You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television by Al Michaels & L. Jon Wertheim

Author:Al Michaels & L. Jon Wertheim [Michaels, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062314987
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

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.

Since he’d “discovered” me in Hawaii, Tommy and I had crossed paths countless times over my years with the Reds, the Giants, and ABC. Now we’re together in St. Louis for the National League playoffs. It’s the Cardinals versus the Braves. It’s baseball in October. Beautiful. Except that Tommy was very nervous. Frankly, he looked petrified. As we rehearsed the opening segment, I had to keep telling him, “Tommy, it’ll be okay, you’ll be fine.”

Cosell opened up the telecast. Then he brought me in. And then I brought Tommy in. We talked with him about the two teams. The Cardinals do this, the Braves do that. Here are their strengths and weaknesses. So far, so good. Then Cosell is ready to take us to a commercial. But before he does—and I’m going to paraphrase here, but not by much—Howard says, “Okay, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch are the children of the late Cardinals third baseman, Kenny Boyer, who succumbed a fortnight ago, at the age of fifty-one, to the ravages of lung cancer. Kenny Boyer fought that insidious disease tooth and nail to the very end. He went to Mexico for laetrile treatments and absorbed more radiation than anyone thought could be humanly possible.

“So when you look at the long and storied history of the St. Louis Cardinal franchise, you can go back and you can have your Rogers Hornsby. You can have your Joseph ‘Ducky’ Medwick and Jerome ‘Dizzy’ Dean, as well. You can take Albert ‘Red’ Schoendienst and, yes, even the Man himself, Stanley Frank Musial of Donora, Pennsylvania.

“Because when it comes to the embodiment of the St. Louis Cardinals franchise, look no further than the countenance of one Kenton Lloyd Boyer. He was a man’s man. And we’ll miss him.”

Howard then lowered his voice another notch. “We’ll be back after this.”

Know this about Howard. There was nothing he loved more than delivering a eulogy.

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