burnet44
06-28-2007, 11:23 PM
Longtime Texas Relays announcer dies
By Randy Riggs | Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 11:18 AM
The world of colorful sports personalities has decreased by one. J. Fred Duckett died Monday night.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, his booming base voice probably does. You longtime Houston Astro sufferers no doubt remember “Jose Cruuuuuuuuz!” when the outfielder came to bat in the Astrodome in the 1970s and ’80s.
That was J. Fred, who was the public-address voice of the Astros from 1969 to 1992. He also did P.A. announcing for the NFL’s Oilers as well as his beloved Owls of Rice, his alma mater. But his first sporting love was track and field. He was a fixture at every major meet in the Southwest, including the Texas Relays, for decades.
Reports say J. Fred had battled leukemia for several months before he died at age 74 in a Houston hospital. It wasn’t apparent the last time I saw him — the rain-plagued final day of the Texas Relays on April 7. Like every other track meet we’d been at over the past 30-something years, we chatted about the sport and its characters, of which he unquestionably was one. J. Fred was a walking, talking (oh, how he could talk) encyclopedia of the sport, an invaluable resource if for some reason you needed to know, say, the time of an obscure steeplechaser at the 1984 Mt. SAC Relays.
But more than his knowledge, J. Fred had a droll, occasionally somewhat subversive sense of humor.
I recall a Southwest Conference indoor championship at Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth sometime in the early 1980s. A false start in a sprint race triggered a barrage of restart pistols echoing through the cavernous old building.
Over the PA system came that big voice: “Sounds like Houston on a Saturday night.”
And this one from the Texas Relays
"A warning for those of you that are walking by the javalin area - If you are hit with a javalin, we measure first!"
RIP, old friend. Our track meets will never sound the same again.
By Randy Riggs | Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 11:18 AM
The world of colorful sports personalities has decreased by one. J. Fred Duckett died Monday night.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, his booming base voice probably does. You longtime Houston Astro sufferers no doubt remember “Jose Cruuuuuuuuz!” when the outfielder came to bat in the Astrodome in the 1970s and ’80s.
That was J. Fred, who was the public-address voice of the Astros from 1969 to 1992. He also did P.A. announcing for the NFL’s Oilers as well as his beloved Owls of Rice, his alma mater. But his first sporting love was track and field. He was a fixture at every major meet in the Southwest, including the Texas Relays, for decades.
Reports say J. Fred had battled leukemia for several months before he died at age 74 in a Houston hospital. It wasn’t apparent the last time I saw him — the rain-plagued final day of the Texas Relays on April 7. Like every other track meet we’d been at over the past 30-something years, we chatted about the sport and its characters, of which he unquestionably was one. J. Fred was a walking, talking (oh, how he could talk) encyclopedia of the sport, an invaluable resource if for some reason you needed to know, say, the time of an obscure steeplechaser at the 1984 Mt. SAC Relays.
But more than his knowledge, J. Fred had a droll, occasionally somewhat subversive sense of humor.
I recall a Southwest Conference indoor championship at Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth sometime in the early 1980s. A false start in a sprint race triggered a barrage of restart pistols echoing through the cavernous old building.
Over the PA system came that big voice: “Sounds like Houston on a Saturday night.”
And this one from the Texas Relays
"A warning for those of you that are walking by the javalin area - If you are hit with a javalin, we measure first!"
RIP, old friend. Our track meets will never sound the same again.