Bill Baker has called his fair share of incredible sports endings. He’s broadcast bowl game victories, MAC championships, game-winning shots, and last-second field goals.
And, of course, maybe his most famous NIU call: the wild ending of a 63-60 thriller in Toledo.
But the only ending Baker’s thinking about right now is his last call. How will the game end? Will NIU win? When the buzzer sounds, how will he say “Goodbye” to the Huskie faithful before taking off the headset for the last time?
After 44 years as the “Voice of the Huskies” -- Northern Illinois University football and basketball broadcaster Bill Baker is retiring.
“Really," he said, "that's the only thing left on my to-do list: figure out exactly how I want to leave."
One of the reasons he’s so fascinated by the end is that his illustrious NIU play-by-play career started with a bang. It’s September 1980. His first-ever Northern Illinois football game. His first-ever play. Long Beach State kicks off and the Huskies take it back 97 yards for a touchdown.
“The guy that I was working with just sat and looked at me with his mouth open. He called the point after, and we went to a break, and he just shook his head. He says, ‘I just can't believe that happened!’" Baker said. "Yeah, you know what? That's a tough one to beat. Your very first division one call? That is a tough one to beat.”
Since then, Baker has announced thousands of games for NIU: from football to men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, baseball, softball, and more.
He’s called over 500 football games and only ever missed one.
A massive part of the broadcast has been Baker’s partnership with his analyst, Mark Lindo. They’ve been a duo for the past 39 years. Baker says they’re the longest-running broadcast team in Division 1 college football.
“He's inside of my mind and I'm inside of his mind," said Baker. "We both know what the other guy's gonna say before it ever happens."
And when he really thinks about what he’ll miss when he steps away, it’ll be the relationships he’s built with colleagues like Mark and Andy Garcia, who he’s happy to be handing the mic over to after this year. Relationships both on air and off -- watching their families grow up.
“It's not going to be going everywhere. It's not going to be Toledo. It's going to be dealing with these guys, and traveling with these guys, and eating with these guys, and kibitzing," he said. "We don't smoke the cigars anymore, we gave those up, but yeah, that's gonna be the biggest thing.”
But it can be a demanding job. A late game in Washington with a red-eye flight home for a game in DeKalb the next day. He’s been on traveling through Thanksgiving and on the road for Christmas and New Year. It’s been a commitment and, sometimes, a sacrifice.
“Missed a few sporting events, both of my girls played tennis in high school. My older daughter played softball. I saw a lot of them and missed a lot on weekends when I had to be someplace," he said. "Missed a bunch of weddings, and family gatherings around holidays. Missed funerals, missed a couple. Yeah, I mean, and it helps to have a family that understood what I was doing.”
He and his wife Karen have been married for 50 years. She likes to joke that he had a microphone in his hand when they met. And she’s gotten to travel with Bill this fall for his last season.
A lot has changed in the past 44 years in sports and in technology. Baker is not only a play-by-play man, he also does the engineering work behind the scenes. He remembers, long before the internet, the “dry pair” system of getting the broadcast on air when you’re states away from your station. He remembers someone from sports information slipping them a piece of paper with basic team stats during timeouts.
“Nowadays, I've got an iPad, it sits right in front of me," he said. "Anything I need to know about the game [or] the players in the game, what they're doing in the game, and what these players have done historically -- is at the tip of my finger."
Baker doesn’t know exactly how he got the radio bug. He loved listening to Cubs announcer Jack Quinlan as a kid. In high school at Lane Tech in Chicago, he asked if he could record the football games.
“I asked them, ‘Hey, could we maybe tape the games and play them back in the lunchroom?’ Surprisingly, they said yes. And we did. And they did," said Baker. "The only trouble with that was 400 or 500 kids eating lunch at the same time and you couldn't hear those games.”
In college, in the late 60s, he got paid to broadcast sports for the first time. His first call was a sophomore football game between St. Charles and Naperville for WGSB. He never remembers being nervous to be live on air, even back then.
Baker served four years in the Air Force before beginning his career calling high school sports and, eventually, landing at NIU.
“It’s a lifetime," he said. "44 years is a lifetime, and you feel honored, awfully lucky, and you feel blessed being able to do this for as long as I did it.”
No matter how Baker’s final game ends, it will be special. That’s whether it’s a last-second touchdown or two-yard gain -- because the moment demands it. For the past 44 years, Bill Baker has been the one bringing gravity to those moments; to countless memories that will live forever for Huskie sports fans.
