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

by Al Michaels

  But talk about dummies. How about my buddies and me drafting her fourth in a class of fifteen? Can you imagine drafting Tom Brady in the sixth round? Oh wait . . .

  IN 2001, I WAS in Miami doing a Monday Night Football game, Jimmy Johnson was in Key West, and we were doing what’s known in the TV business as a two-way—a satellite interview. This was eight seasons after Johnson had led the Dallas Cowboys to back-to-back Super Bowl titles in the nineties, and then abruptly left the team after clashing with the team’s owner, Jerry Jones. In the months before our interview, a number of people were speculating that Jerry had had some plastic surgery. Meanwhile, the Cowboys were 4-8 and in last place in their division. And as we discussed his old team’s travails, Jimmy couldn’t help himself.

  “If Michael Jackson—I mean, Jerry Jones—would have kept Troy Aikman, they’d be in first place,” he said with an impish gleam.

  Then, as soon as we got to the commercial, I could hear the guys in the truck still laughing.

  The next day, I called Jimmy to thank him for doing the interview and told him I couldn’t believe what he’d said.

  “You know what,” he said. “You gotta have a little rascal in ya.”

  Rascal? Absolutely.

  When I was a kid, my mom was the first to cultivate my mischievous side. Then came Arizona State. I took my broadcasting training seriously, but I was in college. My inner rascal had to find its way out whenever it could.

  I was in the Sigma Nu fraternity, where I met a guy named George Allen (no relation to the NFL coach), who became a good friend. Like me, George was a city kid—he was from New York. Like me, George enjoyed pranks. And together in what in our minds was then a small, Podunk town, we were always on the lookout for a prank.

  At the time, Phoenix had no major sports teams, so any pro event felt like a big deal. One night, the just-opened Veterans Memorial Coliseum booked an exhibition minor-league hockey game between Tulsa and Oklahoma City—the first hockey game ever played in the new building. We wanted to go, but of course had to figure out a way to get in for free.

  Our solution? A few hours before the game, George and I called the box office and made up a name, pretending to be a Tulsa player with a far-fetched story. “Hey, I missed the original flight to Phoenix and my wife just gave birth and everything got messed up. Can you leave me free tickets for two close relatives.” Two hours later, we showed up at the box office just before the game and—what do you know?—two tickets were waiting. Eighth row, center ice.

  On another night we were bored and decided to see if we could put one over on the sports desk at the Phoenix newspaper, the Arizona Republic. So we created a high school baseball player: Clint Romas from Fredonia, Arizona—and pretended to be the stringer calling in with the line score from this tiny town just north of the Grand Canyon with a population of about a thousand. “Fredonia beats so-and-so, the score was four to nothing, and Clint Romas not only pitched a two-hit shutout—he hit two home runs!”

  Well, we picked up the paper the next day and there it was—the line score. We were hysterical—and a few days later, we called back. “Hey, it’s the Fredonia stringer again. Remember Clint Romas?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Listen to what this kid did today: he played the outfield—the coach wanted him to rest his arm before his next pitching start—and he hit four home runs!”

  Sure enough, the newspaper arrived the next day, and there it was again.

  A few more days later, we called in again, upping the ante. “You’re not going to believe this, but Romas pitched a perfect game, struck out twenty in a seven-inning game, and hit five home runs!”

  The next morning, we couldn’t wait for the paper to be tossed into the fraternity house driveway, so we could see if we had pulled it off again. We had. The whole fraternity house exploded in laughter.

  Now we had to go for the grand slam. We came up with a new idea that included Danny Murtaugh, who had managed the Pittsburgh Pirates to the World Series title in 1960, and then had left the dugout for health reasons, and had become the Pirates’ super-scout.

  “Clint Romas pitched another perfect game, struck out every batter, and hit six home runs. And—get this—Danny Murtaugh flew in from Pittsburgh and offered Clint a hundred-thousand-dollar contract right after he stepped off the mound!”

  The whole fraternity house couldn’t wait for the paper to come the next day. But as we thumbed through the sports section, there was nothing in there about our legend.

  The next week, a local columnist, Dave Hicks, wrote about how his paper had been duped, and that there really was no high school baseball star named Clint Romas. But the prank had gotten solid mileage—and we were never fingered as the perpetrators.

  In 2002, I got invited back to Arizona State to receive the Cronkite Award from the newly named Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Walter Cronkite himself—the most respected figure in the history of television journalism—was there to present the award to me in person, and in my speech, I had to ask him if he was sure he had the right guy.

  You know, the guy who spent a month of school calling in stories to the local paper about the great Clint Romas.

  ONE OTHER THING ABOUT high school and college. I met Linda Stamaton in the tenth grade when we were in the same large circle of friends at Hamilton High in Los Angeles. We were in these social clubs that interacted a lot—hers was called the Carousels and mine was the Imperials. My house at that time was like a neighborhood clubhouse—my mom loved hosting and entertaining—so Linda was at my house with dozens of other kids all the time. In a school that was probably 90 percent Jewish, she was Greek Orthodox—one of the few shiksas.

  She wound up going to what’s now California State University, Northridge, then known as San Fernando Valley State University, and we stayed in touch. Occasionally, during the school year, I would fly home for a weekend, and since Linda was going to school in Los Angeles, we would get together. In my junior year I took her to a Los Angeles Blades Western Hockey League game at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. As I took her home that night and went to say good-bye, suddenly it went from two friends who had regularly hugged good night to . . . whoa! We started dating and pretty soon, it was clear it was serious.

  But there was a problem. Linda’s father was a prominent figure in the Greek community of Los Angeles, a good-looking guy, successful in business with a lot of social panache. He fashioned himself a Zorba the Greek type—and he had designs of his daughter marrying a descendant of Socrates. Or Aristotle. Or at least Aristotle Onassis. As we got serious, this became an issue. It wasn’t so much that I was Jewish. It was that I wasn’t the purebred Greek he wanted.

  But in the summer of 1965, before our senior year, Linda and I decided we were going to get married. Of course, we had to tell her parents. Her mother liked me, but the whole key was to find a way to win over her father. Finally, I gathered the courage to approach him and lay out my intentions. My heart was beating like a jackhammer as I—aspiring broadcaster—got right to the point. “Mr. Stamaton, Linda and I are going to get married—with or without your blessing—and we both fervently hope that it’s with.”

  He was speechless, and didn’t react or respond immediately. If it was a cartoon, and you’d put a caption next to his image, it would have read “Holy $%#.” Then finally he said to me—How do you expect to take care of my daughter?

  I told him that my goal, and my dream, was to become a sports announcer. Mr. Stamaton knew so little about sports that his perception of a sports announcer was the guy who tells the fans on the way out of the park, “Thank you for coming, and drive carefully on your way home. Good night.” But when I explained the difference between a public address announcer and what I wanted to do—broadcast games on radio and television—I think he started to understand. Ultimately, he realized how serious we were, and that this was really going to happen. Within a few weeks he gradually and wholeheartedly embraced me and set his sights on thr
owing a wedding the Greek community of Los Angeles would always remember. He succeeded.

  He became a huge sports fan, and we wound up having a wonderful relationship until his death in 2002.

  Linda is still the love of my life. How’s that for a way to get there.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cut by the Lakers

  I GRADUATED FROM ARIZONA STATE in 1966 with a degree in radio and television, a minor in journalism, and somewhere in the range of two hundred live baseball, football, and basketball broadcasts on my résumé. I was ready to break into the business. All I needed was a shot. Looking back now, I was naïve, but that was valuable. At that age, naïveté can be a good thing. Everything is still possible.

  The fact was, teams weren’t exactly eager to hire a twenty-one-year-old kid right out of college. I had written letters to every franchise in Major League Baseball. Every NBA franchise, too. No responses. Teams in those days had flagship radio stations, but there was no real television presence—no cable, certainly no regional networks. Which meant there was usually just only two play-by-play jobs per team. And not a lot of “churn,” as we say today. Once you got one of these jobs, you’d normally hang on to it for years. All I could do was go to the mailbox every afternoon and hope that I’d hit the lottery.

  Right around graduation, the city of Phoenix was awarded an NBA team that would start play in 1968. The new team had hired a general manager by the name of Jerry Colangelo, a bright young Chicago Bulls executive. Perfect opportunity, I thought—I knew the Phoenix market, and maybe I could connect with this GM who wasn’t much older than I was. I made an appointment to meet with Colangelo. I drove back to Phoenix from Los Angeles to interview with him at his office, which was actually a trailer outside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Jerry couldn’t have been nicer, or more encouraging—we still run into each other to this day, and reminisce about that meeting. But in 1968, he didn’t have that job for me. The new team needed an established voice, someone known in the area.

  Ironically, the announcer Colangelo hired was also an Arizona State–affiliated broadcaster who called ASU games on local radio. He’d often be in an adjacent booth—me broadcasting to a seven-block radius, him to most of the rest of the state of Arizona. His name—Al McCoy. Al turned eighty in the spring of 2013, and as I write this, he’s still calling the Suns games on KTAR. Colangelo always had a great eye for talent on and off the court.

  Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, I needed a job. When I was home from college a couple of summers, I’d worked as an office boy for a Hollywood television production company. And before I left to go back for my senior year, I had to train a new office boy. He’d go on to become one of the most successful writer/producers in television history, with shows like The Rockford Files and The A-Team on his résumé. But back then, I was just teaching him how to answer phones. His name was Stephen Cannell.

  Anyway, at that job, working at a game show called Seven Keys, I met someone who knew someone who knew somebody who knew Chuck Barris. Chuck had started out in the music side of the TV business, working on American Bandstand with Dick Clark. He even wrote a hit song called “Palisades Park.” Eventually he’d move into game shows and start his own company to produce them. His first show was a hit—The Dating Game. And he offered me a full-time job in the summer of 1966, shortly after my graduation, to help procure potential contestants. The salary: ninety-five dollars a week.

  I was getting married to Linda within three months, and in fact, Chuck would wind up hiring Linda shortly thereafter to be an assistant prize coordinator. But there I was in a small room in an office just two blocks south of Sunset on Vine Street in Hollywood, with about five other production assistants, basically cold-calling women—and men—and then interviewing them on the phone, seeing if they wanted to be considered as contestants. I’d also ask if they had friends who might be interested—that’s how we got the call lists. And this was in a world of rotary-dial phones and no answering machines. For twelve hours a day, I called strangers and hoped they’d pick up.

  If you’ve seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or know anything about Chuck, you know he’s a character. As a boss, he was also a great motivator. After I was in the office for all of four days, he came in and said with all the enthusiasm on the planet, “You’re doing an incredible job! I’m giving you a raise to a hundred bucks!”

  A week later, “Al, you’re doing a fantastic job! I’m bumping you up to $105 a week.” I went back to work feeling like a million bucks.

  Then another week went by. “Just fabulous work you’re doing. I’m giving you another raise to $110.”

  Within a few months, my starting salary almost doubled, getting up to something like $160. Which was terrific, except for one thing: that’s probably what I should have been making from the start. Chuck was a master psychologist.

  I started working at The Dating Game in late June, and got married on Saturday, August 27, 1966. As I’ve said, the ceremony was beautiful, and the guests had a great time. Chuck was invited, and in the receiving line he sidled up to me. I figured he was going to congratulate me, or maybe offer another raise. Instead he leaned in and said, “So, when are you coming back from your honeymoon?”

  “Thursday, Chuck.”

  He paused. “Are you back in town Thursday—or back to work Thursday?”

  “Yes, Chuck, I’ll be in the office Thursday.”

  BEFORE THE 1966 FOOTBALL season, after years of competition, the NFL and AFL reached an agreement to merge. The complete merger wouldn’t take place until 1970, but in the meantime, the champions of each league would meet in a title game at the end of every season. As a big AFL fan, I couldn’t wait.

  My brother and I had been following the renegade league since its founding in 1960, and were planning to go to the inaugural championship game at the Los Angeles Coliseum in January 1967. My dad wound up with two fifty-yard-line tickets for us. Tremendous.

  The tickets read “AFL-NFL World Championship Game”—the term Super Bowl had been tossed around by football executives, but not officially coined yet. The Coliseum held nearly 100,000 people—but on that day, there were more than 30,000 empty seats. And with the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs matching up in Los Angeles, for the most part the crowd consisted of mainly neutral observers, and was relatively absent of passion. Today at NFL games, you might have catering by Bobby Flay or Wolfgang Puck. But that afternoon, it was just your basic hot dogs and Cokes at the concession stands.

  The game was televised on two networks: CBS, which held the NFL rights, and NBC, which had the AFL package. Because a lot of the details of the game hadn’t been worked out until late in the season, rather than negotiate the leagues basically said, “Here, you both televise it.” CBS had Ray Scott, Jack Whitaker, and Frank Gifford in their booth, while NBC had Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman. The cost of a thirty-second commercial on either network? Forty-two thousand dollars.

  Meanwhile, with regard to the competition, a lot of people still considered the AFL a minor league. And the Chiefs certainly weren’t intimidating to the Packers, who had Bart Starr at quarterback and Vince Lombardi roaming the sidelines. The first half was competitive, though. The Packers led only 14–10 at halftime, and I remember talking to another Chiefs fan and speculating that Kansas City had a chance to win this thing after all. So much for that. Green Bay outscored KC 21–0 in the second half, and won the game, 35–10.

  No one then had any inkling that the Super Bowl would grow to become an unofficial national holiday. That the thirty-second commercial spot that cost $42,000 in 1967 would balloon to $4 million by 2014. More people now watch the game than vote for president. Ironically, for as wildly as the NFL has grown, Los Angeles—with its huge population and good weather and all those ties to the media and entertainment communities—doesn’t have an NFL team. The reason in a nutshell: no first-rate football stadium.

  There wasn’t much traffic as David and I drove out of the stadium that day. And how in the wor
ld could I have possibly imagined that forty-eight years later, in February 2015, I’d be getting ready to call my ninth Super Bowl on national television.

  WHILE WORKING FOR CHUCK Barris, I continued my search for a sports broadcasting job. I wrote to dozen of team owners, general managers, and individual announcers—some of whom, like Ernie Harwell in Detroit, actually took the time to write me encouraging and gracious letters in response. The advice was generally to just keep knocking on those doors. And a few months later, in the summer of 1967, I thought I’d gotten my big break.

  I knew someone who knew someone at California Sports Inc., the company that had purchased the Los Angeles Lakers. The company was building a state-of-the-art arena in suburban Inglewood, which would be called the Forum, and the Lakers would move there from the Los Angeles Sports Arena by the end of 1967. In addition, the National Hockey League was expanding from six teams to twelve, with one of the new franchises awarded to Los Angeles. CSI owned that team as well, and named them the Los Angeles Kings. I interviewed for a job in the public relations department, which would at least give me a small toehold inside the company, and who knows what could happen from there.

  Well, I got the job, and let people inside the company know that I was dying to get into broadcasting. The Kings had hired a play-by-play announcer but were still looking for a color man. Back then, a color announcer was a number-two voice doing minimal analysis, bearing very little semblance to the role that today’s analysts typically fill. They had hired a young announcer, Ken McDonald, as their number-one announcer—but the president of CSI, one Jack Kent Cooke, who took the term bombastic megalomaniac to new levels, decided that Ken McDonald wasn’t a distinct enough name. Cooke wanted everyone to have a nickname, and he asked McDonald if he had one. McDonald told his new boss they used to call him Jiggs when he was younger. And that was the start of Jiggs McDonald’s forty-year Hall of Fame career calling games for the Kings, Flames, Islanders, Olympics, and more.