If you were to meet Eddie Andelman on the street and exchange pleasantries, Eddie would slap you on the back and say, “Well, how ahya?” in that uber Boston dialect.

That’s how he opened his radio show every afternoon (or morning, or night; it never varied), and that was as formal as he ever got.

Eddie, who lived in Lynnfield during his radio days, died Monday at the age of 89, and it’s fair to say that he was on the ground floor of what sports talk radio has become. Sure, it has veered off into directions he never imagined. But he laid the blueprint in the Boston area for taking what normally went on at lounges and bars across the area and putting it on radio.

One night, Andelman and friends Jim McCarthy and Mark Witkin, three Boston-area businessmen at the time, were at a bar arguing sports. At the next table was the owner of a small radio station, WNUR. He liked listening to them, and together, they began “The Sports Huddle.” The show also had stints on WBZ and WEEI.

The Huddle, and other Eddie Andelman iterations, subsequently were light fare. No nasty confrontations encouraged.

What made it entertaining was that you never knew what the next three hours would get you. The three could riff on how much they hated Boston Bruins and Red Sox ownership, scan the globe, via telephone, for a better kicker than whoever the Patriots had, trade some of the worst puns the genre ever saw (which automatically made them the best) and guffaw hysterically, and ridicule the Red Sox manager, especially if his name was Don Zimmer.

“The Sports Huddle” was not unlike those Monday bull sessions around a table at Kelly Square Pub in East Boston.

“It was ‘Mondays with Eddie’ with friends he had made through all walks of life,” said former Daily Item Sports Editor Rich Fahey, who was his friend for 50 years and even an early caller on the show. “We had a ball and would talk about sports.”

Andelman was certainly irreverent. He’d rail on the Bruins, calling the organization “Westy’s House” as a play on Westinghouse, the parent company of WBZ TV and radio, in reference to Bruins owner Weston Adams.

If you ever mentioned Zimmer on his show, he’d play a recorded bit, in stentorian tones, admonishing you that Zimmer’s code name was “Chiang Kai-shek.” No explanation was ever given.

Yet for all his radio tomfoolery, there was a charitable side to Andelman, and it ran deeper than anyone ever knew, according to Fahey.

He was a close friend of the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Joe O’Donnell, whose son, Joey, died of cystic fibrosis. Andelman began the annual “Hot Dog Safari” in various locations around Boston, with the proceeds going to “The Joey Fund.”

“People know his public charity, but not a lot of the private things he did,” Fahey said. “He’d say, ‘It’s not for anyone to know.’”

When Fahey’s wife died, in 1995, “He couldn’t have been nicer to me and my kids,” Fahey said. “They went out to eat, he gave them Red Sox tickets, we ate at Kowloon, things like that.

“He was good to people he’d meet on the street. ‘Hey, how ya doin?’ I think people felt really comfortable with him,” Fahey said. ‘He’d ask people where they’re from and what they do.”

Fahey accompanied Andelman to Las Vegas for fights, covered his sons at Lynnfield sporting events, and often went on his show.

“I’ll remember him as a longtime friend,” Fahey said.

His three sons, David, Daniel, and Mike, followed in his footsteps. Also, all three were involved with hosting “The Phantom Gourmet” on radio and television.

He was a notorious gourmand himself, particularly fond of Chinese food at Kowloon’s on Route 1 in Saugus. On many nights, you’d see Andelman and his sons at a roundtable full of pu pu platters and other assortments.

“He was a great guy, and over the years, our families bonded,” said Bob Wong, a co-owner of Kowloon. “He was a dear friend and he was such a friend of our business.

“I used to listen to his show when I was really young,” Wong said. “Later, when I’d mention we owned Kowloon, people would smile and go, ‘Oh, yeah! Eddie Andelman!’”

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