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Longtime sports broadcaster Dick Enberg dies at 82

Enberg called a total eight Super Bowls with NBC, half of those coming alongside Merlin Olsen.
Dick Enberg was 82.(Photo: Patrick Gorski, USA TODAY Sports)

Legendary sports broadcaster Dick Enberg, whose career spanned parts of seven decades, died on Thursday. He was 82.

Enberg's wife, Barbara, confirmed her husband's death to USA TODAY Sports on Thursday night. She told The San Diego Union-Tribune it appeared Enberg suffered a heart attack at their La Jolla, Calif., home as he prepared to fly from San Diego to Boston on Thursday morning.

After high-profile roles with NBC and CBS, Enberg called San Diego Padres games as the team's main television voice for seven years before he retired at the conclusion of the 2016 season.

"What's important to my future is that I can continue on my terms," Enberg told USA TODAY Sports in 2011. "At my age, the foot gets bigger that can kick you in the ass and you're out the door. I'd rather close it gently myself."

Enberg was a fixture in the Southern California sports landscape through the 1960s and 1970s. He broke onto the national scene as a game show host and joined NBC, where became the network's lead NFL and MLB play-by-play voice.

Enberg called a total eight Super Bowls with NBC, half of those coming alongside Merlin Olsen. He recalled in an interview with USA TODAY Sports last year about calling Super Bowl XVII in January 1983 with Olsen as they experienced technical issues in the booth.

"The wires were crossed or something," Enberg said. "We would start a sentence, and then there was a delay where we heard what we just said as we attempted to speak again. It was maddening. It was so awful I thought maybe we had been sabotaged by another network."

Beyond the NFL and MLB, Enberg called 32 Wimbledon tournaments, the last coming in 2011 with ESPN. He also called the biggest events in golf and boxing.

Enberg appeared in Naked Gun, seated alongside another broadcast legend, Mel Allen, and made other appearances on both the big and small screen.

Enberg grew up near Detroit and graduated from Indiana University. He moved to Southern California to take a job as an assistant basketball coach at Cal State Northridge State before he embarked on his broadcast career.

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