Tony Roberts, play-by-play announcer for the old Senators baseball team and the NBA’s Washington Bullets before becoming the voice of Notre Dame football, dies at 94

Tony Roberts, a versatile sportscaster who brought his fluid baritone to the Washington airwaves in the 1970s, doing play-by-play for the old Senators baseball team and the Bullets of the NBA before going on to national renown “as the booming, ebullient voice” of Notre Dame football, died Aug. 25 at his home in Gainesville, Va, reports The Washington Post. He was 94.

His son Lance said that the cause was not immediately known, added WaPo.

Sportscaster Johnny Holliday, the voice of the University of Maryland football and basketball teams, who worked Bullets and Senators games with Roberts in the early ’70s, told The Post how Roberts “was a stickler about tradition and propriety, even when it came to the performance of the national anthem.

“He’d put a clock on it. He’d start the stopwatch and say, ‘This is way too long, it’s a minute and 24 seconds — it’s supposed to be done in 58 seconds. This is not acceptable,’” Holliday said with a laugh. “When he did a Senators game, he did it exactly the way it was supposed to be done: He would paint the picture, but wouldn’t be overly graphic or off the charts with emotion. He would let the game dictate the excitement. If the game was exciting: boom.””

In 1970 he joined WWDC-FM and later WRC-FM, where he was an announcer for Navy football games, the Baltimore Bullets (now Washington Wizards) and the Washington Senators before becoming the longtime voice of Notre Dame football.

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PHOTO: Notre Dame Athletics