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

by Al Michaels

  Meanwhile, somewhere in the south that day, ABC’s “A” game was being produced by Chuck Howard, with Keith Jackson doing the play-by-play. Chuck oversaw all of the network football coverage. About a half hour after our game was restarted, during a commercial break, my producer, Ken Wolfe, told me that Chuck had heard that the referee had died.

  “How does Chuck know that?” I asked.

  Apparently someone on Chuck’s crew had spoken to someone at the hospital.

  “We can’t report that.”

  Wolfe was in total agreement. How would we know whether this was fact or rumor? But even more important, what if McVay had died? Do we know if anyone had contacted his wife and family or next of kin? We certainly didn’t. And we knew that he was from Columbus, Ohio, and that this regional telecast would be on the air in his hometown.

  Howard told Wolfe that he was instructing Keith Jackson to announce it on their game, which was airing in the South. And that we should do it as well. We refused. Our feeling was, who gives a damn about where an audience hears something first? Here was a man who might have died—or might not have—but there was nothing more important than absolute verification and direct notification of his family and certainly not from television.

  It turned out that Richard McVay did die at the hospital. The news would be announced soon enough but certainly not by our crew until we were absolutely certain his family had been informed.

  Again, I go back to the “you heard or read it here first” nonsense. The audience and readership doesn’t care. It’s nothing but a “look at me, look at me” vanity play on the part of broadcasters and newspapers.

  That game marked the second time in 1982 I had gone to the Midwest and ended up reporting on a tragedy. In mid-May I’d gone to Indianapolis to cover the time trials for the upcoming Indianapolis 500. My broadcast partners were Jackie Stewart, the legendary Formula One champion; Sam Posey, a very accomplished racer himself; and Chris Economaki, who edited a popular racing newspaper, and had for years been covering the scene in the pits for ABC.

  Among those trying to qualify that afternoon was Gordon Smiley, who was thirty-six years old and had finished 25th and 22nd in the “500” in appearances over the prior two years. Qualifying consists of running four laps by yourself around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at speeds well in excess of 200 miles per hour.

  Smiley went out to warm up and on his second warm-up lap, as he exited the long back straightaway and entered the third turn, his car began to oversteer. In a flash, a gradual left-hand turn became a violent right-hand turn, which sent him into the outside wall nose-first at nearly 200 mph.

  The car virtually disintegrated and the fuel tank exploded. All you could do was say a prayer.

  At that moment, we weren’t on the air live. We were taping some of the earlier qualifying runs and we were still an hour or so away from our live show. Our crew then scrambled to build a package about a man who had lost his life, and, among other things, choose which portions of the footage needed to be edited out because they were simply too graphic. I opened the broadcast, reported what had happened, and then brought in Stewart and Posey for their thoughts. Then we went to the pits. Chris Economaki interviewed one of Smiley’s crew members. His whole crew was in shock. Frankly, we all were. It was a horrible thing to witness. It took me several days to get some of the images out of my brain. Then it was time to resume our coverage of the qualifying, not that anyone could concentrate.

  But I’ll never forget Jackie Stewart’s description. He said, “This is like an aircraft accident.” It was.

  Sports are mostly a lot of fun and a diversion, but tragedy occasionally intrudes. And those moments present a large challenge for announcers and production crews. They’re almost always completely unexpected and there’s no “how-to” guide. I’ve found that the best way to handle these moments is to let my heart lead me. You’re looking at a man who may be dying? It’s not a time for acting. Be natural. If you express emotion, or trip on your words a bit, the viewers will understand. And never speculate. Just tell the viewer what you know, not what you think.

  And then, if and when the action eventually resumes, echo the mood in the play-by-play. Don’t get excited about too much. Realize that the relevance of anything that subsequently takes place is pretty minimal. Just go on and get through it.

  Oh, and something to always avoid—the phrase “This puts everything into perspective.” I detest that cliché. Everything—and certainly sports—should always be kept in perspective. We don’t need a tragedy or a disaster to remind us.

  CHAPTER 11

  The One and Only

  THE FIRST TIME I met Howard Cosell, I wound up replacing him. It was in San Antonio in March 1977, at an event called the United States Boxing Championships. ABC had made a deal with promoter Don King and Ring magazine to stage a tournament to determine the best American fighter in each weight division. But in fact, after the tournament had gotten under way, signs of improprieties and shady dealings were emerging. (In a Don King enterprise? Really?) Sooner than later, it would be determined—in part thanks to the investigative work of Alex Wallau, an ABC executive who would become my best friend not long after, and to this day still is—that King was using the tournament, and the money and exposure coming from it, to sign the best fighters to exclusive contracts. Furthermore, Ring magazine was falsifying records and inflating rankings to get a number of fighters into the tournament for King. Word was circulating that the United States Congress (!) was about to launch its own investigation. The night before the next installment of the event in San Antonio, no one was sure of anything, but ABC was leaning toward keeping its best-known boxing commentator—a man who prided himself on a scrupulous set of morals when it came to sports—off the coverage. That announcer, of course, was one Howard Cosell. And so I was flown in at the last moment as the potential replacement. Howard was already in San Antonio.

  When I arrived in Texas that evening, I had dinner with Howard and the production crew. It wasn’t my first experience in boxing—back in Hawaii, I had announced some small cards put on by a local promoter with the unforgettable name of Sam Ichinose (pronounced “itchy-NOSE-ee”), as well as some cards promoted by Harry Kabakoff, a real showman from the mainland. To help promote one of those shows, Kabakoff suggested to me a week before the event that I get into the ring to spar with Jesus Pimentel, the Mexican bantamweight who once fought for a world title. The sparring session was going to be part of a goofy feature piece for my sports report on the six o’clock news. So there I was, climbing into the ring, ready to spar a couple of rounds. At the time, in my mid-twenties, I felt I was in really good shape. This would be fun. Then, after forty-five seconds of dancing with Pimentel, giving and taking some light, gentle jabs, my tongue was hanging out of my mouth, and I was completely out of breath. It became my own version of “No Mas.”

  Years later, at this dinner in San Antonio, Howard Cosell was very friendly. I was the brand-new kid on the block and it was readily apparent that he’d had enough of his other ABC colleagues. With me, though, there hadn’t been time for familiarity to breed contempt. Sure enough, the next day, it was decided by the ABC brass that Howard should be kept off the telecast—things were getting too dicey with Congress at bay—and thus, I would be ringside calling the action.

  Howard had left a law career in the 1950s to get into broadcasting, initially on ABC radio. Later, he’d risen to fame on Wide World of Sports with his frequent interviews with Muhammad Ali. But it was on Monday Night Football where he became a full-fledged megacelebrity, possessing a much larger profile than many of the athletes he covered. And then working with him from 1977 through 1985, I learned what a charming, brilliant, bitter, confounding, complex, and maddening figure he could be—sometimes, it seemed, all at once.

  Howard never held most of his colleagues in high regard. He would always mock Jim McKay. When the Munich massacre began unfolding at the 1972 Olympic Games, with the hostage-taking of the Israe
li contingent of coaches and athletes, Roone Arledge selected McKay for the anchor seat for ABC’s coverage. Cosell always deeply resented that he wasn’t the chosen one, and he never let it go. He’d refer to McKay behind his back as “the diminutive one” and “the one who shouldn’t have been there.” McKay, meanwhile, would wind up winning an Emmy—for news!

  Howard thought that Keith Jackson was bombastic, an announcer of little substance whose legacy was nothing more than terms like “big uglies in the trenches.” He had little regard for Chris Schenkel, as fine as gentleman as you could meet. And he basically loathed his longtime Monday Night Football partner Frank Gifford. “The human mannequin” was one Cosell description of Frank. He resented everything about him, especially his close friendship with the boss. “Roone’s bobo,” he’d call Gifford.

  While Howard spent a good deal of time excoriating the other ABC announcers, he was okay with me at the time. I think he recognized the Rascal. He saw that I was willing to question authority, and that I wasn’t reluctant to offer opinions, even if they sometimes went against the company line. We would wind up having some great times together. I enjoyed his company for the most part, especially in the earlier years. I liked his wife, Emmy. And while Howard irritated plenty of broadcast partners by smoking cigars in the booth, it never bothered me—and eventually I finally figured out why. When my father had taken me to Ebbets Field and Madison Square Garden decades earlier, the air had always been filled with cigar smoke. So that smell took my brain back to my childhood.

  When Cosell was on the road, he usually brought only one jacket with him: the Tweety Bird yellow blazer that ABC Sports inexplicably decided would be the signature piece of our on-air wardrobe. And he’d wear it everywhere. Here was one of the most recognizable men in America at the time, going around town with a blazer you could see from the next state over. He’d complain that he couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized but, really, that was the way he wanted it.

  Cosell and I worked together on a number of Monday Night Baseball games in the late seventies, and then our pairing became more regular in 1981. This was the year that the players went on strike in the middle of the season. Days before the work stoppage, we were in Kansas City, where the Yankees would be playing a Monday night against the Royals. Howard and I both arrived at the Alameda Plaza Hotel on Sunday afternoon. The phone rang in my room, and I heard that familiar, unmistakable voice.

  “Alfalfa. What are you doing?”

  Of course it was Howard calling, using the nickname that Bob Uecker had originally conferred on me. Howard had stolen the moniker and began to believe that he had copyrighted it.

  “Nothing,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “DINN-uh,” he growled. “Let’s go to the Savoy Grill for DINN-uh.”

  And so a half hour later, we were walking into the Savoy Grill—Howard wearing that hideous yellow jacket, as usual. And par for the course, Howard consumed at least four or five glasses of vodka on the rocks before the food ever came. Howard could hold his liquor very well, but by the end of dinner, he’d had an aquarium’s worth.

  In those years, the so-called golden years of ABC Sports, ground travel was exclusively by limousine. And in Kansas City, the one company that ABC had utilized for years not only had basic limos, but they were stark white and twice the average size. We also had a regular driver in Kansas City—a woman in her mid-fifties named Peggy, who had been driving ABC personnel for years.

  Howard and I finished dinner at around 8:45, and as we walked outside the Savoy, it was still twilight. We got into the backseat as Peggy began to drive us back to the hotel through local surface streets. The route took us through a gritty, inner-city section of Kansas City, and soon we came to a traffic light. On the sidewalk to our left, we saw two kids, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, in the middle of a serious fistfight, surrounded by a knot of other teenagers egging them on.

  Suddenly, Howard opened his door and began to get out of the limo. Peggy screamed, “Mr. Cosell! Mr. Cosell! No!” I tried to grab him. It was too late. He was out of the car and onto the sidewalk.

  At this point in my life, I have a wife, an eleven-year-old son, and a seven-year-old daughter. Worst-case scenarios start racing through my mind. If they jump him, am I really going to fight a pack of teenagers to stick up for Howard Cosell? Do I tell Peggy to drive away as fast as she can? There are no cell phones in 1981—you can’t call a cop.

  So now, Howard is standing on the corner—signature toupee on his head, cigar dangling from his mouth, ridiculous yellow blazer making him impossible not to notice. Suddenly the fight stops. The kids are looking at him, dumbfounded—each wearing this look of suspended animation, eyes and mouths wide open. They’re incredulous. It’s as if everyone, in unison, is saying, “WHAT THE #%$*^&!”

  Howard certainly had their attention. And then, he began to speak. Feel free to do your own imitation of his voice here in your head. “Now LISTEN. It’s quite apparent to this TRAINED observer that the young southpaw does NOT have a jab REQUISITE for the continuation of this fray. Furthermore, his opponent is a man of INFERIOR and DIMINISHING skills. This confrontation is halted POSTHASTE!”

  Total silence followed. Then came the moment of truth. “Howard Cosell? Howard Cosell!” one kid said. An instant later, they were all dancing around him like he was a maypole. Somehow, a pen got produced and the next thing you know, Howard was signing autographs and patting the kids on their heads.

  Real life had been officially suspended.

  Howard then got back into the limo, closed the door, and leaned back against the headrest with total satisfaction. Peggy was still in a state halfway between shock and disbelief. I was just happy to be alive.

  What Peggy and I had just borne witness to was so insanely surreal that we were rendered temporarily speechless.

  Peggy then drove off, and about a block down the street, she looked back at Howard through the rearview mirror.

  “Mr. Cosell,” she said. “Excuse me, but I have to tell you something. I have been driving for twenty-five years. I thought I had seen everything! I have never seen anything like that.”

  Howard took a long, deep drag on his cigar. He looked straight ahead.

  “Pegaroo,” he said. “Just remember one thing. I know who I am.”

  OFTEN WHEN HOWARD AND I worked baseball together, we were joined in the booth by Bob Uecker. The concept was that Uecker was supposed to play the role of Don Meredith for the Monday Night Baseball telecasts. Johnny Carson, who had brought Uecker on as a guest close to a hundred times, once said that Bob might just be the single funniest man ever. He’s certainly in the argument. To this day, almost anything out of Bob Uecker’s mouth makes you belly-laugh.

  Uecker has always had a collection of great lines, a lot them revolving around how inept a player Bob was during his career in the sixties. (“I signed with the Milwaukee Brewers for $3,000. That bothered my dad at the time because he didn’t have that kind of money.” Or, “I hit a grand slam off Ron Herbel and when his manager, Herman Franks, came out to get him, he brought Herbel’s suitcase.”) And Uecker’s always been quick with a rejoinder. That came in particularly handy when he was in the booth with Cosell.

  Howard’s knowledge of baseball could probably best be described as shallow. He thought he knew everything about the game, but he really knew very little. If Cosell was in the booth for a Monday night Yankee game in May, with the opposing team leading 8–1 in the third inning, he might be expected to say that the Yanks should bring in Goose Gossage to put out the fire. There was little use explaining to Howard that, no, in the third inning, with the Yankees trailing by seven, it would border on insanity to call on their best reliever, a pitcher who would end up in the Hall of Fame. To Howard, the conventional analyst was just another dumb jock. He was Howard Cosell! He knew better.

  In the early eighties, the three of us were doing a game at the Astrodome in Houston. At one point, late in the game, Cosell, as he was wont to do, c
alled for a bunt, even though it was a situation in which no one would ever bunt. Uecker wanted to mildly chide Howard, but knew he had to be careful. “Well, Howard, I’m not really sure you want to bunt here,” Uecker said gently. And he went on to explain why.

  Howard responded (and again, try to hear how Howard would articulate this in your brain), “Uecky, I get your point. But you don’t have to be so truculent. You do know what truculent means, don’t you?”

  Uecker didn’t miss a beat. “Of course, Howard. If you had a truck and I borrowed it, it would be a truck-u-lent.”

  Uecker didn’t need a Howard setup to come up with the perfect line. He could also use me as his straight man. Another time, we were talking about Charlie Finley, the eccentric owner of the Oakland A’s, and his proposal to manufacture all baseballs the same yellowish orange color as tennis balls. The idea was that the brighter baseballs would be easier for the fans to follow.

  “It’ll never work,” Bob said flatly.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because,” he said in total deadpan, “they could never find enough diseased horses.”

  NOW IT’S THE LAST weekend of the 1982 baseball season. Three teams were still in contention to win the National League West and make the playoffs: the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Braves. Atlanta held the trump card—while the Dodgers were playing the Giants in San Francisco, the outcome wouldn’t matter if the Braves beat the Padres in San Diego—which they did. So Atlanta (managed by Joe Torre) won the division and advanced.

  Cosell and I were set to work the National League Championship Series that year, and the third spot in the booth was still to be determined. Roone Arledge was always very big on bringing in someone of the moment, someone topical, someone in the news. So that Sunday night, the call went out from ABC to Tommy Lasorda. Lasorda had come a long way since his days as the manager of the Spokane Indians in the Pacific Coast League—he’d won three pennants with the Dodgers, and a World Series title the previous season. But now, with his club eliminated from the playoffs, would he be interested in a brief sojourn into broadcasting? The answer was yes.