Editing Al McCoy (sportscaster) (section)

==Early life==
McCoy was born on April 26, 1933, [[Williams, Iowa]].<ref name="NBAcom-Death">{{Cite web|url=https://www.nba.com/suns/news/phoenix-suns-ring-of-honor-member-al-mccoy-passes-away-at-91|title=Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor member Al McCoy passes away at 91|website=NBA.com|date=September 21, 2024|access-date=January 25, 2025}}</ref> He grew up on a [[farm]] outside the area with no [[electricity]] or [[Tap water|running water]] throughout his early childhood.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />  To entertain himself as a boy on the farm, he would often read [[comic books]] or listen to his family's [[battery-powered]] radio.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />

At an early age, he became enamored with both the local and [[broadcast syndication|nationally-syndicated]] [[broadcasting of sports events|sportscasts]] picked up through the area's [[AM radio]] frequencies.   The sounds of golden-age broadcasters like [[Bert Wilson (sportscaster)|Bert Wilson]], [[Don Dunphy]], [[Bill Stern]], along with [[Pat Flanagan (sportscaster)|Pat Flanagan]], [[Jack Brickhouse]] and [[Harry Caray]], would propel his childhood imagination, provide future inspiration and fuel a lifelong passion for [[sports]] and broadcasting.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />  As a growing boy, he would sometimes prop himself on the farm's fence posts and broadcast [[fantasy (psychology)|fantasy]] play-by-play for a crowd of the family's pigs and cattle, imagining himself at [[Chicago Stadium]], [[Madison Square Garden]] or famed [[Boston Garden]].<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />
[[File:McCoy-1950-yearbook.jpg|thumb|Al McCoy (center) played starting point guard for the Williams High School basketball team.]]
In 1945, he attended the [[1945 World Series|World Series]] between the [[Chicago Cubs]] and [[Detroit Tigers]]. In the fall of 1948, he attended his first [[National Basketball Association]] (then-known as the [[National Basketball League (United States)|National Basketball League]]) game as the [[Waterloo Hawks]] hosted league-MVP [[Don Otten]]'s [[Atlanta Hawks|Tri-Cities Black Hawks]], and would soon witness [[George Mikan]] play in-person during another game in Waterloo.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" /> He continued to scan the radio dial every night to hear the [[Joe Louis]] big boxing fights of the era, [[Chicago Cubs|Cubs]] broadcasts, national [[American football|football]], basketball, or any and every other sport he could get [[radio tuning|tuned]] through his [[Radio receiver|receiver]]. Concurrently, as an active youth with a basketball hoop now-propped up in a tree on the farm, he made the starting line-up of his high-school basketball team for three seasons, playing the position of [[point-guard]].  His high school Coach Chuck Lovin remembered McCoy as a "good shot" who was "intense" about everything he did in high school, from athletics to school plays.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />

Around the same span of time, at the age of 14, he began playing [[jazz piano]] in a variety of local and touring small-piece and [[big bands]] at local area dances in the [[Midwestern United States|midwest-territory]] for extra income, a side-gig he would continue throughout college that would routinely have him home by 2.a.m. for 7 a.m. classes.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" /> One memorable night, he played as a sideman to famed jazz trumpeter [[Roy Eldridge]], who remembered and recognized him immediately upon their second meeting many years later, as McCoy attended a concert alongside [[Al Bianchi]] & [[John MacLeod (basketball)|John MacLeod]] following a Phoenix Suns game.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />

===Education and early career===
{{Refimprove|section|date=September 2024}}
He attended [[Drake University]], majoring in [[Drama]]-[[Speech]] and minoring in [[Broadcast Journalism]].

Drake University did not formally offer a radio or broadcast major at the time, so McCoy signed up for as many radio classes as he could.  During his first year of classes he begged his [[professor]], the head of the radio department and [[Drake Relays]] announcer Jim Duncan to let him borrow a university [[tape recorder]] so he could [[Demo (music)|demo]] his play-by-play during a campus basketball game. Assuring McCoy it could wait until his junior or senior year, Professor Duncan relented after weeks of McCoy's ongoing persistence. Dropping his recording off early the next morning and eager for his professor's critique, he waited another couple weeks until finally being called into Duncan's office, who now demanded to know how long McCoy had been calling basketball games. Impressed by the level of detail in his first play-by-play recording, Duncan became McCoy's early supporter and [[mentor]] from that date forward.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />
[[File:1954-yearbooks 21986 full.png|thumb|Al McCoy graduated from Drake University in 1954.]]
Also during his freshman year his first job in radio was at [[KZWC|KJFJ]] in [[Webster City, Iowa]], and he was soon hired by [[WHO]] in Des Moines, Iowa, working the night shift where was subsequently told by the person who hired him that he did not have a future in broadcasting, demoted from "[[broadcasting|on-air]]" talent and moved to production staff.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />  

Shaken by the experience, but undeterred from following his childhood dreams, McCoy left WHO for smaller family-run station [[KWDM]] to strengthen his play-by-play for a variety of different sports.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />  Amidst transition, he first encountered [[Chick Hearn]], then-broadcaster for [[Bradley University]], at a Bradley-Drake basketball game.  The two would remain friends until Hearn's death in 2002, buying each other dinner when either were in [[Phoenix, AZ|Phoenix]] or [[Los Angeles]] for their future respective NBA teams, often reminiscing on their early days broadcasting in the midwest.  McCoy would later credit Hearn along with [[Marty Glickman]] as “blazing the trial” for basketball broadcasters in his Naismith Hall of Fame speech.

In 1954 McCoy graduated from Drake.  Testing his luck out west where some of his relatives had relocated, he spent a summer looking for radio work in [[Phoenix, Arizona]] and later [[Denver, Colorado]].  In both locations he found could not even land a single job interview and played [[piano]] to support himself, before applying for a graduate assistantship at the [[University of Iowa]].

During and following the year of graduate school McCoy ran the gamut of employers, bouncing around more local Iowa stations like [[KXIC]] where he kept area connections<ref name="WHO-2007-07">{{cite episode|title=July 15, 2007|series=Two Guys Named Jim|url=http://whoradio.com/pages/twoguysnamedjim.html|station=[[WHO (AM)]]|location=Des Moines, Iowa|airdate=2007-07-15|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080907193814/http://www.whoradio.com/pages/twoguysnamedjim.html|archive-date=September 7, 2008}}</ref> and {{asof|2007|lc=y}} was still a frequent guest on "Two Guys Named Jim"—a sports-talk show on WHO.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://whoradio.com/pages/twoguysnamedjim.html |title=Two Guys Named Jim|date= July 1, 2007|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080907193814/http://www.whoradio.com/pages/twoguysnamedjim.html |archive-date= September 7, 2008 }}</ref>  He would eventually move from Iowa City, to [[WBMX|WJJD]] in [[Chicago]], to [[WHLD]] in Niagara Falls where he commenced broadcasting a “[[Steve Allen]]-type” [[piano]]-meets-[[radio personality|disc jockey]] show for [[Buffalo, New York]] that was rejected by WHO.  Three weeks after moving to [[Niagara Falls, New York|Niagara Falls]] amidst a decade of constant transition and upheaval, he found stability in the form of Georgia Shahinian, born Koharig Shahinian, meeting her at a birthday party for a mutual friend.  The two soon found themselves inseparable, and quickly became a daily part of each other's lives.

As his radio contract in Buffalo was set to expire, McCoy got a tip from [[New York Giants]] play-by-play broadcaster [[Russ Hodges]] that the team would be relocating to [[San Francisco, CA|San Francisco]] as their [[Triple-A (baseball)|Triple-A]] [[farm team]] moved to [[Phoenix, Arizona]].<ref name="ESPN-Death"/> Both men felt McCoy had a good shot of securing the job.  With major life decisions to be made quickly, Georgia & Al McCoy were soon wed, hitching their lives on a [[Trailer (vehicle)|trailer]] attached to his '54 [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]] with no [[air conditioning]], headed [[southwest]] in the [[summer]] of 1958.

===Early Phoenix career===
After getting married, Al & Georgia McCoy moved to [[Phoenix, AZ]] in the summer of 1958.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />   He was soon hired by [[KOOL-FM|KOOL]], scheduled broadcaster for the [[Phoenix Giants]], and he worked as the host of night-time radio shows for the station until the team completed their own move to the [[West Coast of the United States|west coast]].{{Cn|date=September 2024}}
[[File:AlMccoy Phoenix Giants advertisement KOOL-960.jpg|thumb|Advertisement for Phoenix Giants games on radio, 1958.]]

With the Phoenix Giants, McCoy broadcast the only baseball game in history to be postponed due to [[grasshoppers]], who collectively gathered around all the surrounding sources of light and placed the ball park in a shroud of darkness.  McCoy described exiting the ball park grounds as “like driving around in [[snow]]. There'd be a drift of grasshoppers in the street. you'd start sliding around.”<ref name="McCoy's-Book" /> 

McCoy was occasionally visited during Phoenix Giants broadcasts by then-[[San Francisco Giants]] owner [[Horace Stoneham]], who often told McCoy he would become the next “Voice of the Giants” in [[Major League Baseball]].<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />   When the job was eventually offered, talk of a potential move of the team away from the west coast caused McCoy to decline, believing it to not be the “right fit.”  During another period in time when the Giants job was again presented, McCoy briefly contemplated broadcasting both Suns and Giants games, planning to make a decision later, but was ultimately glad he did not.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />   He would eventually one day fill-in as play-by-play for the San Francisco Giants for one single game, during a night the Suns were not playing.

The [[Triple-A (baseball)|Triple-A]] team would also eventually leave Phoenix for Tacoma, WA due to a dispute over construction of a new ball park, while McCoy remained in Phoenix.  Once the park was built, the team returned.  In the interim five years without the Phoenix Giants, McCoy became "One of the Good Guys", a [[radio personality|DJ]] on [[KRUX]] 1360 AM.  While on KRUX in the 1960s he also did play-by-play for [[Arizona State University|ASU]] [[Arizona State Sun Devils|Sun Devil's]] football and basketball.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />   On local television stations [[KTVK]] and [[KTAR-TV]], he did [[Ring announcer|ring announcing]] work for [[boxing]] fights held at Phoenix Madison Square Garden, and also some [[professional wrestling]] commentary for the regional territory.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />

McCoy parted ways with the Phoenix Giants three years after their return to Phoenix in 1966.  He would eventually return to baseball some 32-years later with the [[Arizona Diamondbacks]] during the club's first season in 1998, paired with [[Joe Garagiola Sr.|Joe Garagiola]].{{Cn|date=September 2024}}
 
As the [[Western Hockey League (1952–1974)|Western Hockey League]] expanded to Arizona in 1967, McCoy also began broadcasting for the [[Phoenix Roadrunners (WHL)|Phoenix Roadrunners]] during the Giants' off-season.  Less experienced with hockey, McCoy served as a color-commentator for two seasons before learning to do play-by-play for the ice on-the-fly after his broadcaster partner Jim Wells fell through a shower door.  McCoy found he enjoyed doing hockey play-by-play, and Wells' agreed that it would be a better fit if they switched roles after his recovery.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" /> 

As his ongoing commitments to the Phoenix Giants, the Phoenix Roadrunners and other radio stations transitioned, he began to observe a “buzz” in the city over a potential new NBA expansion team and quickly made inroads to secure a job with the new franchise as it was officially announced in 1968.<ref name="McCoy's-Book" />