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Bill Hillgrove received a call from his boss at WTAE-TV, Tony Quatrini, in the summer of 1994 with good news and bad news.
The good news was that Hillgrove was the new play-by-play announcer for the Pittsburgh Steelers, replacing the retired Jack Fleming. The bad news was that he was taking a significant pay cut.
At the time, TV personalities made a lot more money than radio guys.
“That was good because I always wanted to be a full-time player in the NFL,” Hillgrove once said.
Not even Hillgrove could imagine he would do it for 30 years, plus call University of Pittsburgh basketball games for 55 years and football games for 50 years.
Hillgrove’s fall schedule just opened up a bit. He announced Thursday on the Steelers’ flagship station, WDVE-FM, that he will retire as the Steelers’ play-by-play announcer, three decades after being tapped for the job by late owner Dan Rooney. Hillgrove, 83, will continue calling Pitt basketball and football games.
“It’s time to move on to another chapter of my life,” Hillgrove said on WDVE.
Hillgrove was the last play-by-play announcer for both an NFL team and a major college football team in the same city. He was also the only one who played basketball. Joe Starkey called both the San Francisco 49ers and the California Bears until his retirement two years ago.
Hillgrove called four Super Bowls during his tenure with the Steelers, including championship-winning performances against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL and against the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII. The Steelers have had only three losing seasons during his tenure and made the playoffs 21 times in his 30 seasons, including nine appearances in the AFC Championship Game.
Despite some major travel conflicts, Hillgrove missed only a handful of Steelers games throughout his career. Back surgery in 2019 forced him to miss two games at the end of that season. They were the first he missed in 26 years.
It was not unusual for Hillgrove to cover a Pitt basketball game, a Pitt football game and a Steelers game in the same week. His schedule has been lightened by Pitt in recent years, but not by much.
Many memories. So many great calls.
Here’s to a flawless 25th season on the stand, Bill. pic.twitter.com/nWf7HeRla0
– Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 9, 2018
Hillgrove grew up in the nearby Garfield section of Pittsburgh before graduating from Central Catholic and Duquesne University.
He was hired as Pitt’s roving basketball commentator in 1969 and took the position full-time the following year. He added the football job to his biography in 1974 and has remained in both positions ever since. He also served as WTAE 4’s sports director for more than a decade.
Hillgrove won the Chris Schenkel Award (for excellence in college football broadcasting) and the Woody Durham Voice of College Sports Award. He also received the prestigious Dapper Dan Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor Pittsburgh has long bestowed on some of the city’s top sports figures, including Mike Tomlin, Sidney Crosby, Mario Lemieux, Dan Marino, Chuck Noll, Roberto Clemente , Suzie McConnell and Swin Cash. .
Story time with Bill
You won’t meet anyone who is a better storyteller than Bill Hillgrove. Maybe it had to do with the 50-plus years of him telling the story of the Steelers and Panthers, but he perfected it. And I loved him.
If you know anything about covering the NFL, you sometimes arrive at the stadium three hours before kickoff, mostly to beat the traffic. After the obligatory pre-game meal, I made my way to Hillgrove’s dining room many times to chat, knowing full well that I would have a colorful story to tell. He would never disappoint. Whether it was some kind of crazy travel schedule he endured, like when he got a police escort from Chestnut Hill to Logan International Airport in Boston just in time to make the trip across the country to Seattle, to old stories about the deceased, Great Myron Cope, he always got a little more than a laugh out of me.
Too bad I can’t go into detail about my favorite Cope story that Hillgrove likes to tell, but I can tell you this: When the voice of the Steelers got on a roll with his stories, he just let it go.
Best Steelers call
There have been many memorable calls throughout Hillgrove’s 30-year Steelers career, but the one that stands out to me the most was Troy Polamalu’s interception call during the 2008 AFC Championship Game against the Ravens and Joe Flacco. Hillgrove’s patented “INTERCEPTED!” The call got you, and the “Troy Polamalu at the 40, 35, 30… it’s in, for the Pittsburgh Steelers touchdown” took it home and sent the Steelers on their way to their sixth Lombardi Trophy.
Required reading
(Photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)