Mike Patrick, a flexible sportscaster for ESPN who referred to as Nationwide Soccer League video games on Sunday nights for 18 years, died on Sunday in Fairfax, Va. He was 80.
His dying, in a hospital, was confirmed by his doctor, Dr. Mark Vasiliadis. Kevin Kiley, a pal and former colleague at ESPN, mentioned Mr. Patrick had been handled for coronary heart and kidney diseases.
Mr. Patrick was considered one of ESPN’s best-known announcers, calling faculty basketball, soccer and baseball, along with N.F.L. video games. He introduced a commanding voice and an unobtrusive model that made it straightforward for analysts to work with him.
“He was most likely as egoless an announcer as I’ve ever labored with,” Fred Gaudelli, the producer of ESPN’s “Sunday Night time Soccer” video games for 11 years, mentioned in an interview. “He had a really pure means of saying, not as a carnival barker or a screamer.”
Paul Maguire, who labored with Mr. Patrick and Joe Theismann on the Sunday night time video games, mentioned: “One factor about Mike is that he made the three-man sales space work. He was the chief. Joe and I had been followers when he took the reins.”
ESPN, which launched in 1979, didn’t get the rights to televise N.F.L. video games till eight years later. It was a coup for the cable community, even when the bundle was for video games performed solely within the second half of the season. Mr. Patrick virtually didn’t get the job.
“I attempted to show it down!” he mentioned in a convention name with reporters in 2003. He recounted how he informed Steve Bornstein, then a senior vice chairman of ESPN, that he most well-liked to name faculty sports activities: “He mentioned, ‘Are you an fool? That is the most important factor we’ll have.’ I thought of it for a day and mentioned sure. In spite of everything, he is aware of higher than I do.”
In 1998, ESPN purchased the rights to the total season of “Sunday Night time Soccer,” and Mr. Patrick continued to name the video games by way of the 2005 season, when NBC took management of the bundle.
Regardless of his tv prominence, Mr. Patrick maintained a low profile in contrast with contemporaries like Al Michaels and Pat Summerall.
“The day he walked right into a broadcast sales space, that was the large factor for him, not recognition,” Mr. Kiley mentioned. “He was naturally deferential.”
Mr. Patrick was born Michael Carduff on Sept. 9, 1944, in Clarksburg, W.Va. After he was adopted by his stepfather, Robert Frankhouser, he was often called Michael Patrick Frankhouser, Mr. Kiley mentioned. His mom was Eleanor (Freeman) Frankhouser.
Mike acquired a style {of professional} sportscasting in highschool by holding up playing cards to inform Jay Randolph, a future community announcer who was then calling video games on an area radio station, the place the soccer was.
“Jay was on the lookout for somebody to assist him as a result of when the ball will get contained in the 1-yard line, he couldn’t inform precisely the place it was,” Mr. Patrick informed the sports activities web site of West Virginia College in 2018.
He graduated from the George Washington College in 1966 with a bachelor’s diploma in speech and began his profession at WVSC Radio, in Somerset, Pa. In 1970, he left for WJXT, a tv station in Jacksonville, Fla., the place he was the sports activities director. He was additionally the play-by-play announcer for the Jacksonville Sharks of the short-lived World Soccer League and the voice of Jacksonville College’s basketball video games. He was elected to the varsity’s athletic corridor of fame in 2009.
Mr. Patrick moved on to WJLA, a TV station in Washington, D.C. (it later moved to Arlington, Va.), the place he was a sports activities reporter and a weekend anchor whereas additionally calling basketball and soccer video games for the College of Maryland. Mr. Kiley recalled becoming a member of WJLA as a fill-in sports activities anchor on Saturdays, figuring out little about methods to be one.
“I got here in on Saturday morning for a 6 p.m. present, and hastily Mike walked in, from his trip,” Mr. Kiley mentioned in a cellphone interview. “He spent the day with me, and I did a ok job that they employed me.”
Mr. Patrick joined ESPN in 1982, starting greater than 30 years of calling Atlantic Coast Convention basketball video games, together with matchups between Duke College and the College of North Carolina, many with Dick Vitale as his associate; the ladies’s basketball Last 4, from 1996 to 2009; the School World Collection; and faculty soccer bowl video games.
His final project was the 2017 AutoZone Liberty Bowl between Iowa State College and the College of Memphis.
His survivors embody his spouse, Janet (Bishop) Patrick.
Within the first 12 months of “Sunday Night time Soccer,” Mr. Patrick’s analyst within the sales space was Roy Firestone, who was higher recognized for his interview present on ESPN and his celeb impressions; they had been joined by a unique former participant each week showing as a visitor analyst. It didn’t work out properly.
“Roy was making an attempt to get off jokes, and so they’d have Dick Butkus one week, O.J. one other and Jim Brown one other,” Mr. Gaudelli mentioned. “One week, Ed Marinaro confirmed up and mentioned, ‘I’m blissful to be right here, however I haven’t watched a recreation in a 12 months.’
“On the finish of the season, Mike informed the producer, John Wildhack, ‘In the event you ever do that once more, I’ll stop.’”
The visitor analysts had been gone the following season, and Mr. Theismann changed Mr. Firestone. Mr. Maguire joined them a decade later.
