The late Bill O'Donnell charted a memorable trail in media. As a sportswriter and later, as a radio and television broadcaster, he journeyed from the minor leagues to the World Series.

Born in 1926, and raised in the Bronx, N.Y., O'Donnell harbored a boyhood dream of being a newspaper reporter. At the age of 14, while a student at Fordham Prep School, he became a copy boy in the New York Times sports department.

In 1944, O'Donnell left Fordham University to enlist in the Marine Corps, two months shy of his 18th birthday. He briefly played baseball for a Navy team, then was appointed to serve with the military police in Guam. A few months later, he requested a transfer, and became a sportswriter and radio announcer for the Navy News.

When he returned home to New York after his discharge, he couldn't get admitted to the overcrowded Fordham University, so he found a job on the sports desk of the New York World Telegram and Sun.

After 0' Donnell grew impatient over a lack of assignments at the Telegram, a colleague put him in touch with a friend, the editor of the Utica Daily Press. O'Donnell was then offered a position by the sports editor, Len Wilbur, in 1946. O'Donnell covered hockey, basketball. boxing and minor league baseball for the Press, in addition to Syracuse University sports.

O'Donnell got his professional start in broadcasting at WIBX Radio in Utica in 1949. When the Philadelphia Phillies transferred their Utica Blue Sox Franchise, O'Donnell vowed to continue his career as a baseball announcer elsewhere. In the spring of 1951, his friend, baseball comedian Billy Mills, told him of an opening with KWIK Radio in Pocatello, Idaho. There, O'Donnell called minor league baseball games and moonlighted as a high school and college sports announcer.

Late in 1952, he returned to Central New York and made his debut in the infant television business at WSYR in Syracuse. He broadcast SU basketball and football games for 13 years, and also did play-by-play of the Syracuse Chiefs baseball team. In 1959, he received the Court Grimes Television Award.

O'Donnell broadcast seven Baltimore Colts football games in 1963, and occasionally did National Basketball Association games for NBC. In 1965, NBC invited him to join Curt Gowdy, Jim Simpson and Herb Carneal in broadcasting regional American Football League games. O'Donnell's goal however, was to broadcast major league baseball.

He reached his goal in 1966 when he joined the Baltimore Orioles. He and his wife Pat Martin, a Utica native, decided then to make their home in Baltimore. In 1968, O'Donnell even rejected a broadcasting offer from the New York Yankees.