Pete Hubbell, 89, longtime Western New York radio broadcaster

From the very beginning, the microphone was Pete Hubbell’s friend.

The son of legendary Buffalo sportscaster Ralph Hubbell, he began helping out in the broadcast booth during games when he was 9.

From 1960 to 1972, he was the smooth-voiced public address announcer heard by thousands of Buffalo Bills fans at War Memorial Stadium.

As sports director for radio station WJTN-AM in Jamestown, Mr. Hubbell provided play-by-play and commentary for more than 2,000 games and tournaments before he retired to Siesta Key, Fla., in 1998. He died June 1 in Sarasota, Fla., after six months of declining health. He was 89.

“Money wasn’t important to him. That’s why he stayed in Jamestown,” his youngest brother Phillip said. “He said, ‘If you enjoy what you are doing, you can have a good life.’”

Born in Buffalo, the oldest son of three children of Ralph G. and Ann Bolton Hubbell, Peter Bolton Hubbell was president of his eighth grade class at School 22 and received the Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizenship Award.

At Bennett High School, he was captain of its Yale Cup champion basketball team in his senior year and shortstop on the baseball team. He earned Buffalo Evening News second team all-star honors in both sports as a senior and was a first-team Yale Cup All-Star. He was also an honor student, a Student Council member, treasurer of his junior class and the senior class secretary.

Graduating in 1954, he went to Colgate University on scholarship and played basketball until he was sidelined after his junior year by a knee injury. During summers, he played baseball in the Buffalo Muny League and was an All-American Amateur Baseball Association All-Star.

An English and history major at Colgate, Mr. Hubbell joined the National Guard after he received his bachelor’s degree in 1958 and began working as a staff announcer at WESB in Bradford, PA. He was sidelined once again by injuries he suffered in a crash on Route 219 in Concord as he was returning to Bradford from a visit home in April 1960.

Southern Tier radio station mogul Simon “Si” Goldman, a family friend, gave him his next job at WGGO in Salamanca. He then became sports director and morning host at WBTA in Batavia, and was hired again by Goldman in 1967, this time for his flagship station, WJTN.

In addition to hosting afternoon and evening programs, including a nightly sports talk show for 17 years, he called hundreds of high school games, as well as Little League baseball,the New York-Penn League Jamestown Expos, Jamestown Community College teams, Babe Ruth World Series games in Jamestown, golf tournaments and the local soap box derby races. He went with the JCC basketball team to Hutchinson, Kan., to broadcast from the National Junior
College Athletic Association tournament.

His gift for compelling commentary was at its best in a Jamestown Expos game against the Niagara Falls Rapids on Aug., 6, 1990, when the crew of “Candid Camera,” the hidden camera TV show, was in the ballpark.

In the set-up, the Jamestown catcher sent bizarre signs to the starting pitcher, who got so flustered that he was ejected. Mr. Hubbell and his sidekick in the broadcast booth, Skip Pierce, were unaware of the joke and gave a deadpan account of the proceedings. The episode can be seen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmBNRTl6blw.

“The beauty part was the play-by-play,” executive producer Peter Funt told the Jamestown Post-Journal years later. “When I finally did get back to the editing room and I was able to listen to the clean radio feed of these wonderful guys, I was just blown away. I realized immediately that this was the meat and potatoes of what we got. They’re bringing the whole thing to life and yet they, too, were surprised.”

Mr. Hubbell took a seat beside his father in the 1970s to call the plays for television broadcasts of Buffalo’s Harvard Cup football games. He also was behind the microphone as master of ceremonies for many sports banquets, including the induction dinners for the Chautauqua Sports hall of Fame. He was one of the hall’s inductees in 2001.

A low-handicap golfer, he shot 5 holes-in-one and continued playing regularly until two years ago. A perk for employees at WJTN was membership at Maplehurst Country Club in the Town of Busti.

“He didn’t have to go to work until one in the afternoon,” said his brother, who was his longtime golfing partner, “so he played five, six times a week.”

Post-Journal sports editor Scott Kindberg, in a tribute following his death, recalled how Mr. Hubbell and another program host, Jim Roselle, played what might be considered the longest round of golf in 1971, starting from the WJTN studios in the Hotel Jamestown on West Third Street and finishing almost 7 hours later on the course at Maplehurst, more than six miles away. Mr. Hubbell won the match with 196 strokes. Roselle shot 228.

Survivors include two daughters, Jody Hubbell Menz and Karen Winslow; a son, Peter Jr.; their mother, Barvara Ann Budny Hubbell; his brother, Phillip; his partner of 30 years, Cathy Dunlop; her daughters, Rhonda Kunzle and Robin Porter; ten grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

A celebration of his life will be held in August.