium in 1991 with Bill Walsh. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Loved him in the booth. Nothing was ever about him in his broadcasts, ever smiling and humble.

He wasn’t there to make you think he was smart or clever, just to tell you what was happening on the field and ask his color guy what he thought about it.

There was an honesty and earnestness about his on air demeanor. He wasn’t some overly-sportsed knucklehead… you could imagine him as a loan officer at a bank during the week who just happened to have some cool weekend gig.

I miss that. Even his catch phrase… OOOH MY! was mild mannered, and you got the impression he really meant “oh my,” and wouldn’t have said anything stronger on TV or not.

He’s also one of the few big-time folks who didn’t disappoint me upon meeting him. What you saw was what you got. He was more interested in my having worked with Van Miller than whatever I was asking about.

He was 82 when he died this morning.

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.