Ron Weber: The man who taught hockey to Washington

As a sports fan growing up around D.C. I was blessed to experience two notable iron man streaks — Cal Ripken’s with the Baltimore Orioles and Ron Weber’s with the Washington Capitals. We might not see the likes of either ever again.

Earlier this year Capitals’ play-by-play voice John Walton devoted the entirety of his ‘Caps This Morning’ podcast to an eye-watering stroll down Memory Lane with the original broadcast voice of the Caps, Ron Weber. Weber on radio called the Capitals’ very first game in 1974 and continued to do so uninterrupted, without a night ever off, until 1997. Nearly 2,000 Capitals’ games. With the podcast Walton was commemorating the 25th anniversary of Weber’s final call on air for the Caps.

For years Walton has treated Weber with striking and commendable reverence — befitting a talent who is enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. When the Capitals met the Las Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup finals in 2018, Walton invited Weber into his broadcast booth and had the legend call Game 4’s second period alongside him. And when the Caps won the Cup a few days later, Walton extended another invitation to Weber, this time to join him in a gleaming red convertible for the team’s celebration parade down Constitution Avenue.

Two aspects of the Walton-Weber podcast resonated deeply (weepingly) with me: Walton noted that in their first decade of existence the Capitals had basically zero television coverage of their games. Ron Weber on WTOP radio was no less than the portal to hockey for Washingtonians trying to discover the game, and this remained the case deep into the 1980s. Today Weber, Walton said, “is still beloved by those who grew up with him and those he taught the game to.” So pitch perfect, that. Most assuredly I was a Ron Weber pupil, and most assuredly he, along with my father, taught me hockey.

Alluding to the 2018 Stanley Cup parade down Constitution Avenue, Walton described lengthy lines and deep rows of men along the parade route, many quite chronologically deep into their Caps’ fandom, sobbing at the sight of Weber. Thanks to Walton, and the Caps, the storyteller and teacher was having a richly deserved glory moment under a bright sun. That parade of course was to honor the Cup champion Caps, but Ron Weber was richly deserving of the honor ride himself.

Weber’s was a play-by-play voice of meticulous, lavish preparation and heart-felt passion. His richly detailed calls carried you along the frenzied pace of play as it was unfolding in a way few others ever did. As such, he painted a vivid portrait of great action at a time when most Washingtonians simply had no foundation for understanding the game and only a few thousand could join him in seeing it with their own eyes in the arena on game nights.

Washington was a poorly managed new entry into the NHL in the mid-1970s, but the league also set it up for moribund maiden season — incredibly, the Caps won just 8 games in season one in 1974, by far the worst ledger in NHL history and surely one of the worst expansion seasons in the history of pro sports. And things didn’t get much better the balance of the decade. And so Ron Weber’s work was weighted nightly by the spectre of near-certain defeat. But you never knew that from the earnest love of hockey — Caps’ hockey, especially — he so eloquently articulated.

Listen in to a minute’s worth of Weber’s closing call of the Caps’ first-ever victory over hallowed Montreal, in 1980, in its 35th skate against the Habs.

Years back when I was blessed to be credentialed by the Capitals as media I had an opportunity to sit down with Weber for an interview for my hockey blog. I wanted to remind Washingtonians then that there was a rich legacy to the Capitals’ organization and to hockey in our town, and if you want to chronicle this you have to reach out and engage the people who laid the groundwork for it and ask them to share their stories. But I also wanted an audience, for the first time, with the man who powerfully enriched my Washington youth. I wanted him to know of my conviction that the passion he brought to his calls made a difference in an enormous number of lives. What Harry Carey was to Chicago Cubs’ fans, what Ernie Harwell was to Detroit Tigers’ fans, what Johnny Most was to Boston Celtics’ supporters, Ron Weber was for a generation of Washington Capitals’ followers.

I called Weber then the dean of D.C. Hockey, a Washington broadcast monument who for many veteran Caps’ fans was no less than their access point to pro hockey in D.C. Weber on the air brought alive — oh so vividly — the world’s fastest team sport, blending illuminating descriptions with idiosyncratic numerics, dates, and milestones. He was perhaps beloved most (certainly in my family’s station wagon) for signing off rare Capitals’ victories with this signature oration: “It’s been a two-point night, Caps’ fans.”

Today the Washington Capitals skate in an arena downtown that lacks any acknowledgment of a Hockey Hall of Famer who brought alive their first 23 years of existence. That ought to change. In email some years ago I suggested to team owner Ted Leonsis that he raise a simple banner to the arena rafters bearing a first and last broadcaster name on it. It would be beautiful, poignant, and proper.

In reviewing my blog interview transcript of Weber I found it no less salient today than it was some 15 years ago. One observation he made towered over all others for me: Get a newcomer into a hockey rink for a handful of games, seat him or her next to a fan who knows the sport for those initial exposures, and odds are overwhelming that the newbie not only will get hooked on hockey for life but place it at the very top of the sports hierarchy. Ron Weber spent nearly a quarter century behind the microphone calling Caps’ games with precisely that mission foremost in mind, I believe.

My interview of Ron Weber from October 2006:

Keeley: Would you share a bit of your broadcast background, in particular with respect to where your career broadcasting the Caps fits into it?

Ron Weber: I worked in radio and TV for 42 years. Starting at American University broadcasting basketball games over the campus radio station for three years while earning my bachelors degree, from 1951-54. I worked for CBS Sports, I covered the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City for United Press International’s audio division. Roughly the first half of my career I spent, from my point of view, too much time doing daily sports shows, and not enough time doing play-by-play, and I wanted to be a play-by-play man.

The second half of my career, after doing 200-300 basketball games, I finally got a chance to do a hockey game when, while in Baltimore as the backup guy for the Bullets, the play-by-play guy for the Baltimore Clippers of the American Hockey League, a guy named Jim West, took the job with the Chicago Blackhawks, and I jumped in. I started doing the Clippers full time in 1970. I did the Clippers for two years, left for a better job in Philadelphia, but again I was doing sports daily shows. We were the station, WCAU, that carried both the Flyers and the Phillies, my two favorite sports. I did do one game as color [guy] when Gene Hart, the announcer for the Flyers, had a bad throat and he was afraid he couldn’t get through the game, so he hired me to sit there and do color.

Unfortunately, from my point of view, Gene toughed it out, so I never did play-by-play for the Flyers or the Phillies, but I was so close I could taste it.

Keeley: Sounds like Philly’s loss was Washington’s gain.

Ron Weber: But then the station cleaned house, fired me and every one of the newsmen, and I ended up doing Mutual Network radio stuff here in Washington in the summer of 1974. Meanwhile, I had been told that WTOP was going to carry the Capitals’ games in their first year, and I went up there and somehow against 250 others I got the job. So I started doing the Capitals on October 9, 1974, a 6-3 loss to the Rangers in New York.

Keeley: You own an unrivaled record of commitment as it relates to your tenure with the Caps. Please tell our readers what that is.

Ron Weber: One thousand nine hundred and thirty six games [without missing one], from 1974 to 1997. My last game was April 13, 1997, the game in Buffalo.

Keeley: Almost 2,000 games, regular season and playoffs, and you didn’t miss one.

Ron Weber: Nineteen hundred and thirty six. Now, 118 of the games weren’t broadcast fully, on election nights and such. But I was on site working the games, filing reports. Now one night, nothing came through — the night of the Persian Gulf War story breaking. I sent in reports every 20 minutes, but that night, they didn’t put anything on until the game was over.

Keeley: There was so much futility associated with the Caps in their early years — they failed to qualify for the postseason in each of their first eight seasons — and there was the additional challenge of being a new entertainment option in a historically non-hockey region. Did you view your role as broadcaster to any degree as one of being a salesman of sorts for the team and the sport, particularly in the first 10 years of your tenure, which included the ‘Save the Caps’ campaign?

Ron Weber: Yes, that’s fair to say. Let’s put it this way. If somebody said, “We’re not interested in that, don’t do that, don’t call the game that way, I wouldn’t know how not to do it. When you’re showing enthusiasm for the game, which in my case was genuine, and describing the game . . . I hope I tweaked people’s interest. I think any broadcaster ought to do that.

Keeley: From a fan’s perspective, hockey seems like perhaps the most difficult sport for a broadcaster to call — its speed, its rapid change of direction, its odd bounces and tightly packed scrums in corners and the crease. Is it in your view the toughest sport to call, and what was the most challenging aspect of it for you?

Ron Weber: Of the major team sports, it’s the hardest, period. You’re sitting in many arenas in what amounts to the 9th floor of a hotel, asked to describe a 3-inch black disc all the way down below you, traveling 100 miles an hour. And you have players running around who are padded and helmeted so it’s hard to distinguish one from another, and they won’t even put numbers on the front of the uniforms. So it’s a challenge.

The introduction of the helmets — a very sensible thing — made it tougher for the broadcasters. Two things made it tougher as the years went along — the helmets, and every time they built a new arena or renovated an old one they moved the broadcast booth further up. I mean sometimes we’re farther away than any fan in many arenas, we’re up in the girders.

Keeley: I remember viewing Dale Hunter’s overtime winner in Game 7 against the Flyers in April of ’88 from my college apartment. The game was broadcast on ESPN, and watching the sea of Capital Centre white that night, I wanted nothing so much as to be able to hear your call for that moment, but especially your post-game, signature sign-off, “It’s been a 2-point night, Caps’ fans.” I’d love to know if there is one moment that stands out as a favorite for you from your career with the Caps.

Ron Weber: That was it, and I paused and let the fans yell . . . and then I said — and it just came to me, it wasn’t anything I’d planned— I said, “Washington lives to play again.” That to me was my most dramatic statement in 23 years with the Capitals.

Keeley: Folks often forget, the Caps were down 3-0 in that game, in a Game 7, and they battled back.

Ron Weber: They were down three games to one in the series and 3-0 in the final game, and still won. Gary Galley came through, sparked the team, and I can still see Larry Murphy’s pass up to Hunter, skating in, and then Hextall just falling right back when he saw the puck was in the net.

One other thing, in addition to my statement, the other statement I remember was when the late Marv Brooks, the PA announcer at the Cap Centre, he was saying the things about the final score and the game’s three stars and such, and then he said, “We will see you Monday,” because we’d qualified for the next round of the playoffs, and we were to host the first game two days later.

“We will see you Monday.”

Keeley: My father was a Caps’ season-ticket holder for some years, and when he and I would attend games we’d rush out of the Cap Centre the moment the game ended and into the parking lot not just to get a jump on the brutal congestion but also to hear your post-game sign-off. I suspect we weren’t alone in our regard for your affection for the team. Another story for you: when I initially went away to college I was terrifically homesick, and I used to affix a soda can to my dorm radio’s antenna to try and improve my reception for WTOP and pick up your calls. It actually worked on clear nights. I bet you heard similar stories over the years from other young Caps’ fans.

Ron Weber: I got letters from up and down the East Coast. The signal from WTOP is oriented north-south, because it must protect KSTP in St. Paul, also at 1500 on the dial. They carried the North Stars’ games.

Keeley — I heard the claim that at times WTOP could be picked up as far north as Montreal.

Ron Weber: Oh farther than that, way farther than that. Way up in Quebec. Gordon Barnes — remember him, he did [local Washington] weather — his father lived in Bermuda and used to listen to the games, regularly. I’ve heard WTOP myself on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I got a postcard once from Japan, saying, “I heard the game,” even mentioned certain things I said during the broadcast, so I knew it wasn’t a hoax. Guy was a transplanted American. Where in college were you?

Keeley — Ohio, University of Dayton

Ron Weber: Well, you were a Flyer I liked (laughing)!

Keeley: You have the unique vantage of observing Washington’s reception to professional hockey over nearly 35 years. Outside of Washington, there’s a fairly common perception I think that residents here just aren’t all that “into hockey.” Do you share that perception, and if not, do you think there exists a savviness and sophistication about hockey among some of the region’s faithful that is generally unrecognized?

Ron Weber: Washington is a good hockey town. It’ll never be a great one because it isn’t in the northern tier where you play it. I still think, you get everybody — if you get all those people out there to four games and sit a person that knows hockey right next to them, the vast amount of them would be hooked, way to the point over going to basketball games or other sports. It would become one of their favorite sports, if not the favorite sport.

But watching on television . . . it’s too bad you can’t require everybody to see their first handful of games in person before they’re allowed to watch it on TV. Looking at it on television, it can become confusing and so forth and they don’t really get it.

Keeley: This next question isn’t so much a question but rather a reflection, and you’re welcome to comment on it. The first 10 years of your career occurred prior to blanket television coverage of the Caps, and so there are no small number of area Caps’ fans over the age of 30 who today acknowledge getting hooked on the team and hockey by virtue of your radio broadcast work. In my judgment that’s a lasting gift from broadcaster to community, every bit as formative as a father taking his son to the rink for the first time. My father gave me the lasting gift of an introduction to hockey, and my suspicion is that you, in the pre-television days of the Caps, did this for perhaps thousands of Washingtonians.

Ron Weber: You know, sometimes you get the feeling that “Gee, what I do is I’m paid to talk a game played by grownup kids.” Hey, it’s not only not a cure for cancer but it probably isn’t as worthwhile as your average conscientious government worker or certainly not as important as a good elementary school teacher.

On the other hand, when you get notes from shut-ins and people that say, “Man, listening to you gets me away from my troubles, I have all these problems with my mortgage, my wife, my job and I just sit back and relax and for three hours, I forget it all,” well, that makes you feel good. You feel like you are doing something worthwhile.

Keeley: I mean, there was literally no TV, this was pre- Home Team Sports, so you were the gatekeeper between what was going on at the Cap Centre on the the ice and . . .

Ron Weber: And I had the continuity, too. They went through more than a half-dozen TV guys in my 23 years. Luckily — thankfully, too — the general managers of radio stations and TV — cause I did do TV from ’75-’77 for WTOP TV — and later when the Caps became my boss, gave me that continuity, I had that continuity.

Keeley: This last question is my most important one. I’m a believer that Alexander Ovechkin is an organization-altering performer and presence, and that his career in Washington will include at least one Stanley Cup. When that night arrives, will you meet me at a D.C. tavern so that we can share a Stanley Cup victory beer together?

Ron Weber: (Laughing) Well I don’t like beer, but I’ll have a Coke or a Tom Collins.

Keeley: Mr. Weber, on behalf of the OFB team, I want to thank you for taking the time to sit down and speak with us, and I speak for all of us at OFB when I say yours was a 2-point career.