Walt Harris

Walt Harris interviewing Kenji Shibuya, United States Heavyweight Champion and World Tag Team Champion in the San Francisco territory area back in the 1960s.

 

For those growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, there were some great sports announcers one could listen to back in the 1960s.

 

In baseball, it was Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons.  In football and basketball, it was Bill King.  In hockey, it was Roy Storey.

 

When it came to pro wrestling, and in this post, Roller Derby, it would have been hard to find someone better than Walt Harris.

 

Harris began announcing Roller Derby games in the 1959 National Roller Derby League season on the West Coast.  One of the first employees, he was the sports director at KTVU Channel 2.  It was an independent station trying to make it big in the area.  Walt was also an announcer for National All Star Wrestling, a promotion headed by Roy Shire, one of the top promoters in the country at the time.   

 

I'm told that Walt did some announcing for a previous wrestling promotion, NWA San Francisco, before Shire took over the Northern California territory.

 

For the next few years, Harris would become more popular with Roller Derby fans nationwide.  Roller Derby on the West Coast would expand to over 140 stations from coast-to-coast.  Anyone following Derby during this era would know who Walt Harris was.

 

Despite the fact that KTVU Channel 2 changed management in the late 1960s, Walt never appeared unnerved.  Roller Derby, which was on Sunday evenings, decided to change to afternoons.  It wasn't the most popular decision amongst fans in the area.

 

Unfortunately for wrestling fans, KTVU decided to cancel wrestling programing in 1970.  There were several reasons.  One was the opinion of management at the station that pro wrestling was violent.  The second was a rift between promoter, Roy Shire and station managment.  Harris, because of being an employee of KTVU was replaced.  Wrestling studio television shows were now in Sacramento instead of Oakland.  Harris now had Roller Derby and the producer for San Francisco Giants baseball games for the station.

 

In December 1973, Roller Derby, as we knew it, folded.  There had been talk that Roller Derby was going to end its run on KTVU.  The last televised game for viewers was the Championship Playoffs on September 8th from the Cow Palace.  Very little of us knew that this would be Walt's final telecast.  What I remembered was that he was on top of things as an announcer that evening as what he was when I first started watching in 1963, just 10 years before.

 

Another note I want to share with those reading this.  When Walt was back at Madison Square Garden for a Roller Derby matchup during the winter tour in 1970, he received a standing ovation from the sellout crowd in attendance.  

 

Harris passed away in 2018 at the age of 97.  He will never be forgotten by this blogger and the many roller derby fans who followed the banked track.

 

I can hear those words........"Kezar Pavillion, Golden Gate Park in the City Of San Francisco!"