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Bill got
into broadcasting because of two loves - baseball and bands!
From the time he was a little kid, Bill was obsessed with
baseball, doing anything to be part of that world, whether it was
to play the game, to be a batboy, to collect tickets, or to just
breathe the dust from the diamond! He came from a family of
firefighters, born and bred in Hartford (actually, his dad really
was born in a firehouse!), but his love of baseball kept him out
of the firehouse and in the stadium. As he and his love of
baseball grew, so did his love of big band music - Benny Goodman,
Tommy Dorsey and the like - and there was only one place he could
imagine that would allow him to be involved with both his passions
- radio.
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His
broadcasting plans were postponed by World War II, where he served
in both the Navy and Marines in the Pacific, Japan and China.
When he left the service, he enrolled in the New England School of
Radio Broadcasting in Bridgeport. He took whatever job he could
get, finally ending up on what was then WCNX (now WLIS/WMRD) where
he served as newscaster, DJ, program director, and finally became
the play-by-play radio announcer for the Bristol Red Sox, the New
Britain Red Sox, and the New Britain Rock Cats. He also became
the favorite play-by-play announcer for the local high schools as
well as for the American Legion. When he stopped working full
time in 1976, after 25 years, he continued to broadcast any game,
any sport, any time for the station! |
Bill never
married - he found that most girls just didn't go in for sports,
and certainly didn't want life to revolve around sports. Well,
sports have always been part of the Bill Glynn package. Now he
considers all the high school kids he meets through his
broadcasting to be his kids, and swears they keep him
young! At 81, and still going strong, you can't argue with that!
Advice he
may give to any young person who'd like to get into broadcasting?
Go to a good college that has a radio broadcasting facility, get
involved, and then get an internship at a station - it could lead
to great things!
Beyond
baseball and bands, Bill has another basic love - a love of
punctuality. He makes it a point to never be late, and to often
be early, something that has at times gotten him in trouble. He
especially remembers a game between Bristol and Redding, where he
showed up two hours early, as usual, proceeded to the dugout and
recorded the player line-up. Come game time, he realized that he
had it all wrong, that the players he was announcing weren't the
ones running onto the field. It turns out that he had recorded
the previous night's line-up -they hadn't yet changed it when he
got down to work! However, he still believes that in the world
of live broadcasting, anything can go wrong, so the earlier you
are, the better prepared you are.
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