Hank Goldberg, the South Florida sports radio and television broadcaster whose intimidating character earned him the nickname “Hammerin’ Hank ”and helped propel him to national fame as a writer and prophet, recently with CBS Sports HQ and SportsLine, as well as over the years. on ESPN, died Monday, aged 82, at his home in Las Vegas.
His sister, Liz, confirmed the death of Goldberg, who continued to work until three weeks ago even though his health had declined rapidly in the past two years. He died after a seven -year struggle with kidney disease.
For thirty years (1978 to 2007), Goldberg hosted or co -hosted a popular radio show in South Florida, first with 610 WIOD and then with 560 WQAM. With a style showing in your face, honestly, he threatened, greeted and yelled at his callers. And that’s when he got a good feeling. In 1981, Sonny Hirsch, who represented Goldberg at the time, said, “He’s the bad guy, he’s definitely the bad guy. He yells at people.
In the late 1980s, Goldberg hosted a three -hour night show “Goldberg at Night” for WIOD. He received calls from people he knew and listened to their opinions. From time to time, he agreed with them as well. Most of the time he didn’t.
What followed helped build two generations of sports enthusiasts in South Florida. With his low voice and quick wit and a clear understanding of the game and what’s going on right now, Goldberg jumped on those callers and explained why their views were so bad.
“How can you ask me?” he often shouted at them. “Get off!” Feelings are damned.
Joe Zagacki, who was hired as a Goldberg employee in 1978 and eventually became its manager at WIOD and WQAM, was a Goldberg manufacturing company at the time and oversaw thousands of phones.
“Not only did he hang on to them, but he would punch his fist or throw a pen at the wall or something,” Zagacki said two years ago. “One time I said, ‘You hit him back! You’re Hammerin’ Hank Goldberg! ‘” With that, the nickname was born.
Over the years, stories in the Miami Herald and Sun Sentinel have portrayed Goldberg, among other things, protesting, bombastic, rude, brash, cranky, cross, disgust, egotistical, irascible and procative. And if newspapers could publish vulgar words, perhaps more colorful words were used.
In January 2020, when asked about the accuracy of those names, Goldberg argued with one. “It’s disgusting? I don’t think I’ve ever been disgusted.”
Hammerin ‘Hank (born Henry Edward Goldberg) was born July 4, 1940 in Newark, New Jersey, and raised in Oranges, the eldest of Hy and Sadie Goldberg’s two children. Hy has been a sports writer and reporter for the Newark Evening News for 40 years and five times has been named New Jersey’s sports writer of the year. Like his son, Hy has a prominent forehead and a broad body, but he is an anti -Samala, a reserve player with a positive and calm demeanor.
Hy has traveled to many major games – including the Olympics in Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich – and often brings Hank and his daughter Liz.
“Most of our lives,” he said in 2020, “are around the next big game.”
Every year students miss for seven weeks – to take their homework to send to them – to be with their father in Florida as he covers for the Yankees during spring practice. One of those years Hank’s friendship with Joe DiMaggio was guarded, a relationship that continued as Hank became an adult. He also sat at the radio station with Mel Allen and listened intently as the Yankees ’voices called into action. Hank has sometimes been the team’s tattoo artist for indoor games. There was an interest in sports.
Meanwhile, Sadie’s mother is an Auntie Mame in real life. Not only did he organize parties for the wives of baseball writers, but he was also the life of those parties. While Hy and the kids participated in the spring training games, they hung out with the other wives. And when the baseball players’ association was having their dinner, he would get up and sing with the band, intimidating his wife.
In the summer of 1958, 18 -year -old Hank went with a friend to Monmouth Park, a track for horse racing in Oceanport, New Jersey, where he laid down the first bet of his life. Goldberg quickly hit the daily double, which cost him $ 450 (about $ 4,580 in 2022 dollars), and brought the win home and showed it to his father, who refused to accept the award. gambling.
“This is the worst day of your life.”
Twenty -one -year -old Goldberg moved to Miami in 1966 and worked in advertising while also assisting the Dolphins ’public communications department with busy tasks such as setting up the printing press, taking people to the airport and setting the scene for the television broadcast. While with the Dolphins, he befriended Bob Sheridan, a local radio guy (who would eventually mention some of the most famous celebrities in boxing history) and asked Goldberg if he would like to fill in for Sheridan when he can’t host. Paul Warfield’s Dolphins Radio Show. The kig was seasonal, but Goldberg got his start on radio in the process.
Perhaps Goldberg’s most fortunate retirement came in the mid -1970s when popular businessman and Las Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder told Goldberg that he was eager to write his own newspaper column. country, which appeared in more than 150 newspapers three times a week. Goldberg agreed. Every Friday night during the football season, Goldberg, Snyder and Walt Michaels, who was the defensive coordinator for the New York Jets in 1976 before becoming head coach in ’77, will have dinner at Dewey Wong Chinese restaurant on East 58th Street at. Manhattan where Michaels Goldberg and The Greek will provide important information on each NFL game that week.
Armed with this new knowledge of football, Goldberg, who worked for Snyder for four years, became a color writer for the Dolphins radio show and got his own game talk late at night. in 1978, replacing one Larry King, who left both episodes starting “Larry King Live.”
Despite being suspended by WIOD several times due to his controversies (in 1981 he was put on leave after scolding the Miami Hurricanes team for disappointing the team. participants for a game against No. Florida and lived there for nearly three decades, intimidating reporters into the future and earning well in six figures in the process.
At one point in 1992, Goldberg retained four jobs at once: Senior Vice President at the media agency Beber Silverstein (he worked there from 1977-92), color commentator for the Dolphins, hosting of “Goldberg at Night” and the game series for WTVJ -TV. That year, when his show was at No. 1 for WIOD, he was fired for rejecting orders from his programming director. Goldberg quickly joined the WQAM wrestling match and beat his former employee to the rate. Hammerin ’Hank is a must -listen radio, and fans need to be a part of it.
“He’s the king down here,” said Zagacki, who is now the voice of the University of Miami athlete. “What Hank did best was that, like Howard Cosell, he had this great level of language. He had this beautiful word and a lot. He could talk to disciples. something. He can talk about sports.. It was advertised, and Hank was wide. “
Goldberg went from a local heritage to a national character in 1993 when he joined ESPN Radio and ESPN2 (and later ESPN) with their babies. For ESPN Radio, he teamed up with Tony Bruno and Keith Olbermann on the radio show three nights a week. Meanwhile, producers on ESPN2, trying to attract a small audience in the early days of the network, used the Hammerin ‘Hank persona by giving Goldberg a mallet he whipped down when disagreeing with a friend’s opinion. Feelings are damned.
“He’s always good on camera,” said Mark Gross, who was a producer at ESPN2 at the time and is now a senior production and distance agent for and ESPN. “He never tried to be someone he wasn’t: ‘Now I have to turn on my radio voice. It’s the same person whether it’s TV, radio. or writing an article. Usually Hank. “
Goldberg also worked as ESPN2’s NFL insider and provided information from sources he developed while working for Snyder and making his radio show in Miami. One of his main contacts is Raiders manager Al Davis, with whom Goldberg talks every Friday during the football season. “I broke more stories than the networkers because Al told me everything that was going on in the league,” he said.
Davis is one of hundreds of links that Goldberg has compiled over the years in an unexplained black book. Caught in the skin of a black alligator, the book’s pages have turned yellow over time but it tells a story of a man who touched every corner of sports and pop culture. Joe Namath. Chris Webber. Mike Eruzione. Al Michaels. The “E” episode alone starts this way: Dale Earnhardt Sr., Kenny Easley and Clint Eastwood.
Goldberg used his connections to the NFL to highlight the options he made on Sunday. Even in its final season in 2021, it had a process: 1) Statistical analysis and series of media releases; 2) After reports of injuries come in, call a public contact person you have known for years to get the facts. and 3) Reaching out to current and former coaches to introduce their members to the sport.
“I have connections in Dallas, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh …,” he said. “I don’t.”
Between 1993 and 2019, Goldberg noted that he only lost three times in picking up games on national television, although that number cannot be independently confirmed. Here’s what can be proven: After joining SportsLine in 2018, he won more than he lost, going 237-220-14 with his options in the NFL. In the 2019 season, before his health fell, he went 62-46-5 with his average score for SportsLine, a winning percentage of 57.0 that converted a $ 1,116 profit for $ 100 bettors. . He also finished third in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s NFL Challenge, which ranks with 10 notables. In 2017 Goldberg won the Challenge.
Goldberg also recounted a story in which he said he went into a 24-5-1 fight (no longer confirmed) over six weeks to pick NFL games. “[The Sports Director] in Las Vegas told me that people came early to the sports book and were waiting for me to come to SportsCenter to hear my options,” he said. “Then they stormed the windows because I was in a great position.”
He added, “It got to the point where I was scared because a lot of people were relying on me.”
The best score of his life came with the help of a communicator. Four nights before the 2004 Belmont Stakes, Goldberg, who provided a horse race survey for ESPN at the time, had his annual dinner at Umberto’s pizza with coach and longtime friend Nick Zito. That year, Zito entered a popular runner named Birdstone in the Belmont 1½-mile challenge, but the donkey came from a dismal position in eighth place in the Kentucky Derby. and is a number two. He was ready to face the undefeated and most impressive Smarty Jones, who was trying to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978 and was drafted as a 2-5 heavyweight champion in the morning-line.
“Nick said,‘ This is the horse I trained out in Saratoga, and no one knows, ’” Goldberg said. “He said, ‘The race is really ready for him.’ He said that Smarty Jones ‘[Stewart Elliott]’ s follower would sway backwards. ‘Our horse will get off and run down Smarty Jones. Believe me.’ So I thought, what the hell? “
Goldberg used Birdstone in his Pick 4, twice daily, exacta, trifecta and superfecta wagers. Smarty Jones left the starting lineup 3-10, while Birdstone went 36-1, the third-longest in a nine-yard field.
The race took place exactly as Zito had predicted, with Elliott quickly going over Smarty Jones and Birdstone passing in the final steps of the race. Goldberg won $ 24,000.
Goldberg lived a life like Forrest Gump, interacting with some of the most popular people in sports and pop culture. In addition to joking with Joltin ’Joe and ghosting for The Greek, Goldberg dated Katie Couric – yes, Katie Couric – when they both worked on WTVJ. He played golf with Sandy Koufax, twice in fact, and played poker with Doyle Brunson. He bet on horses with Don Shula at Gulfstream Park outside of Miami and went to party with Dan Marino in Tokyo. Ann-Margret was hanging out at her house and hanging out with Burt Reynolds at her house and hanging out with Ann-Margret and Burt Reynolds in a room in the former Las Vegas Hilton.
“His life is a game,” Zagacki said. “His life is gone. His life has been playing gambling, setting difficulties, in the middle of all the action.”
While attending a party at the Playboy Hotel in Miami, Goldberg met a girl named Joyce. She said they had lived together for two years, and that was the best time she came to get married. “I almost married him,” she said. “Maybe I should do it.”
Goldberg felt comfortable talking about his love of life – or his lack of one. It often serves as food for his radio show and comes with friends and colleagues.
“We were in San Diego for work,” Zagacki said. “He said, ‘I’ll show you Koufax and Drysdale.’ So we go to one of these big and big meals. And Koufax and Drysdale were these two beautiful women, his two friends. I thought we would actually meet Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. I asked, ‘Hank, why do you call them Koufax and Drysdale?’ He said, ‘They always beat me.’ “
In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law banning sports betting in several states, clearing the way for regulated sports. Goldberg, no longer working for ESPN or WQAM, saw an opportunity. He thought the decision would lead to a need for people with skills. So, two months after the Supreme Court decision, Goldberg, 78, took away his life in Miami, a city he had called home for 52 years, to move. in Las Vegas to find work.
His gambling was rewarded in Vegas. He has joined SportsLine and CBS Sports HQ to select NFL, college football and college basketball games and important horse races. He renewed his relationship with ESPN and offered options for “Wager Day.” He also offered his NFL scholarship for VegasInsider and was a regular guest on Jim Feist’s podcast of the popular Las Vegas gambling industry. During the Triple Crown era of horse racing, he offered his flawless analysis for the “Rich Eisen Show,” whose name worked closely with Goldberg in the early days of ESPN2. And he was often featured as an expert in the NFL and horse racing seminars at his go-to casino, Sunset Station, just five miles from his apartment in Henderson, Nevada.
In an era where one -third of his years dominated sports media and podcasts, Goldberg has grown to become a well -known sports broadcaster, cementing his position alongside other national television broadcasters such as Snyder, Pete Axthelm. and Chris Berman.
But as long as his mind and spirit were active, his body did not work together. Diabetes causes kidney failure. He first learned of his condition in 2015 while living in Florida, began dialysis and went on the waiting list for surgery in that state. But when he moved to Nevada, he realized he couldn’t get on the list in that state because of his age. Currently, she undergoes dialysis treatments three times a week for almost four hours a day.
Diabetes also caused nerve damage in his right leg, a condition called neuropathy. For years, the leg ached whenever he put the weight on, and he needed a cane to walk on. In October of 2021, he had his right leg amputated below the knee.
However, health problems did not prevent him from working. From his bed in the hospital, he directly selected the top two horses in Me’s Preakness Stakes for SportsLine. His last published selections came in June at the Belmont Stakes.
Goldberg is survived by his sister Liz, who also lives in the Las Vegas area and has cared for her older brother for the past four years.
On Friday during the NFL playoffs in January 2020, Goldberg went to see his doctor for a routine checkup. The doctor examined the results of Goldberg’s recent blood tests, which returned clear.
“Your numbers look good,” the doctor told Goldberg before quickly changing the subject. “So which team should I bet on this weekend?”
Goldberg smiled as this story was retold.
“It’s nice to be a legacy,” he said. “That sounds arrogant to you?”
