Cody treated job as entertainment; Popular broadcaster dies at 65

Upon his retirement in 1996 from a broadcasting career that was flamboyant, unpredictable and iconoclastic, Wayne Cody summed it all up in one thought.

"I never really thought it was sports," he said. "It was entertainment."

That credo won him legions of followers and also earned him detractors. But it was the way Cody did business as a longtime sportscaster in Seattle and the first known sports talk-show host in the city.

Cody, 65, died yesterday at Valley General Hospital in Renton of complications from a heart attack suffered a week earlier. He had also battled diabetes for several years.

Cody was associated with KIRO radio for 21 years starting in 1975, and from 1978-92, was KIRO's lead TV sportscaster. The beginning of that stint coincided roughly with the explosion of professional sports in Seattle as the Seahawks and Mariners were born.

Son of a vaudeville performer and an actress, Cody had a predictable take on sports. It wasn't to be viewed too seriously — at least by him.

"Wayne's personality made sports fun," said KIRO news anchor Steve Raible. "It got you excited about your sports teams. Now everything is done with consultants and focus groups. You'd never see a guy like Wayne on the air anymore.

"But it worked. All you had to was look at his popularity and ratings to know that it worked."

At one point, Cody weighed 325 pounds. His girth seemed part of his popularity, even as the station promoted a Cody diet titled "Watch Wayne Disappear." Known as the "Mound of Sound," Cody lost most of 100 pounds but gained much of it back by 1984, when he was described during an interview with The Times as "sipping a 32-ounce Coke and nibbling on a giant Tootsie Roll."

He treated his few minutes on camera without great reverence. He interviewed a horse in the studio, read the sports while wearing a catcher's mask and brought in a high school marching band. When he decided to have his beard removed, he invited in a barber with a straight edge, who performed the shave while Cody did the evening sports.

"Seattle was wonderful to me," Cody told The Times upon his retirement. "They took a radio guy with a beard, weighing three and a quarter, and put me on TV."

He did one sportscast shirtless, another from a hot tub. Magician Doug Henning made him disappear during a segment. At Halloween, he masqueraded once as Henry VIII.

In that 1984 interview, Cody offered this assessment of his role: "People that tune in to me want to see a couple of things. One, what's happened in sports. Two, I hope they think I'll be honest with them. And three, they're wondering what the hell he's going to do tonight? Is he going to do it upside down? Is he going to do it in a bathtub?

"It's hokum, it really is. Some people will turn it on and say that's awful, and turn it off. Other people will call someone out of the bedroom and say, 'Hey, come here. You gotta see this.' "

Susan Hutchinson, another KIRO news anchor, worked with Cody for 10 years.

"Those were the days when people knew what stars were," she said. "I don't think there's anybody like Wayne Cody. He was bigger than life. Those of us who anchor the news go around town and we get called by some other anchor's name. But nobody ever confused Wayne with anybody.

"He was one of those people that just made Seattle what it was."

Cody is credited with founding Seattle's live comedy scene in 1979, starting a stand-up club. He also had a couple of restaurants.

Born near Atlantic City, N.J., in 1936, Cody was around radio at an early age and worked at a number of jobs in the industry starting in Scottsbluff, Neb., and continuing through several stops in the Midwest. He also took a fling at Hollywood, doing some commercial work, a scene as a bum with Red Skelton in his famous "Freddie the Freeloader" skits and a rejected television pilot.

He was working at a radio station in Kokomo, Ind., in the '60s when another product of Kokomo, future Hall of Fame bowler Don Johnson, recommended him for a media-relations job with the Pro Bowlers Association tour.

"It was incredible," said Johnson yesterday. "He would go into a newsroom, read the sports off a ticker and do the sports show without a piece of paper in front of him. He was phenomenal."

Cody traveled with the bowlers for five years, developing a reputation as a card player in their late-night games after tournament play. It was no secret that Cody loved to gamble and to have a good time.

"I'll never forget down in New Orleans, on Bourbon Street," said Johnson. "Little Richard was playing one of those night clubs. (Cody) got up with him and was doing the twist. He was really a comedian."

Cody came to Seattle in 1969 and worked for now-defunct KTW, a daylight-only talk station. In 1975, he began his successful "Sportsline" show evenings on KIRO radio.

He had a notable feud with an early Sonics head coach, NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell. Cody said it began when Russell's agent told him Russell preferred that Cody not talk as much on a two-hour call-in show.

"I didn't bother to tell him I thought it was my show and Bill was a guest," Cody said. "So the next Saturday, I went on and said 11 words: 'Hi everybody, here's Bill.' Then I went out of the room and for two hours and he took calls. Then at 11 (o'clock), I said, 'That was Bill. Join us next week.' "

Cody was sometimes panned as having less than complete knowledge of his subject matter. He seemed to acknowledge that when he left TV for good in 1992, saying, "I'm going to have it 90 percent right, plus it's going to be colorful."

When he retired in 1996, he took a shot at a trend in sports radio.

Said Cody then, "I can't stand the screaming radio today, where the guy is barking and invites people to call up and then insults them, and they scream and holler scores, and 'You're the man! You're the man!' That's just absolute B.S. radio. If that's what they want in radio today, they can have it."

Said Gary Christianson, a longtime KIRO radio newsman who worked with Cody, "He was the most fantastic radio-TV personality I ever met. I got to know him (better) after his TV retirement as a very sweet and generous man."

Cody is survived by two children and two grandchildren. A memorial service will be at 1 p.m. Thursday at Westminster Chapel in Bellevue.