Bob Fouts, whose broadcasting career lasted more than a half-century and included a lengthy stint as one of the 49ers’ main announcers, died of natural causes Sunday in San Francisco. He was 97.

The father of Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback and current CBS football analyst Dan Fouts, Bob Fouts grew up in Sacramento and went to college at St. Mary’s, where he helped start a student radio station on the Moraga campus.

After serving in the Air Force in World War II, Fouts soon began working on the broadcasts of the 49ers in the late 1940s when they were part of the All-America Football Conference.

The 49ers joined the NFL in 1950, and for the next decade-plus, Fouts alternately called their games on television for CBS and on radio.

“Those football days were the highlight” of his career, Fouts said in a December 2002 Chronicle story.

Longtime Bay Area broadcaster Barry Tompkins described listening to Fouts call games as “like sitting around a dinner table with your uncle. … You were part of his family.

“It wasn’t like listening to a broadcaster broadcast a game. It was more like a family member telling you about the game.”

Said Dan Fouts, who followed his father into broadcasting: “When I listened to him as a child doing games, I could tell his interest and his investment not only in the teams he was calling but in the work he was doing.”

Bob Fouts’ signature phrase was “red dog,” which he used to describe blitzes by linebackers. In fact, “Red Dog” became Fouts’ nickname for many years.

He enjoyed a long and varied career. He was a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. He served as a public affairs director for government agencies.

In baseball, Fouts called games of the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. In basketball, he called San Francisco Warriors and St. Mary’s games. He worked as a sports anchor for Bay Area radio stations — KSFO (560 AM), KCBS (740 AM) and KYA (1260 AM) — and for Bay Area television stations — KPIX (Channel 5) and KGO (Channel 7).

Into his 80s, Fouts remained a part-time Bay Area correspondent for ABC Radio.

Fouts was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2008. Also in that 2008 class was longtime Stanford and 49ers broadcaster Don Klein, who died Wednesday at 95.

Tompkins broke into broadcasting in the 1960s at KCBS, where Klein and Fouts both worked.

“Like Don, (Bob) just kind of took me under his wing,” Tompkins said. “He accepted me as a peer. You don’t forget things like that — and he never changed. He was like that from the day I met him until the last time I saw him. …

“I never met anybody in this business who had remotely an unkind word for Bob.”

Dan Fouts recalled meeting Willie Mays. “I introduced myself,” Dan said, “and (Mays) said, ‘You’re Bob’s kid?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Bob’s a good man.’ I heard that from people throughout the football world because of his relationship with the 49ers but also throughout the broadcast world. …

“That phrase ‘He’s a good man,’ to me, means more than anything because you throw the word ‘great’ around every day. This is great. That’s great. But great is a comparison and good is an attribute.”

Perhaps Bob Fouts’ favorite part-time job came during the three years in the mid-1990s when Dan Fouts was the sports director at KPIX. When Dan was off, Bob often subbed for his son.

“I hated it,” Dan said, displaying some of the self-deprecating humor he inherited, “because when I came back to work, everybody said, ‘Why don’t you be more like your dad? He’s good.’”

Bob Fouts is survived by his wife, Julie, and five children: Bob, Patty, Nancy, Dan and John. He had 17 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is pending.

Steve Kroner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: skroner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveKronerSF