(Stan Isaacs, former Newsday columnist and an East Hills resident, collaborated with Marty Glickman on his autobiography, 'The Fastest Kid on the Block.' These are his reminiscences of Glickman, who died of heart complications, Jan. 3 at 83.)

If you grew up a sports fan in New York after World War II, Marty Glickman was a part of your life. When he died, it woke up the echoes of Glickman on the radio for 55 years. Depending on your age, you remembered Glickman most for his college basketball broadcasts or his calls of the Knicks or the football Giants and, finally, for the most recent generation, his New York Jets' work.

Glickman announced college basketball in its heyday in New York after World War II before the sport swept the country. He invented the geography of basketball, focusing on the ball as it moved from man to man. People recalled listening to Glickman and his trademark phrase of "Swish" for a basketball shot that went in without touching the rim or the backboard. His "Good like Nedicks" call for a basket, which referred to an early sponsor, a purveyor of orange juice and hot dogs, was echoed by kids on playgrounds all over the city. "Swish" and "Good like Nedicks" were for an earlier generation; what Glickman's protégé Marv Albert's "Yes" on television was for succeeding generations.

He went on to become the radio voice of the Knicks for 21 years, the football Giants for 23 years, Yonkers Raceway for 12 years and the Jets for 11 years until he retired from regular work in December 1992. He once estimated he broadcast more than 1,000 football games, 3,000 basketball games, 2,100 track meets, 15,000 harness races and 2,000 baseball re-creations. He may have done every sport but auto racing.

He made a point of saying he also did four marbles championships. He did so because he never forgot where he came from. His career stemmed from his days as a high school football star at Madison High School in Brooklyn and he was always a big booster of schoolboy sports. Even when he was working Knicks games he called high school football games on television. And upon his death his family asked that any contributions in his name be made to the PSAL (Public School Athletic League of New York).

That was typical of the classy guy he was. I found him a pleasure to work with in writing his autobiography. Everybody I talked to about Marty had nothing but admiration for him as a person, and as a professional.

Glickman did Giants football games in the era when pro football games were blacked out on television in the home city. So, it was to Glickman on radio that fans turned for Giants games when pro football burst into prominence in the country. Many fans who traveled outside of the city to pick up Giants telecasts from out-of-town stations, would turn down the TV sound so they could hear Glickman's descriptions on radio.

Glickman was a radio guy. His friends came to lament that television later would so dominate the landscape that he became a lesser eminence than some of the popinjays of the tube who didn't have the talent or the breadth of the old master.

His signature call in football came on a field goal when he would say, "High enough, deep enough, it's good." His wife, Marge, a former George White's Scandals dancer, once pointed out to him that the "high enough, deep enough, it's gooooood," call was "pretty sexy." The Glickmans were married for 60 years. He said, "I was away so much that when we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, she said, This should be our 25th."'

Glickman helped a legion of broadcasters, including Marv Albert, Bob Costas, Dick Stockton and Len Berman, who followed him at Syracuse. He became a voice coach to announcers at NBA, HBO and the Madison Square Garden Network. He prized accuracy and freedom from clichés. He spoke in crisp, authoritative tones with a voice that Bill Wallace said in the New York Times "had the clarity of a bell and the authority of a bank."

Glickman starred in football at Syracuse as the fastest running back in the country. Before his sophomore year he earned a place on the 4 by 100 relay team for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The day before the relay, however, the blustery assistant coach, Dean Cromwell from the University of Southern California, dropped Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jews on the US track squad, with a trumped-up explanation that he heard the Germans were saving their best sprinters for the relay.

Glickman, 18, objected. He pointed out that the best German finish in the 100-meter sprint had been fifth, so there was no reason to be afraid of the Germans in the sprint relay. Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe replaced Glickman and Stoller. The Americans won so easily there was no doubt they could have won just as well with Glickman and Stoller. Cromwell kept two of the USC runners, Frank Wyckoff and Foy Draper on the squad. Glickman came to believe that anti-Semitism influenced Cromwell, who was known to utter anti-Semitic remarks. Glickman felt that US Olympic head Avery Brundage, who discounted any claims of anti-Semitism, may have influenced the decision so Adolph Hitler could not be embarrassed by seeing two Jews accepting gold medals on the relay victory squad. Wykcoff agreed that anti-Semitism played a part in the decision to displace the Jews.

When I collaborated with Glickman on The Fastest Kid on the Block, which is available from Syracuse University Press, he sometimes would come to my house from Manhattan and before our recording sessions, ever the athlete, would swim 40 laps in my small pool.

He told me that his father was the fastest runner in his school in Iasi, Romania. His father loved to tell the story of how he beat the mayor's son in a race for boys. His father said, "I won the race, but the medal ... they gave it to the mayor's son."

And Marty Glickman said, "My father and I, we didn't get our medals."

In later years Glickman would say, "There's an irony here. If I had run and won the medal with three other guys, I'd have been just another runner who had won a relay medal. How many Olympic 4 by 100 relay runners can anybody name? But every four years or so before the Olympics the 1936 incident is brought up and my name has been a part - however negative - of the Olympics.

The truth is, of course, that I would much rather have run. I'd much rather have the gold medal to show my grandchildren. I am, though, more than satisfied that my place in sports history, however minor, rests on my work as a sports broadcaster."

An exclamation point to that is this passage in Jack Kerouac's cult novel On the Road in which Kerouac is listening to a basketball game on the radio. He wrote, "Man, you dug that mad Marty Glickman announcing a basketball game - up-to-midcourt-bounce-fake-set-shot, swish, two points. Absolutely the greatest announcer ever heard!"