Strike 1: Before there was 24/7/365 sports television, and decades before there was satellite radio, there was live and local sport talk radio on your AM dial.

Contrary to the national narrative, full-time, full-on drive time sports talk wasn’t invented and birthed on the east coast. The true pioneers of afternoon drive sports talk radio were in Denver: The late, great Irv Brown and legendary sports columnist Woody Paige, who started the format at the old KWBZ, 1150 AM in Denver in the late 1970’s. After getting fired early on because of low ratings, they began the still prevalent practice of buying their own block of airtime from the station and re-selling the time to their sponsors. This made them their own bosses.

The pair developed a loyal following, including a caller who referred to himself as “The Hit Man” to avoid the possibility of his boss hearing him when he called in from his office at Wood Brothers Homes. Hit Man had some very strong opinions and was popular with hosts and listeners alike.

Sometime in 1981, with Irv and Woody doing a remote broadcast that was taking place in his vicinity, Hit Man showed up to meet the guys in person, and a connection was made. Irv eventually convinced Hit Man, who’s real name is Joe Williams, to give up his high-paying job in new home sales to become a radio advertising salesman, with the caveat that Williams would also do fill in shifts on the air from time to time.

“I didn’t know if I could do it or not,” Williams recalls. “I’d never done it before. But I told my wife, I can always get another job selling houses. I want to give this a shot.”

Brown had given up his job as the head baseball coach at the University of Colorado (CU would drop the sport a couple years later) but was still a high-profile NCAA basketball official. As the lead columnist for The Denver Post and later The Rocky Mountain News, Paige was on the Denver Broncos beat among other things. So both men traveled a lot – sometimes at the same time – and Williams filled in as co-host and even on occasion had to do the entire show by himself. Baptism by fire.

He was a natural. But it wasn’t an easy transition. After getting a better deal at rival station KLAK, Brown and Paige picked up and moved (for what would be the first of many times.) Still struggling financially after roughly two years, Williams almost gave up. He told Brown he would give the gig another six months, but if things didn’t get better, he’d have to go back to selling houses.

About that time, former University of Colorado star Dave Logan – who Brown knew from his time as a coach at CU, and who had just retired from the NFL where he was a wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns – joined the group.

Logan was shocked when Williams told him what he had been earning selling new homes.

“I went from making about $77,000 to making about $12,000 selling radio,” he chuckled. Talking about their previous jobs, “Dave told me that I was making more (selling houses) than he made playing for the Browns.”

Williams had gotten an increasing amount of airtime and landed a contract with the station, relieving the financial stress. When Paige left the group in the late 1980’s to go to another station (and eventually to ESPN TV), Irv, Joe and Dave became a full-time thing. After some more changes involving ownership, contracts and personnel, the trio landed at KYBG, AM 1090.

Logan moved to KOA a couple years later (where he remains famously employed) and it was just “Irv and Joe.”

Williams famously became the foil, the guy who Brown would play off, but whose opinions wouldn’t be tamed. As the show evolved, they began the practice of taking a mobile home/mobile studio to Greeley every year about this time to cover the Denver Broncos training camp full time. Other stations eventually followed their lead, but Irv and Joe, along with erstwhile producers Don Martin and Rich Goins, would begin getting live, on-site interviews with high profile Bronco players, with or without help from the team’s PR staff. “Everyone would come to the trailer,” Joe smiled.

They were on their way to becoming the “Deans of Denver Sports.”

Coming Wednesday, Strike Two: John Elway and the Heyday of Irv and Joe.