Winner of several Emmy and National awards, Dick Enberg, Born on 9th January, 1935 is a famous sportscaster of American origin. Currently, he is working with ESPN,
CBS and San Diego Padres.
Dick's hometown is in Michigan; Mount Clemens to be precise. He completed his schooling in Armada, in Michigan. From the Central Michigan University, in 1957 Enberg received his bachelor's degree. He used to play football during his college days. For higher studies he joined Indiana University and completed both masters and doctorate in health science.
He discovered his talent while he was doing his masters at the Indiana University. He broadcasted many events at radio, during his years in the university. He began broadcasting in Indiana University, for the famous bicycle event 'Little 500'. He was also given the opportunity to become a play by play sportscaster for the basketball and football games of the Indiana Hoosiers.
Dick took
sports casting as full time job, and started his career as the same in the year 1960. He embarked on his journey as a sportscaster, by broadcasting the matches of Major League Baseball, basketball and National Football League, for California Angels, UCLA Bruins and Los Angeles Ram, respectively. He started gaining popularity for his catchphrases. In the same year, he also broadcasted boxing matches, in the Olympic Stadiums of Los Angeles. In the following year, he announced his foremost NCAA basketball events. This game was between Ohio state and Cincinnati.
For the next 4 years, he continued working for Cal State Northridge, as a coach for baseball and also an assistant professor. In the year 1968, Dick was recommended by J.D Morgan, the director of UCLA. He was then given the precious opportunity to announce the 'Game of the Century', which was played between UCLA Bruins and Houston Cougars. Till 1970, Dick continued to announce almost all the games for UCLA on TVS channel. In 1970s, he indulged himself in television production, and thereby co-produced 'The Way It Was'. He co-produced this television
sports series for PBS. In the same year, he also associated himself with '
sports Challenge', a game show.
Dick tied up
NBC sports in the year 1975, and this association lasted for over 25 years. For over two decades, he announced various matches and hosted surfeit number of games shows on
NBC sports . Some of the major events which Enberg became a part of are- Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Basketball Association, college football, the Wimbledon, boxing championships, various tennis matches, Olympic games and even horse racing.
In the year 2000, he joined
CBS and is still intact with the channel. He announces various college tournaments, tennis matches and NFL. In 2004, he announced many play by play Wimbledon matches, Australian Open and French open tennis tournaments. ESPN, asked for special permissions from
CBS to hire Dick for announcing French open and Wimbledon matches for ESPN. San Diego Padres hired him in 2009, as a television play by play announcer.
During the entire span of his career, Dick has been garlanded with 13 Emmy awards, 9 awards for National Sportscaster, Curt Gowdy Award by NBA and many other prestigious awards. He is the only one sportscaster who has managed to receive Emmy Awards in three different categories- Writing, broadcasting and production.
He got married in 1959 to Jeri Taylor, but after 16 years of their marriage, the couple got divorced. He then married Barbara Hedbring in 1989 and is currently happily living together.
