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The Razor Out At KNBR

One of those voices in the back of your head disappeared on Wednesday.

Raspy and pressing, the voice of Ralph Barbieri, affectionately called “The Razor,” will no longer have KNBR’s airwaves as his platform to transmit his thoughts on your drive home each weekday. He was reportedly let go from KNBR after being with the regional radio giant since 1984, the last 15 years of which as co-host on the Razor and Mr. T weekdays from 3 PM to 7 PM, with Tom Tolbert.

And as the rumors swirl as to why he was released, quite simply, KNBR and the Bay Area have lost an irreplaceable person who loved us as much as we loved him. On Wednesday’s show, Tom Tolbert was very emotional at the start of the show, taking several efforts to tell the audience his thoughts on the end of Ralph’s career with KNBR, able to add humor to the segment with words of thanks and citing that their tenure together lasted longer than some of the careers of the athletes they covered.

It is hard to write about Ralph Barbieri in the present and not the past, because to me, and in all the ways I know him, he is gone. As a developing sports website that Bay Area Bias is, often quickly dismissed as a blog, we are not privy to the inner circles of the Bay Area sports media. So I don’t have any access to Ralph. He is not on Twitter, and now gone from KNBR, has no accessibility to most of us. Which is a shame, because the thing that made Ralph so appreciated in his tenure was that he was the voice of so many of us living in the Bay Area. Ralph made his living approaching the unapproachable subject to the often unapproached. He pushed people like Brian Sabean for a better answer than he would often give, most notoriously perhaps several years ago when Sabean hung up on Ralph in the middle of a phone interview live on his show when asking why he and the Giants didn’t spend more money on players.

Ralph could easily be mistaken as an impatient old-timer who would talk over guests and interviewees, was sometimes late to the punch line, and refused to be involved in developing media streams like Twitter and Facebook. He could be called crotchety and out of touch. But Ralph was the honey badger, he didn’t care. He knew what worked for him, and what worked for him was sticking to his beliefs in the face of whatever he happened to be going against, and that may have ultimately been his downfall at KNBR. If you can call it that. From what we know about Ralph through his show, it is that he pushed the question, was not afraid to bring up old things thought buried, never forgot, and spoke for a good portion of the Bay Area in topics that went against the grain. He touched on things like Sabean not bringing up Buster Posey sooner; Buster Posey having a little Jeff Kent in him; Jeff Kent hunting animals as sport. He asked what I wanted him to ask. No one else on the radio would.

What will be missed about Ralph is that he was a part of the fabric of the Bay Area sports scene, and it just so happens that is what this website is all about. So obviously a man who was engrained in it since 1984 offers influence and becomes part of the culture here. In your bumper-to-bumper traffic, Ralph was the saving grace for 28 years. Ralph was not like the gentle west coast media – he is from the east coast where a guy like Ralph would perhaps be commonplace. His tenacity and enthusiasm for a topic was good radio and also thought provoking. Where so many others use their shows to break down trade scenarios, line-up changes, and take the other side with callers, Ralph would pass on the low-hanging fruit and go for a more substantial topic, be it animal rights, religion, or an all-out campaign for Vladimir Guerrero. He would pick fights with interviewed guests, but be warm at the end, always thank them for their time, and wish them luck – often talking over Tolbert to do so before he kicked it to a Sleep Train commercial.

It is a shame that after so many years with a company that Barbieri saw so many changes and evolution out of, he was not offered a word of goodbye by KNBR. No last chance to say thank you to his listeners, or simply remind them one last time that, “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” In the context of it all, without knowing the full context, I might hold some grudge with KNBR for not allowing a man his last goodbye in something he gave his heart to for almost 30 years. Of all the things, this perhaps makes me saddest. I would want that, Ralph deserved that. And perhaps something else was worked out between the two, I do hope so.

The ugliest side of all this, of course, is the reason as to why Ralph Barbieri was dismissed. What you don’t want to think in all of this is that other organizations do indeed have such a strong influence on KNBR that on-air personalities who give local teams too hard of a time are pressured out – even folks as high up as Ralph who was rumored to be one of the highest paid Bay Area radio personalities.

Where Ralph goes from here is only known to him. I can just speculate and hope that if anybody told Ralph to tone it down, ask more softball questions, or not berate the interviewee, that Ralph stood his ground and stuck to his roots and defied them, making them choose the business side of things over allowing him to express his values and challenge people he spoke with on air. I hope we get to hear again soon from Ralph Barbieri. Whether we see an out-reached hand from the less biased and more edgy 95.7 The Game in the direction of Ralph remains to be seen. But it could be a good fit, and a good chance to hear Ralph tell us once again why angels fly.

If not, thanks for the great shows, Ralph.

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