When noting the passing of notable media figures, we occasionally point out that the person is pretty much synonymous with their field.
That’s certainly the case for long-time Akron high school sports radio broadcaster Rudy Piekarski, who died of natural causes Tuesday at the age of 69.
Rubber City Radio’s AkronNewsNow.com has more here, and the Beacon Journal’s Ohio.com has more here.
Over his decades on the air, “Rudy Pie” called thousands of games on a number of radio stations…starting out with a lengthy stint at now-Rubber City Radio oldies/news WAKR/1590 Akron, then showing up on a number of area signals, including Clear Channel talk WHLO/640 Akron in recent years.
It’s his time there that brought us to a picture of him broadcasting a game on WHLO featuring former Cavaliers star-turned-Miami Heat player LeBron James, during LeBron’s run with the St. Vincent-St. Mary Fighting Irish.
The picture is on the front cover of James’ book “Shooting Stars”, and WHLO/CC Akron/Canton operations director Keith Kennedy told us at the time that the “WHLO” banner was Rudy’s own.
In his most recent years, Rudy engaged in the common practice of buying airtime for his games, then making his money by selling sponsors…not a difficult task in sports-mad Northeast Ohio.
But we hear that Rudy went about it with vigor, and was as hard working away from the microphone as he was on the air…
Rudy was a great guy. He and I covered Akron Zips football and basketball on WAKR for several years.