STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Mark Marquess, a National College Baseball Hall of Famer who coached Stanford to a pair of national titles over 41 years beginning in 1977, has died. He was 78.
The school announced Friday that Marquess died, but provided no details on the cause.
A fixture for more than four decades in the dugout at Sunken Diamond on campus, Marquess guided the Cardinal to consecutive NCAA championships in 1987 and ’88.
Long known as “9” for his No. 9 jersey, he retired in 2017 and ranks as the fourth-winningest coach in Division I history with a 1,627-878-7 (.649) career record.
Marquess typically arrived on campus in the wee hours of the morning when most were still in bed, then would go to sleep early to get ready for the next day.
As the wins piled, Marquess remained humble and grounded — he certainly wasn't keeping track of where he ranked among the best of all-time — determined never to get too high or too low.
“Really, I don’t think about it,” Marquess said in early 2008. “It’s just a matter of you get busy and as a coach you worry about the next one. You worry about the ones you lost, too much. ... When I think about it, it just means I’ve been coaching a long time.”
A former first baseman, he played both baseball and football for Stanford when he arrived at the university in 1965. Marquess would go on to become a three-time NCAA Coach of the Year — in 1985, ‘87 and ’88 — and a nine-time Pac-10 Coach of the Year. Along with the two College World Series titles, Stanford made 30 NCAA Tournament appearances, reached six NCAA Super Regionals and won 18 regionals during his tenure. The Cardinal also won the conference regular-season title 11 times.
“This man was Stanford baseball,” said David Esquer, Stanford’s current coach who played for Marquess on The Farm. “He was my coach, and like a father to me. I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. This is a great loss for the Stanford community, the Stanford baseball family and myself. I love that man.”
Marquess was also a member of the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame, the American Baseball Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame and the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame.
Marquess, who played in the Chicago White Sox organization from 1969-73 and reached Triple-A, also coached USA Baseball to an Olympic gold medal in 1988 when the sport was a demonstration event in Seoul, South Korea.
He always loved his role in the the college game and so appreciated working at someplace like Stanford, taking great pride in not only finding players himself along with his staff but also developing them — many into future pros.
“One of the things, at the professional level a manager can say, ‘Well, I’m just not getting the players, it’s the general manager.’ You can put blame elsewhere,” Marquess said. “In our game, I recruit them, I do everything, so it all falls to me. You can’t blame it on somebody else. The nice thing about Stanford is it kind of sells itself academically, the campus. I mean, what’s not to like?”
AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
FILE - Stanford coach Mark Marquess smiles before practice at the Sunken Diamond in Stanford, Calif., on March 11, 2014. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
Stanford coach Mark Marquess cheers on his team during a baseball game against California in Stanford, Calif., on March 2, 2007. (Darryl Bush/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.
“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”
The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman presided over a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.
McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.
“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”
McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.
McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.
“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”
WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.
“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. “There is Greats of the 80s, Sounds of the 70s, 90s Rewind.”
LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.
“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”
And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is in McIntire’s basement.
Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.
They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.
“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.
After 10 years on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.
“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”
They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.
They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”
Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.
“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”
Whatever they do with the call sign, he hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.
“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”
D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
