OAKLAND — Some time ago, Martin Wyatt turned to his wife, Joyce, and asked: “How will I know when it’s time to retire? How will I feel?”

Joyce answered, “When the time comes you’ll know.”

Wyatt, who as a youth attended PUC Prep School in the Napa Valley, signed off as sports director and weekday sports anchor for KGO TV-ABC7 News Jan. 31, saying good-bye to Bay Area viewers and ending a distinguished career in television news that spanned 23 years in San Francisco and a total of four decades in three different markets.

The final sportscast for Wyatt — a widely respected and award-winning journalist who has covered everything from Super Bowls to World Series to the NBA Finals while also interviewing such greats as Muhammad Ali, Willie Mays, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Ronnie Lott and Barry Bonds — ended with the station chronicling his career highlights and achievements in a five-minute tribute, going back to his days when he played football at Vallejo Junior College and the University of Washington and later with his work in broadcasting.

“I teared up,” Wyatt recalled from a new four-bedroom, custom-built and spacious home, not far from The Claremont Resort & Spa, that he and Joyce recently moved into. “I didn’t expect it. I didn’t know they had done it. It just moved me.

“It hit me — this is it, you’ll never be as close to these people as you were. When you’re in news you’re on the cutting edge. You’re on top of what’s going on. I’ll never be in that groove again. I knew I was going to miss that — the adrenaline. It was sad, but you move on to a different chapter and make it happen.”

Life is, indeed, different for Wyatt, 65, now that he is retired and no longer delivering the stories and highlights of the day and also meeting deadlines in a pressure-packed business. Sundays, he said, are already noticeably different.

“You don’t even know that you’re gearing up all the time for the next story, the next day,” he explained. “I think I’ve kind of decompressed. I didn’t know it, until one Sunday when I said, ‘I don’t have to go to work Monday.’

“Now I can just chill. It’s a good feeling.”

There is a lot for Wyatt to feel good about as he reflects upon a career that started in Seattle, took him to San Francisco, Washington, D.C., then back to San Francisco. He won an Emmy for his documentary as both producer and writer on basketball great Bill Russell, and he covered the “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975, when Ali beat Joe Frazier, for KING-TV. He’s reported about the good and bad, the highs and lows for Bay Area professional and college teams.

“This is the place that I had always wanted to be. But it’s so hard to get here,” he said. “Guys try to keep jobs forever. When I was able to come back here, I never wanted to leave. Why would you want to go anywhere else? It’s expensive, but the attitude of people from Northern California — they care. It’s the best place in the world to live.

“We’ve traveled all over the world, but when we come back, it’s always, ‘wow.’ You can’t beat a sunset in the Bay Area.”

Ties to the Napa Valley

Wyatt isn’t living far from where he grew up — the small town of Angwin in Napa County. He attended PUC Prep for seven years and learned how to compete as an athlete in city league basketball games in St. Helena. A lot of people, Wyatt said, were after him to go to public schools, where he could have performed for St. Helena High School.

“My mother (Nadine Poindexter) was a Seventh-day Adventist, and she wanted me to go to a Seventh-Day Adventist School,” said Wyatt, a 1959 PUC Prep graduate. “I acquiesced to her wishes. I never played football until I went to Vallejo.”

Wyatt’s story is all the more remarkable and impressive, considering he never played a down of football until going to Vallejo Junior College, a dominant team.

“I didn’t even know how to put on pads. I had never put on a uniform,” he said. “But if you were a good enough athlete, they would accept you, to come in and help. These guys were really good. My first year I was able to fit in and learn. I guess it was just wanting to compete.

“I just wanted to get an education when I went to Vallejo Junior College, and I said, ‘I can play with these guys. Maybe I’ll get a scholarship.’ I got it from Washington, and that just opened up everything.”

Wyatt was good, all right. He was an All-American his second year as a two-way player (running back-defensive back) and received a football scholarship to Washington, which was coming off back-to-back Rose Bowl appearances. He turned down offers from a few other schools, including Oregon and Colorado State, to play for the Huskies.

“I was a great opportunity,” he said.

He was a halfback-fullback on Washington teams that went 5-4-1 (1961) and 7-1-2 (1962), finishing in second place in the conference each year. One of his best games was against UC Berkeley, when he scored on a 72-yard punt return — one of the longest in school history — and a 16-yard touchdown run in a 21-14 loss to the Golden Bears. He graduated with a degree in business.

Wyatt went on to play for a short time in the Canadian Football League for the Calgary Stampeders. He started his work in broadcasting after serving in the Army in Vietnam.

Sports broadcasting

The radio and TV work came naturally to Wyatt, who worked for KYAC, a radio station, and was the weekend sports anchor for KING 5 in Seattle for four years. He started at KGO TV in 1980, working as weekend sports anchor from 1980-85 and hosting the station’s weekly sports wrap-up show, “Plays and Players.” He moved east in the late ’80s to join Black Entertainment Television, and returned to San Francisco in ’89.

“I’ve been fortunate — I think it’s because I’m a Bay Area guy, so I knew a lot of the history, the feel of it,” he said. “When I started in the business it was to be a representative of your community — not to get another job and then go to another place and get a better job and a better job. For me, it was always to be a part and to contribute. When I go to the ballpark I can tell them what I saw, the little things that are happening in the locker room.”

In 1981 and ’82 he was a play-by-play announcer for ABC-TV’s college football games. He has co-hosted “Monday Night Live,” a Monday Night Football post-game show.

“To come back here in 1980, that was just the epitome,” he said.

In a comment that ABC7 carried on its Web site, former NFL great Jerry Rice said Wyatt was “one of the best, and we always hit it off. He was so down to earth and he would always come over, he would talk to me and I pretty much always granted him an interview because I really respected him so much.”

Wyatt gained respect for his work — both as an anchor and for his countless contributions to the community — from different organizations that honored him. He was inducted into the California Black Sports Hall of Fame in 1999. The same year he was the recipient of the Humanitarian of the Year Award from Athletes United for Peace and receiving the Man of the Year Award from the organization, 100 Black Men of California.

Along with former NFL wide receiver Gene Washington, they co-founded The Sports Image Foundation, a non-profit organization that has honored noted athletes and generated scholarships. Wyatt was honored with the Image Award for Journalism by the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority in 1995.

He has served on the board of directors for the Bay Area Black United Fund, Inc., and on the advisory board for the Oakland Area Black Community Crusade for Children.

The City of Vallejo honored him with “Martin Wyatt Day” in 1993, recognizing him for public service work with the Omega Boys Club.

“He has a love for charity organizations,” said Joyce. “When they call upon him I know he’ll say yes. He’ll still be in the business, but at his own pace.”

Joyce wasn’t at the station, but still saw her husband’s final sportscast that night.

“This is a different era now,” she said. “We’re in a different part of our lives.”

The next chapter

Wyatt plans to keep busy. He will be landscaping around his home, which is situated high in the Oakland hills, overlooking the Bay Area and providing dramatic views. He will also be converting his former home, located near Lake Merritt, into condominiums.

He and Joyce are hoping to take a cruise to Alaska and would like to visit India and Australia. Both Bay Area baseball teams, the Athletics and Giants, have invited him to throw out the first pitch at a game this season.

“I’m busy — all I did was take a suit off,” he said. “It’s not as much pressure.”

Wyatt said he’s looking forward to the fall and a football season when he can finally relax and not have to take notes during a game.

He also wants to relax and spend time in his new home, which took about a year and a half to build. The couple has four children — Marcus (39), Sabriya (33), Jamila (32) and Aisha (26) — and two grandchildren.

“We’re the type of people that always are busy and have things to do — whether it’s someone else trying to give us an agenda or us giving ourselves an agenda,” said Joyce, who is retired from a job in sales. “When you’re retired you have that flexibility to do so many different things.”

Wyatt was touched by a call he got at his home from Mike Murphy, the longtime head equipment man for the Giants who phoned from spring training in Scottsdale, Ariz., to congratulate him on retiring.

“Hey, we care about you. Come around the ballpark. We look forward to seeing you,” Murphy said.

From high atop the East Bay hills, Wyatt doesn’t have far to travel to see a game, or return to a place that will always be special and important to him — the Napa Valley.