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

by Al Michaels

  The next morning, I was picked up at the hotel by Gordy Coleman, the former Reds first baseman then working for the team in community affairs. The Reds hadn’t even met with me or made an offer, but Coleman was assigned to show me around town and drive me around some neighborhoods where I might want to settle if they offered me the job. Even if nothing was explicitly said, it seemed like a good sign for my prospects. We started in Kentucky directly across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati. I couldn’t say this to him, but the truth was, I had grown up in Brooklyn and then moved to Los Angeles. Now I am living in Hawaii. How could I possibly tell my family and friends: we’ve just moved to Kentucky! Our new address is in Kentucky! I couldn’t wait to get back on the other side of the river.

  At around three thirty that afternoon, I arrived at the Reds’ team offices in the Central Trust Tower. (Riverfront Stadium had opened in the middle of the 1970 season, but the team offices were still under construction.) I met with the team’s general manager, Bob Howsam; his second-in-command, Dick Wagner; and the team’s director of broadcasting. Broadcasters didn’t have agents in those days. We talked for about an hour and a half, and they offered me the job. Two weeks earlier, I was told, in essence, that I was a little too young to be the Chicago White Sox’ number-one announcer. What a difference a fortnight makes, huh?

  It turned out that Dick Wagner had called Chet Simmons, the number-two executive at NBC Sports. My father had known Chet, and Simmons had been to Hawaii on a few occasions for the Hawaiian Open golf tournament, where I’d visited with him. Chet had occasionally seen and heard my work. Simmons told Wagner that yes, he knew me, and I’d be someone they should interview.

  The offer from the Reds was a three-year deal: $24,000, $27,000, and $30,000. I was disappointed. It was 162 regular season games, all thirty spring training games, and even some duties in the off-season. It was more money than the Islanders were paying me, but less than I was making in Hawaii all put together. In Cincinnati, I wasn’t going to be supplementing my income by working at a local television station. Then again, it was the Cincinnati Reds—the big time. I told them I would give them my decision after speaking with my wife.

  A million thoughts were rocketing around in my head. One of them: as far as I could tell, the city of Cincinnati had two dominant colors on that November day, gray and brown. It had been a dank 41-degree day (82 in Honolulu that afternoon), with the streets looking like Warsaw at rush hour. I walked from the meeting back to my hotel, and was waiting for a light to change. I glanced to my right, and in a ground-floor window of the Terrace Hilton Hotel was a travel agency. And as I was standing on the corner, bundled up in my father’s scarf and overcoat well before Christmas or even Thanksgiving—what do I see in the window? A huge poster of Diamond Head. Not only that—as I looked a little closer, I could see the apartment building that Linda and I had called home.

  Marbles were shooting out of my brain.

  In no way could I pass up the Cincinnati Reds, the team that had just won the National League pennant, to go back to the Hawaii Islanders. I called Linda. Then I called my boss in Hawaii, Jack Quinn.

  “What do you think,” I asked.

  “A fabulous opportunity. You have to take it,” said Jack.

  I had dinner that night with Wagner at the Maisonette—a longtime world-renowned restaurant, may it rest in peace—and told him that I wanted the job, but that the money was an issue. We’d just had a baby. Sooner than later, we would want another. This was less than what I was making in Hawaii. He came up a little. And I accepted. (Of course!) Before we left the table, Wagner made arrangements for a press conference the next morning to announce my hiring. I would fly back to Hawaii in the early afternoon. My partner would be Joe Nuxhall, a former pitcher best known for being the youngest player in major-league history, having debuted for the Reds when he was fifteen years, ten months old in 1944. Nuxie, as everyone called him, a beloved figure in Cincinnati, had already been a part of the broadcast team for four years.

  Back at the hotel after dinner that night, I spoke to Linda for almost two hours (a very expensive call in those days—I was already eating well into the $24,000). I tried to sleep but couldn’t get a wink. I was up all night rolling around in bed, pacing by the window, thinking about this wonderful existence in Hawaii I would be leaving behind. I couldn’t back out of the Reds job. But I was so exhausted that I even had thoughts about going through with the press conference, then flying back to Hawaii and calling Howsam and Wagner in a few days to say I’d had a change of heart. It’s not like they would fly five thousand miles to reel me back in.

  I went through with the press conference in a sleepless fog. I flew back across the mainland and then half of the Pacific. My brain was still going in a thousand different directions. Could I really call back and say I had changed my mind? Or was I just a victim of Polynesian fever? I got off the plane and saw a copy of the Honolulu Star Bulletin at the airport newsstand. And there it was—me staring back at me from the front page—the headline, “Voice of Islanders Off to Cincinnati.”

  When minor league players get called up to the majors, they’re ecstatic. No one would agonize whether to stay in Triple-A. This was my call-up to the bigs. But I was all over the map. The Hawaiian Islands were an elixir. Still, in the end, there was absolutely no decision.

  It was on to Cincinnati, the Big Red Machine, and the big time.

  CHAPTER 6

  Rose, Bench, Sparky, and the Machine

  AT THE END OF January 1971, Linda, Steven, and I moved to Cincinnati and settled into a townhouse (on the Ohio side of the river, of course). On one very cold night a couple of weeks later—only two weeks removed from wearing aloha shirts in Honolulu—it was time for our fireplace to make its debut. Having spent years in Southern California, Arizona, and Hawaii, I had never lit a fire before. No problem. There were some logs already in the fireplace, and I covered them with paper and threw in a match. Five minutes later, the room was filling with smoke. Fortunately, one of our new neighbors smelled smoke, came over, assessed the situation, and said to me, “You do know you have to open the flue, right? It lets the smoke out.”

  I had no idea what a flue was.

  Acclimating to other parts of our new life went more smoothly. The Reds had an annual off-season regional tour known as the Reds’ Caravan. In mid-February, as the new voice of the Reds, I would join this off-season’s edition. Several of the team’s players lived in the area full-time, and on the Reds Caravan, which included some of those players and manager Sparky Anderson, we visited cities like Indianapolis, Lexington, Louisville, Columbus, and Huntington, West Virginia, among others over a three-day span to meet and greet fans and talk up the Big Red Machine. On that swing, I got to know the guys and began to get a sense of the fan base. I’d always loved geography and maps, and this was a brand-new part of the country to explore. Apart from the November trip when I was hired, I’d never been to that part of the country.

  I had seen Joe Nuxhall pitch when I was a kid. He was also a local legend, and couldn’t have been more gracious, introducing me around town and making sure people knew I had his stamp of approval. In Cincinnati, where the Reds are almost like a public trust, his support made a huge difference.

  Each of the three network television affiliates in Cincinnati had a local daily morning talk show. The ABC show was hosted by Phil Donahue, but he was based in Dayton. I was a guest a couple of times on the NBC show, hosted by Bob Braun. But the man who was most helpful in getting me accepted quickly was the host of the CBS show. His name was Nick Clooney. He had a young son named George. A few years ago, I was playing in a charity golf tournament in Las Vegas, and at the tournament dinner, my wife noticed that George Clooney was in the room. “You have to go and say hello to him,” Linda said excitedly. Of course she wanted to meet him—what else is new? “I can’t do that,” I told her. “I don’t know him.” A couple of minutes later, Clooney spotted me and came straight over to our table—in what I th
ought must be a case of mistaken identity. The first thing he says is “I’ve always wanted to ask you. Why did you leave Cincinnati?” George was one of those kids who went to bed with a transistor radio pressed to his ear, listening to Reds games, much like I had done with the Brooklyn Dodgers. For the next hour, we reminisced about the Big Red Machine. He couldn’t get enough stories.

  In early March 1971, it was on to spring training in Tampa. Ironically, the first game I was to call was our exhibition season opener against the White Sox in Sarasota—in other words, the team I was with, versus the team I was almost with. We had a pregame show that began a little after 1:00, followed by an opening segment for the game itself at 1:30, then a commercial break, with the game itself scheduled to start at 1:34. Except on this day, the umpires were ready to begin at 1:31. It was my first broadcast and I was nervous enough—now we were going into a commercial break with the first pitch about to be thrown. I’m in a mini-panic. What am I going to do—make my big-league debut three batters into the game?

  Fortunately, Harry Caray, who had gotten the White Sox job that six months earlier I thought would be mine, was in the adjacent booth and his station’s format was the same as ours. Harry had been around for years, and knew the umpires. So he stood up, and in that unmistakable bellowing voice of his, yelled down to the umps, “Hey, you gotta hold it up for us! You gotta hold up the game!” And they did.

  Harry had a different broadcasting philosophy than I. My approach was based on Vin Scully and Red Barber’s philosophy of neutrality—while Harry was an out-and-out homer. But I always respected him, and viewed him as an announcer who understood and fit in well with his audience, since at that time, sports were more regionalized, and what worked in New York or Los Angeles might not work as well in the Midwest—and vice versa. Harry knew his market, embraced the fans in his own inimitable way, and will always be remembered as one of the most popular announcers ever. Now, there’s a fine line between overwhelming the situation with force of personality, or being someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously and appeals to the fan base. Harry was on the right side of that line. He got it. And to this day, I think back to that spring training game and thank God Harry made sure I had a clean break out of the starting gate.

  SPRING TRAINING IS OVER and we head back to Cincinnati. Opening Day was April 5, 1971, a Monday afternoon. By tradition, because the Reds were the first professional baseball franchise, founded in 1869, they were annually accorded the honor to open the season first. The Reds had won the pennant in 1970, and lost to the Baltimore Orioles in a World Series that will always be remembered for Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson’s brilliance. Now a new season was starting against the Atlanta Braves. And who’s playing shortstop and batting eighth for the Braves? My man, Marty Perez from the Islanders. I saw him before the game and we both had the same thought. Holy mackerel—the last time we saw each other was at Termite Palace in Hawaii. Now we’re both in the big leagues.

  A lot like a player making his major-league debut, I felt a mix of excitement and nervousness and Oh-My-God-Look-Where-I-Am awe. Riverfront Stadium was packed. Gary Nolan was the Reds’ starting pitcher, and the first batter to come to the plate was Sonny Jackson, who had been Joe Morgan’s double-play partner with the Astros for a number of years. More on Morgan shortly. Jackson hits the first pitch of the game on the ground well to the right of second baseman Tommy Helms, who makes a backhanded stop and throws Jackson out in a bang-bang play. I say, “One pitch, one great play, one out.” The second batter was Ralph Garr, who would win a batting title two years later. And the third batter: Henry Aaron. It was a one-two-three inning. Then the Reds come up, and the leadoff hitter is Pete Rose. So my major-league broadcasting career starts with the longtime home run leader and the to-this-day major-league hit king among the first four batters. And Tony Perez, Johnny Bench, and Orlando Cepeda were in the game as well. And Phil Niekro started for the Braves. Five Hall of Famers—plus Pete Rose.

  It was the first full season of the new ballpark in downtown Cincinnati, Riverfront Stadium. Cincinnati was beginning to feel like home. In the birthplace of baseball’s first professional team, you could feel the tradition of the sport woven throughout the fabric of the city. The fan base was special. And while I know the Internet and ESPN can be valuable, in the days before their existence getting information was a much different exercise. I’d comb over box scores in the newspapers and read everything I could—but mostly, the way to get information was to build relationships with players, managers, coaches, and executives.

  It was easy to become close to Sparky Anderson. Each day before every spring training and regular season game, we would tape a ten-minute pregame show called The Main Spark. And those ten minutes would often lead to anywhere from another five to thirty minutes where I had a private audience with the man who was such a great manager that he’d be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000. I was receiving a Ph.D. in baseball. I was also developing close relationships with the coaches, including Alex Grammas, George Scherger, Larry Shepard, and the hitting coach, Ted Kluszewski. I remembered watching this huge first baseman, Big Klu, playing for the Reds when I was seven or eight. Now I’m with him nearly every day for six months. And you know what he was? A big, giant teddy bear.

  I also became good friends with a number of the players. Most of them were around my age. First baseman Lee May was the player who lived nearest to me, and I would often drive with him to the ballpark. Johnny Bench became a good pal. So did Tommy Helms, Bernie Carbo, Gary Nolan, Tony Perez, and a utility infielder by the name of Jimmy Stewart who had been with the Hawaii Islanders in 1968.

  And I became fast friends with Pete Rose. When spring training opened in 1971, Pete didn’t report on time. Why? He was holding out. The team was offering him $105,000 and he wanted $110,000. They eventually settled on $107,500, which sounds like a joke now. There are players today—a lot of whom couldn’t carry Rose’s luggage—who make fifty times that.

  Pete and I hit it off right away. After he’d reported for camp, the Reds had an off day, but Pete being Pete, he wanted to go out to the facility to take extra batting practice in the morning. Then, Pete Rose being Pete Rose, he had arranged that we would make the thirty-minute drive over to what was then Florida Downs (now called Tampa Bay Downs), near Clearwater, for a day of thoroughbred racing. Bob Hertzel, the Reds beat writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, came with us.

  When the races concluded in late afternoon, we got back into the car and drove the twenty-five minutes to Derby Lane in St. Petersburg for a full card of greyhound racing. (The Cardinals and the Mets both trained at the same facility in St. Pete, and the Phillies were up the road in Clearwater, so the place was often filled with major-league ballplayers, coaches, front office people, and broadcasters on any given night.) After the last race, we drove back across the Gandy Bridge to Tampa. At the other end of the bridge was a jai alai fronton. The fronton featured a late daily double. So where do you think we ended up? We were pulling off a pari-mutuel trifecta.

  By the way, as a newspaper guy, Hertzel wasn’t exactly flush with cash. In fact, he had only $7 in his pocket when we left the greyhound track. At the jai alai fronton, he then had the option of boxing an exacta for $6—giving him three separate combinations—or getting a cocktail for $1.75 and then splitting the box by picking only two combinations. He opted for the cocktail and the split box. And you guessed it—the third combination came in.

  Rose had had a big day and night and won around a thousand bucks. Hertzel got dropped off back at the hotel with $1.25.

  The Reds lost their first four games in 1971, and never made it above .500 the entire season. It was the one bad year in the Big Red Machine’s run. But I was having the time of my life. Driving to work for home games, I’d come around the last bend of Columbia Parkway—an insanely dangerous road, which had been a WPA project, and ran parallel to the Ohio River leading into downtown Cincinnati—and see Riverfront Stadium. It was a beautiful sight—and a
daily reminder that I was in the big time. Then the Reds would go on the road, and I’d get to explore all of these great American cities. One night I could be looking out at Lake Michigan in Chicago. The next day, I would be standing next to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. A week later, I’d be gazing at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

  A week and a half into the season, we flew to Montreal for a weekend series against the Expos. I had never been to Canada before. As it turned out, the Boston Bruins were in town to meet the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Game 6 was scheduled for that Friday night while the Reds would be playing the Expos at Jarry Park. When I woke up that morning, it was snowing. The Expos called that night’s game off by noon, which meant if I could somehow get a ticket, I could go to the hockey game. Pete Rose loves all sports, but had never been to a hockey game. I saw him in the lobby around noon and said, “This is something you have to see.”

  A couple of other players also wanted to go, including Johnny Bench, and somehow, someway—I don’t remember how—we wound up getting six or seven single tickets that were scattered around the Forum. Montreal had brought up a goalie at the end of the regular season, a rookie by the name of Ken Dryden. Dryden had gone to Cornell, where he’d led the team to a national championship. Now he’d been called up for the last six regular season games, had won the starting job for the playoffs, and had become an overnight sensation. And there I was, in the balcony at the Montreal Forum behind one of the nets, staring down at this six-foot, four-inch goalie with his chin on the knob of his stick, in the middle of the Stanley Cup playoffs. What could the odds have been that nine years later in Lake Placid, New York, that same Ken Dryden and I would wind up partners on a broadcast that would be the most impactful and exhilarating of my career?