Ron Kantowski catches up with Oakland A’s radio voice Ken Korach, who talks about the deaths of the A’s season, Cory Lidle and his good friend Bill King

Thursday, Oct. 19, 2006 | 7:35 a.m.

The voice on the other end of the line was barely recognizable, which was strange, because I have known Ken Korach since his days as the voice of the San Jose State Spartans in the 1980s. He and Jeff Garcia and Peter Ueberroth are proof that you can make it to the big leagues from almost anywhere.

Korach sounded as if he were talking in a submarine, which is what happens when your team is swept out of the American League Championship Series in Ron Cey weather. You know, suited for a penguin.

"I got a cold. It was 38 degrees in Detroit," Korach literally sniffed.

This was Korach's 11th year with the Oakland A's radio broadcast team but first as its primary play-by-play man. He inherited the job from Bill King, the Bay Area institution who died a year ago Wednesday, ending a 25-year reign as the voice of the A's. With his outrageous handlebar mustache, he was the face of the franchise, too. He was that popular.

Remember Ken Stabler's "Holy Roller" against the Chargers, when King told the Raider Nation "there is nothing real in the world anymore" after Dave Casper scooped up The Snake's fumble and stumbled into the end zone and the referees told John Madden to get his big butt off the field?

Korach, the former play-by-play voice of UNLV basketball and football who still makes his home in Henderson, said that was how it felt not to have his colleague and friend sitting next to him in the booth. It seemed surreal.

"I thought about him a lot," said Korach, who eulogized King at his funeral service last fall. "We spent a lot of time together in 10 years, so on the day we clinched the division, we went to his favorite restaurant in Seattle (The Brooklyn downtown), ordered his favorite fish and toasted him with a glass of his favorite red wine.

"There were a lot of toasts (in King's honor) this year. I really miss him."

It was an emotional week all the way around for the A's family, given the death of Cory Lidle, a former member of the Oakland starting rotation, who was killed when his private plane crashed into a high-rise condominium building in New York.

Korach said Lidle was a great guy and a good teammate who enjoyed life to the fullest, sometimes even at the expense of others. He shared an anecdote about the day Lidle was supposed to throw a simulated game on the sideline but instead told his identical twin brother, Kevin, to put on the pitcher's uniform and report to the A's bullpen.

The brothers would have gotten away with the ruse, Korach said, if Kevin's fastball wasn't of the batting practice variety.

"He started throwing and Rick Peterson, our pitching coach at the time, finally said, 'What the heck is going on?' " Korach recalled. "Cory was like that, always playing pranks."

Lidle was killed on Wednesday last week. Seventy-two hours later, the A's were bounced out of the postseason when Magglio Ordonez's walk-off home run triggered one of the biggest celebrations in the Motor City since the oil embargo ended and the UAW went back to work. Forty-eight hours after that, A's manager Ken Macha was fired.

Korach said that although he didn't see Macha's ouster coming, it wasn't a shock, adding that some of the relationships between Macha, his superiors and his subordinates - i.e., the A's players - "could have been better."

As for the ALCS, Korach said it wasn't as disappointing as it might have seemed, if for no other reason than it was over before the Fat Lady could even hum a few practice bars.

"It never turned out to be a series, that was the thing," Korach said, adding that from a broadcaster's standpoint - and probably a player's, too - it would have been much more satisfying losing in a taut seven-game series than one that lasted just four games, Ordonez's Shot Heard 'Round the Assembly Line notwithstanding.

Still, he said, it was another enjoyable year watching the A's hit the cutoff man and move the runner along and play the game the way it was meant to be played.

"It was fun to watch the team execute," Korach said. "Sometimes it's more fun watching a team grind it out every day than watching a team that spends a lot of money (on players)."

Although Korach said he would have preferred the season to last a couple of more weeks, coming home to his wife, Denise (the manager of baseball administration for the Las Vegas 51s), and daughter, Emilee, isn't exactly a bad trade, especially for a guy who isn't feeling well.

Just call them peanuts and Cracker Jack for the soul.