You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television

by Al Michaels

  In early January 1974, UCLA made its annual trip to the state of Washington. The Bruins beat the University of Washington Huskies on a Saturday night in Seattle, and the next day we took a commercial flight across the state to Spokane, which was followed up by a ninety-minute bus ride to Pullman, the home of Washington State University. The following night, the Bruins would play the Cougars. When the bus rolled into Pullman but before we would check into the hotel, Coach Wooden had the driver head straight to the Cougars’ arena. He wanted the players to stretch their legs and go through a light practice. After about twenty-five minutes on the court, the players went back to the locker room to shower and change back to their street clothes. The weather that early evening was miserable—rain was turning to sleet. I was leaning against the wall in a corner of the locker room when Coach Wooden gathered the team, laid out what the following day’s schedule would be, and said, “Boys, now it’s very cold and damp outside. I want you to make sure you dry your hair very thoroughly. I don’t want anyone to get sick.”

  I laughed to myself. Coach Wooden was clearly a father figure to so many of the players in that room. But at that moment, he wasn’t just their father. He was also their mother.

  The Bruins beat Washington State, but that night Bill Walton injured his back. Walton has said that game, and that injury, was the start of a lifetime of back issues. UCLA won the game and would go on to defeat California, Stanford, and Iowa to run their record that season to 13-0, and their overall winning streak to 88 games. The Bruins had not lost in nearly three years, with that last defeat coming at the hands of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

  The next stop, ironically, would be South Bend on Saturday, January 19, 1974. Though Walton played with a back brace, UCLA led by 11 points with less than four minutes to play. Then Notre Dame reeled off 12 straight points and won, 71–70. The longest winning streak in college basketball history was over. It was a nationally televised game on NBC, which meant I didn’t call it. Behind the mic, in one of his first NBC assignments, was Dick Enberg.

  In an odd schedule twist, the Bruins would play Notre Dame again the following Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion. The Irish were coached by Digger Phelps. I broadcast that game not only locally in Los Angeles, but on the TVS Network, run by Eddie Einhorn. Eddie ran what turned out to be a very successful operation, later became an executive at CBS Sports, and then along with Jerry Reinsdorf, bought the Chicago White Sox in 1981. So the Bruins were attempting to start a new winning streak, and did, rolling to a 94–75 victory. My broadcast partner on that game, by the way, was one Tommy Hawkins, who’d been with the Los Angeles Lakers during my ill-fated twenty-minute adventure as Chick Hearn’s sidekick. Meanwhile, Einhorn was a real character. He reminded me a lot of Chuck Barris. In fact, on that night, with a huge national television audience tuned in, Eddie decided that I would interview him at halftime. Why? He wanted to announce the recent birth of his daughter. When you own the store, you can do whatever you wish.

  I had also done some TVS games for Einhorn in a couple of the off-seasons when I was with the Reds. In fact, on two games, both in Olean, New York, on back-to-back weekends at St Bonaventure University, my partner was Butch Van Breda Kolff, the Lakers coach who, a few years earlier, had been the man assigned to tell me at Los Angeles International Airport that I was not to board that flight to Boston. Bill was dabbling in broadcasting in between coaching jobs with the Phoenix Suns, in the NBA, and Memphis Tams, in the American Basketball Association. One unforgettable memory I have about working with Van Breda Kolff was the fact that on both weekends the temperature hovered around zero. We went out to dinner, and Butch had no parka, no overcoat, no scarf, and no hat—just a sweater. I’m shivering to death, and looked at him and said, “Are you kidding?” And he said, “Why travel around with a coat? You can go right from the car to the arena or the restaurant to the hotel. You’re outside for fifteen seconds.” You never know where your life lessons will come from.

  In March 1973, I went to South Bend to broadcast a Notre Dame–South Carolina game for TVS. One of the stars for the Gamecocks was Mike Dunleavy, who’d go on to coach four NBA teams. Forty years later, he’d be a frequent golf partner of mine in Los Angeles. And who did Einhorn pair me with for that game? None other than Hot Rod Hundley, the man who had succeeded me as Chick Hearn’s partner with the Lakers. People in my career (and life, too) keep coming and going and coming and going. And then reappearing. I love it.

  I worked two years of UCLA basketball for KTLA, and the 1974–75 season turned out to be John Wooden’s last. The coach had not shown his hand all season in regard to possible retirement, and in fact said nothing until after the Bruins had won another national championship, Wooden’s tenth, defeating Kentucky, 92–85, in the NCAA Tournament Championship Game. John Wooden was one of the most remarkable people I’ve had the great pleasure to know. He was honest, moral, encouraging, and inspiring. When he died in 2010 at the age of ninety-nine, he had left an indelible mark. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into through the years—and not just his players—who have talked about the everlasting impact he had on their lives. In 2003, when UCLA named the court at Pauley Pavilion in John and his late wife Nell’s honor, the Nell and John Wooden Court, I was asked to emcee the luncheon that preceded the dedication. Coach had insisted that Nell’s name precede his. Of course. He was the quintessential gentleman. Always, “Ladies first.” I said to the gathering, “For my money, he’s the greatest coach in any sport, ever—but don’t just take my word for it. The Sporting News named him the greatest coach of all time as well.” I looked at John, and he had his head bowed. For a man of such singular accomplishment, he was always genuinely modest. He was remarkably humble and rarely comfortable with praise, which came often. Looking down at his table that day, I continued. “Coach,” I said, “it’s your own fault. You didn’t have to go out and win those ten national championships.”

  NOW IT’S MARCH 1974. The San Francisco Giants are about to go to spring training, and I’m going back to baseball. Linda, Steven, and I had moved into a home we loved in Menlo Park, not far from the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. Linda was pregnant with our baby due in July. We were living in the middle of Silicon Valley during its nascent days.

  The Giants were a mediocre team playing in one of the worst stadiums ever constructed, Candlestick Park. And it seemed to me early on that there was a malaise that was affecting the whole franchise. The owner was Horace Stoneham. He’d moved the team west from the Polo Grounds in New York sixteen years earlier, and now it was pretty clear he was beginning to run out of money. The team was so-so, attendance was terrible, and it affected almost everyone in the entire organization. I would spend too many nights in the broadcast booth at Candlestick, freezing my butt off, announcing a game with a crowd that would often number less than five thousand. Meanwhile, the Reds were in contention, playing to packed houses, and on their way to consecutive World Series titles in 1975 and ’76, while Marty Brennaman had succeeded me in Cincinnati. In a way, how could I not think about what I had left behind? By the way, Howsam and Wagner wound up hitting the jackpot. Marty Brennaman is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and has now been the voice of the Reds for more than forty seasons.

  The Giants had some good players. The outfield consisted of Gary Matthews, Garry Maddox, and Bobby Bonds. Solid. Also, the team had been experimenting for a couple of seasons with Dave Kingman at third base. Kingman would go on to hit 442 home runs over the course of his career with several teams, though never quite living up to the incredibly high expectations that accompanied his perceived potential.

  Anyway, by the middle of that April, the Giants were compelled to make a change at third—because it was becoming too dangerous for fans to sit behind first base. Night after night, Kingman would field a ground ball and wind up uncorking a throw into the fifth row behind first. He would be moved back to more comfortable roles at first base and the outfield by the end of April.

  Very quickly, I
could sense the difference between the Reds and the Giants in terms of chemistry and energy. The contrast was stark. Before the season was a week old, the Reds came to Candlestick Park—my old team against my new team. Before the game, when I walked into the Reds clubhouse, the players treated me like a long-lost brother, which felt great. In the second game of that series, Tony Perez came to the plate. Having watched his every at bat for three years, I obviously knew his strengths and weaknesses. The Giants didn’t. Scouting wasn’t what it is today. Cronyism prevailed. Some teams, like the Giants, would have a scout behind the plate with a notebook in one hand and a beer in the other.

  So Perez comes up. In left field, Gary Matthews is playing him toward the line. In center, Garry Maddox is playing in the left center field gap. And Bobby Bonds is shading Perez toward the right field line. There was this enormous gap in right center. On the air, I said, “Well, the Giants are playing Perez exactly the opposite of the way they should. Perez’s primary power is to right center field.” As if on cue, he hits a home run over the right center-field fence.

  Two months later, with the Giants at around .500, we ended a road trip in Philadelphia. The Giants led 3–0 going into the bottom of the eighth inning, when the Phillies scored four runs and won the game, 4–3. You can’t lose in much more dispiriting fashion.

  When the Reds would suffer a loss like that (which was not often), the bus ride out of the stadium would be a quiet one. Winning was too important to the Reds. Now, following this game, I witnessed how much the approach to and importance of winning could vary. The Reds’ bus would have had a collective mute button on, but on this day, when the Giants filed onto the bus, an outsider would have had no idea whether they had won or lost. The guys just wanted to get out of Dodge and fly back to San Francisco. I was still upset about the way the game had unfolded. And I then came to the realization that I cared more about whether the team had won or lost than most of the players did.

  I had received my baseball master’s and Ph.D. degrees at the knees of Chuck Tanner in Hawaii and Sparky Anderson in Cincinnati. I remember telling a friend it was like having Socrates and Aristotle tutoring you in philosophy. Now I’m in San Francisco, and the manager is Charlie Fox.

  In mid-June, we started a road trip with a weekend series in Pittsburgh, and in the Friday night opener, Fox wanted to make a pitching change with one out and a Pirates runner on second in the bottom of the sixth. He also wanted to bring in a new left fielder who could bat third in the top of the Giants’ seventh since the 7-8-9 hitters would be due up and he could insert the new reliever in the six spot. In other words, your basic “double switch.” He signaled to the bullpen to bring in the new pitcher, Elias Sosa. I immediately sensed a problem. We went to commercial during the pitching change, and I then watched as Fox proceeded to get into an argument with the plate umpire, Nick Colosi. I knew exactly what was going on. Thank you, Chuck Tanner and Sparky. Charlie had forgotten to tell Colosi that he was inserting two players simultaneously—the double switch. When he had signaled for Sosa alone, Sosa was immediately placed in the nine slot. He had forgotten to tell Colosi he was also making the change in left. Moments later, when he went back to the umpire to tell him what he had meant to do, the ship had left the harbor. He’d blown the double switch. The argument that followed was pure histrionics. Back from commercial, I’m all over it. “Here’s what Charlie meant to do. Here’s what happened. Here are the rules.” I remember thinking I’d been spoiled. I’d been with Tanner and Sparky and now I’m with . . . ? Okay. Whatever.

  I was off in the seventh inning and went over to the writers’ area in the press box to check in with our beat reporters. “Can you guys believe how he messed that up?” I said.

  “Messed up what?” came the response. “What happened?”

  “Charlie blew the double switch. He lost track of the rule.”

  They were still clueless. Our three reporters had been their beats for a long, long time and riveting their attention on any game’s nuances was not necessarily a priority. Sometimes an in-game nap would be in order.

  After the game, on my way to the bus I stopped by the press box again and saw one of the writers. “Did you ask him about it? What did he say?”

  “He said that he really didn’t want to make the double switch,” the writer responded.

  Charlie probably figured the writers really didn’t know what was going on, and that answer could help him avoid being pressed any further. Of course, I knew it was total bull. Then I got on the bus. Fox was already in the front seat where the manager typically sits. I said to him, “What happened in the sixth inning?”

  I had felt that Charlie was always a little uncomfortable with me, knowing that I had spent three years with Sparky Anderson, and that I understood a lot of things that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. That night, though, Charlie acknowledged to me that he had blown it. At least he owned up to his mistake.

  Still, the team was slogging along and he’d be fired about two weeks later.

  FOX’S SUCCESSOR, WES WESTRUM, was another player I watched as a kid in Brooklyn—he played for the New York Giants. In fact, he was on the cover of the inaugural issue of Sports Illustrated in 1954, crouched behind the plate with Eddie Matthews batting in Milwaukee. Now in 1974, he had reappeared, another baseball card from my childhood come to life. He was an okay manager and a very decent man with some idiosyncrasies. Then again, who doesn’t have some? Years before kids would text “OMG” to each other on iPhones, he always used the phrase “Omigod.” Omigod, we have to go the bullpen early. Omigod, I hope he gets out of his slump. It was his favorite expression, so much so that among several of the players, it became his nickname.

  Westrum also had to deal with Dave Kingman. That was not necessarily easy. Kingman could be very off-putting, even with teammates and the coaches, and almost always with the media. But for whatever reason, he liked me and we got along very well.

  By August, the seeds had been sown—the Giants were destined to finish well down in the National League West standings. In the middle of a twelve-game road trip, we flew from Philadelphia to St. Louis on an off day. A three-game series with the Cardinals would start the next night. It was one of those stretches of oppressive summer days in the Midwest—a thousand degrees by noon with 99 percent humidity. In those years, I was playing a lot of tennis. On the bus from the airport to the hotel, I casually mentioned to no one in particular that I was looking for a tennis game. As it turned out, Kingman would always bring a tennis racket on the road. Dave overhears me and says, let’s go. I’ll meet you on the court at one thirty. We were staying at Stouffer’s Hotel downtown, next to the Mississippi River, with an outdoor court on the property.

  Playing in intense heat had never bothered me. We played three sets. The next day, I run into Kingman at breakfast, and he says, you want to play again this afternoon? I say sure. We meet at the court at one. Our game with the Cardinals that night would start at around seven thirty. Westrum had recently chosen to platoon Kingman with the left-hand-hitting first baseman Ed Goodson. For several days, Kingman had been limited to a couple of pinch-hitting appearances, and knew he wouldn’t be in the lineup that night against Bob Gibson.

  So, on that sweltering afternoon before the game, we played for two hours, and at about three o’clock, we stood in the hotel lobby waiting for an elevator, holding our drenched shirts and our rackets and looking as if we’d just escaped a car wash. And when the elevator door opened, who would come out along with a couple of his coaches? You got it—Wes Westrum. Busch Stadium was a couple of blocks away, and they were walking over to the ballpark. Westrum looked at Kingman and—seeing his now part-time first baseman covered in sweat, without a shirt, holding a racket—did a double take. Eyes wide open, he exclaimed, “Omigod. Playing tennis?”

  As Westrum was getting off the elevator, Kingman and I were getting in. Dave waited a beat and responded with perfect timing as the elevator doors were closing in front of him.

 
Looking straight at Westrum, he said, “Hey, got to get my exercise somehow.”

  I WAS NEVER SHY about criticizing the Giants on the air when I thought it was deserved. One night, after another dispiriting loss, I actually said, “Folks, you should come on out to Candlestick to see for yourselves how badly the Giants are playing. It’s just too hard for me to describe.”

  From time to time, my broadcast partner Art Eckman and I had to have some fun. One night late in the season, with the Giants well out of contention, and with again tens of thousands of empty seats at Candlestick Park, I was handed an attendance figure that once more was embarrassingly low. The number was around three thousand. And then I thought—why not? So I said something to the effect of “Tonight’s attendance—well, why don’t I just tell you who’s here: Jim McAlpine has driven in from Atherton. Steven and Sue Waxman and their three kids have come up from San Jose. Harvey Faloukian and his cousin have driven down from Mill Valley . . . .”

  The Rascal was back.

  Joey Amalfitano—the Giants’ third base coach at the time, and a very funny guy—had my favorite line about the team’s dismal attendance. In early 1974, Patty Hearst had been kidnapped—as, it later was discovered, by the Symbionese Liberation Army. For a number of months, no one had any idea where she was or if she was dead or alive. It was front-page news every day. So, one night in early July, I’m standing by the cage during batting practice, and Amalfitano looks toward the upper deck and says, “You know, I wonder if anyone’s checked there for Patty Hearst. Nobody’s been up there for at least five years.”

  Obviously, I wanted the Giants to do well and I wanted the team to sell tickets. But an announcer who’s too much of a homer and overlooks obvious mistakes can lose credibility. The hitch is that, even today, some owners and team executives see negativity as an act of disloyalty and are reluctant to give their broadcasters much latitude. In Cincinnati, I understood how far I could and couldn’t go, but the team was generally so good that the positives vastly outweighed the negatives. The Giants and KSFO, to their credit, rarely interfered or tried to censor me. I was fortunate in that regard because across San Francisco Bay were the Oakland Athletics, owned at that time by one Charles O. Finley. He had a different philosophy. He would have cut the microphone cord as I was talking.