Photo by Whitney Copeland Bill York is a fixture at Indianapolis sporting venues such as Conseco Fieldhouse.

York continued from cover page

He doesn’t work alone, though. For each sporting event, York has his own media team that he coaches through each game. They are the ones who do the hard work, according to York.

There isn’t much turnover on his crews, a testament to York’s leadership skills.

Jay York, Bill’s wife of 47 years, says: “It’s fun, and they all like to do it. It’s a prestigious thing to be on the stat crew.”

York comes from a Purdue agricultural family. His brother Jim, BS ’63, and his two nephews, Mark, BS ’88, and Bob, BS ’91, all earned Purdue degrees.

But for Bill, being a media director is a far cry from the hog-buying career he started way back when the only major sporting event in Indianapolis was the 500-mile race.

When York graduated from Purdue Agriculture in 1958, all he wanted to do was buy hogs. He had known a couple of buyers and coveted the respect and admiration they commanded.

York interviewed for a sales job at New Holland and for a hog-buying job with meatpacker Stark & Wetzel. It was no contest.

Part of his job with the meatpacker was to travel around promoting the company. One of the ways that he did that was through the “Stark & Wetzel Rookie of the Year” award that went to the top Indianapolis 500 rookie driver. York would take lunchmeat to the garage of the rookie winner at the track during the month of May.

After York’s job at Stark & Wetzel was eliminated in 1964, Al Bloemker (Speedway director of publicity) offered him a job during the month of May. “I was unemployed, so of course, I said, ‘Well sure,’” York says. “I made more at the track in one month than I had made in six months.”

York soon found another “real” job as a salesman, but while he was working at the Speedway, Bill Marvel, public relations director for the newly formed American Basketball Association team, the Indiana Pacers, called and asked York to create a statistics crew for the team.

“The league says we have to have a stat crew and we have to have people to keep time and the clocks and keep score and everything. You are going to have to put together a group, because I don’t know enough about basketball,” Marvel told York.

“I have done that since the beginning for the Pacers (1967) and the Colts (1983),” York says in a proud tone. “I also put together the first all-women stat crew and game day officials for our WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) team, the Indiana Fever (2000).”

York has done many things to further the quality of the sporting events in Indy. From the recliner in the living room of his Indianapolis home, York points at the wall, quilted with plaques, pictures and awards.

“That one up there is for 20 years with the Colts,” he begins. “That picture is from Daytona when Elmo Langley took me around the track at about 160 miles an hour, that picture is from our 1,000th Pacer game — we’ve nearly passed our 2,000th by now. And that one… oh, that is The Speedway Oldtimer’s Club Louis Meyer Award.

“That is the most prestigious one up there.”

The media center at Conseco Fieldhouse bears York’s name, a tribute usually reserved for memorials. “It is a heck of an honor … it pulls at the old strings every once in a while when somebody mentions it,” he says softly.

York also received an Unsung Hero award from the Speedway in 2001. “I am stunned to be on an Unsung Hero list. I guess that’s why I’m on it,” he says.

He got a ring for the Unsung Hero award. He also got a ring when the Pacers had three championships in the ABA. “I got one of those Unsung Hero rings for Jay too, but she doesn’t wear it,” he says.

Jay and Bill lived just three blocks apart as undergraduates at Purdue. She lived at the Pi Beta Phi house. Bill lived just down the street at Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. But they didn’t meet until they hooked up on a blind date while they were both back home, she in Kokomo, he in nearby Peru.

Bill left Purdue to serve in the Korean Conflict, but returned to earn his degree in 1958.

Bill and Jay married while they were in school. Bill scratched out a living selling material-handling equipment for large warehouses.

York retired in 1998 after a 34-year career in sales, 17 years at Associated Materials Handling and another 17 years at Wiese Planning and Engineering. But he keeps on working, and not just with numbers. Three days a week, he shuffles cars for National Car Rental from the Indianapolis Airport to locations statewide.

Now 71, York admits he has thoughts of retirement. But Jay insists they are only idle thoughts.

“I hope you don’t quit anytime soon,” she says. “I mean, if you were sick or something it would be different. But you just enjoy it too much, you’d be miserable if you didn’t have your work to do.”

Contact York at bjstats@msn.com