Gunner was truly a Prince, met him at Candlestick and Dodger Stadium over the years. Always dressed to the nines and affable as all get out!! A wondeful person.

Had a memorable 2 hr. lunch at the Hilton's Rifle and Plow , when it first opened. Cannot believe he wasn't allowed to finish his career, beyond sad!

You know, of course, I only hang out with homers and yinzers and folk who hate stats geeks.

By the mid 1970s, Westinghouse executives were bringing guests and clients into the booth during games. Sometimes they would try to talk to Prince or ask for autographs during the broadcasts. On more than one occasion, they committed the cardinal sin of cheering the opposing team. During a game in 1975, when the Westinghouse guests became too raucous, Prince blurted over the air, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've got some idiots in the box rooting for Chicago." On October 30, 1975, Westinghouse Broadcasting shocked Pirate fans by announcing that Prince would not return for a 29th year behind the microphone. He and popular sidekick King were fired. At the time, no major league broadcaster had ever spent more years with one team than Bob Prince.

Prince admitted that Brown (echoing beliefs expressed two decades earlier by Branch Rickey) wanted Prince to ramble less and stick closer to the action on the field. But, "I never dreamed that meant, 'If you don't, you're out.'" He pleaded to remain with the Pirates. "It's the first time I've ever begged for anything. I asked for another chance. I even offered to write out a resignation for ill health of they would let me come back for '76." But regional director of Westinghouse Broadcasting, Ed Wallis, would hear nothing of it. Wallis, who became the public bogeyman in the firings, initially ducked requests for comment on the firings. But later he responded, "Club management and station management met with him (Prince) at the beginning of this year and summarized specifically all of our previous concerns. It became clear last season that the issues in dispute could not be reconciled; therefore, the contracts were not renewed." He told a Rotary Club luncheon that he was looking for a play-by-play man who could provide "accurate, consistent, uninterrupted accounts of the baseball game." Prince contended, "The only person who doesn't want me back is Ed Wallis. It's that simple." The level of acrimony on both sides suggests that somewhere along the line the disagreements between Prince and King and the Westinghouse executives had crossed the line from professional to personal. King claims that Wallis laughed when he reminded the executive that he needed the job to support his family. "It was almost like dealing with someone from 'The Godfather,'" according to King. Indeed, one person at Westinghouse claimed that Prince simply had gotten "too big for his britches."