Chris Wheeler (born August 9, 1945) is a former announcer and color commentator for the Philadelphia Phillies in

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

. He is nicknamed "Wheels". Wheeler attended

Marple Newtown High School Marple Newtown School District (MNSD) is a public school district which serves Newtown Township and Marple Township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Marple Newtown School District encompasses approximately . According to 2000 federal census ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in journalism from

Penn State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State became ...

in 1967. Following graduation, he began his broadcasting career with

WCAU WCAU (channel 10) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Mount Laurel, New Jerse ...

radio in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, where he was an airborne traffic reporter as well as a news writer and reporter. He later worked at WBBM in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadc ...

in New York. Wheeler joined the Phillies as assistant director of publicity and public relations in 1971 and began broadcasting in 1977. In 1982, he also was made director of the Phillies' community relations department. He was the camp coordinator for Phillies Dream Week from 1983 to 1999 and ran the team's

speakers bureau A speakers bureau is a collection of speakers who talk about a particular subject, or a company, which operates to facilitate speakers for clients requiring motivational speakers, celebrity appearances, conference facilitators, or keynote speaker ...

from 1991 to 1997. He was released as a Phillies broadcaster on January 8, 2014.

References

1945 births Living people American sports announcers Major League Baseball broadcasters Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications alumni People from Darby, Pennsylvania People from Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey Philadelphia Phillies announcers Baseball players from Pennsylvania {{US-tv-bio-stub