Joe Zagacki, one of the producers of Mr. Goldberg at the WIOD, recalled in a phone interview one day that “Hank got into a fight with a caller — he had one of his volcanic explosions — and I said, ‘My goodness, you just hammered that guy. You’re hammering Hank. Goldberg’.”
The nickname stuck. After joining ESPN in 1993, Mr. Goldberg began hitting a studio desk with a hammer to express his disagreement with a colleague or his disdain for a sports figure. He called himself ‘Hammer’.
He initially appeared on ESPN2, which was new at the time, trying to reach a younger audience with anchors dressing in a casual, cool style. Not Mr. Goldberg, who was by no means cool, but brought a quirky, brassy personality to the network — though it was more likeable than his in-your-face radio demeanor.
“Hank can fit into any genre; it could fit anywhere,” said Suzy Kolber, a longtime ESPN anchor and reporter who worked with Mr. Goldberg on ESPN2 and in Florida. “Join him in horse racing or the ESPN2 group. He fit right in.”
Henry Edward Goldberg was born on July 4, 1940 in Newark and grew up in South Orange, NJ. His mother, Sadie (Abben) Goldberg, was a housewife; his father, Hy, was a sports columnist for The Newark Evening News. Hy Goldberg often took his wife and children to Yankees spring training in Florida, where young Hank befriended Joe DiMaggio, who called him Henry, Ms. Goldberg said in an interview.
At age 17, Mr. Goldberg took to the track for the first time and won $450 when he hit the daily double at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. When he took his winnings home, he recalled, his father told him, “Oh, you’re in trouble now.” In an interview this year with The Las Vegas Review-Journal, he added, “He knew I would never get over my love for the races.”