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The greatest call in the history of sportscasting doesn’t just happen. It takes extraordinary events to line everything up just right.
There is growing up in Brooklyn at 670 Ocean Avenue between Albemarle and Beverley. There is looking at the green grass of Ebbets Field, hearing Vin Scully call games and wondering how you can spend a lifetime at arenas and stadiums.
And, like the Dodgers, there is a move to Los Angeles, where you use the backyard garden hose as an imitation mic to hone your craft.
Finally, there is one last ingredient mixed in. It is a cherished book about the history of the Olympics, a gift from your grandparents, that makes you dream big.
This is how the cement was mixed to produce the most iconic set of words that a sportscaster has ever uttered.
Even with the foundation for the call laid, a unique series of events had to build for the historic crescendo.
On Feb. 22, 1980, when the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the mighty Soviet Union in Lake Placid, the victory would be everlasting because of the magnitude of the achievement in the tense political climate. No matter what was said, it would be eternally memorable.
But a TV play-by-player’s fundamental job is to complement the action, to make it more enjoyable and lasting for the viewer.
Simply moving out of the way is one approach — understated and respectful.
What is even better is using words to raise the event to another level, complementing the action with a phrase that lives on right with the moment.
When 35-year-old, Brooklyn-born Al Michaels had the opportunity, he strung together a perfect question and answer that has been stamped forever into the American lexicon.
“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
Michaels’ exclamation at the end of the United States’ 4-3 upset of the USSR in the 1980 Olympic hockey semifinals is the greatest call in the history of American sportscasting.
The words turn 40 next month. And, boy, have they aged well.
Al Michaels is 75 years old now. He has called 10 Super Bowls, eight World Series, two NBA Finals and has been involved in covering nine Olympics. He still is considered the top NFL play-by-player.
He finds it inconceivable that a “Miracle on Ice” could happen again. In 1980, the Cold War was at its height. The Russians were professionals, an army of a team, while Herb Brooks’ US squad consisted of amateurs.
It was like men against boys — and the boys won. The circumstances seem unmatchable.
“I couldn’t think of a scenario,” Michaels told The Post during a 75-minute interview. “At that point, the Soviet Union is pretty much our archenemy. The Cold War is really cold. The country is just in a bad emotional place: gas lines, the hostages in Iran, everything that is going on.
“And a hockey team — a hockey team! — does that! That was something that transcended sports. I can’t believe I was there to do this. I couldn’t think of something that could top that.”
Michaels’ partner on the call was Hall of Fame goalie Ken Dryden. Dryden had just retired from the Canadiens after winning five Stanley Cups.
In these big moments, the color commentator should wait to avoid stepping on the call of the play-by-player. Dryden, studying to become a lawyer and new to broadcasting, drew a little outside the lines, but, upon review, actually enhanced the call.
As Michaels revved up, “Five seconds left in the game…,” Dryden stepped in, his words finding a small crevice between Michaels’.
“It’s over!” Dryden said softly.
Michaels then opened up his mouth with the same enthusiasm he had as a child of nearly 9 years old when his beloved grandparents, Harry and Ida, gave him the “United States 1952 Olympic Book.”
Now, Michaels was putting the headline on maybe the greatest chapter to be included in future editions.
“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
Dryden chimed in quietly, “Unbelievable.”
And it was. All of it.
“It was in the delivery of it, where the magic lay,” said Dryden, now 72 and the recent author of a book on his Stanley Cup-winning coach Scotty Bowman. “It was in Al saying it with that kind of shrill, chilling, electric voice and, most particularly, with the pause after it — ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ — and then the punctuation of it, more shrill, chilling and electric of the ‘Yes!’ It just worked. It was just completely appropriate to the moment.”
A universally praised call such as this one could really only happen on an international stage. The nature of the Olympics is to unite the nation.
“It was pure emotion,” Michaels said. “You can’t make a call like that in the Super Bowl, where half of the audience is going one way and the other half is going the other. But this was you have 99.9 percent of the audience with you on the call. The one tenth of one percent are probably spies from Kiev or something.”
Michaels stuck the landing — and those words are as memorable or more so than anything that happened in that semifinal.
“If I’m on a golf course, someone will yell out, ‘Do you believe in miracles?’” said game-winning-goal scorer Mike Eruzione, sounding as enthusiastic about an event as anyone could four decades later. “If I’m at an airport and someone recognizes me, they say, ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ It was fitting.”
Two days later, the United States beat Finland to seal history with the gold medal.
It is funny how glamour and reality are sometimes so much at odds. Michaels’ call inspired the name of the 2004 Disney film, “Miracle,” about the 1980 team. It has led to Michaels joining Eruzione and other members of the team for highly paid speaking engagements. And it helped Michaels become one of the great sportscasters in history.
But it wasn’t like Michaels made the call and knew it would be an all-timer.
“In the aftermath of that, I had zero idea this thing would live the way it did,” Michaels said.
At the conclusion of the United States win, as large portions of the sold-out crowd of 8,500 in upstate New York headed for the exits in celebration, the rest of the nation did not know the result because the game was not broadcast until 8 p.m. on tape delay.
“That United States game ended at about 7:15 because it was the first of a doubleheader,” Michaels said. “Sweden is playing Finland in the other game. The building clears out as people are pouring into the street. Kenny and I are calling the second game.”
Michaels and Dryden broadcast the second semifinal as a precaution in case there was a malfunction playing the tape of the US game. As it turned out, the Sweden-Finland recording wasn’t televised.
“This is 1980, so this is a time where you could have technical difficulties,” Michaels said. “The tape machine could break — boom, boom, boom — when they replay the game at 8:00. So we had to stay and do the Finland-Sweden game into a tape machine.
“The whole country is going crazy, and we are doing this game that goes to nowhere.”
The only way to have a spoiler was if you heard the result on a radio or TV newscast.
“And remember, in those days, no Twitter and no internet,” Michaels said. “No semblance to where we are today. I would say 95 percent of the people had no idea what happened.”
Michaels vividly recalls the conversation he and Dryden had as they walked from the Hilton to the arena on the Friday afternoon of the US-USSR game.
“There was no discussion about how the US could win the game,” Michaels said.
Michaels told Dryden if the United States was down 3-1 in the second period, that would be good because it would keep the audience tuned in. They received much more than that, of course, but even as the United States kept the game tight throughout, the belief that the young Americans could pull off the upset didn’t foment until near the end.
“The first time it really crossed my mind was when Eruzione scored with 10 minutes to go,” Dryden said, referring to the eventual game-winner in the third period. “That’s the moment when the US is discovering what they are, the Soviets are discovering what they are. They hadn’t been in this situation before. How are they going to react?”
The United States had the home-ice advantage, and it could be felt in the broadcast booth. The rumbling foreshadowed another famous moment: Michaels was on the call during the 1989 World Series earthquake in San Francisco.
“The building is crazy,” Michaels said. “It is in a two-level fieldhouse, and they built a temporary wooden platform on one of the balconies [for the broadcast booth]. The building is moving more than the earthquake in 1989.”
With noise enveloping the arena and with history suddenly in the balance, Michaels did what the best do under such circumstances — he simplified it.
“I have never worked in a more intense state of concentration,” Michaels said. “I thought to myself, ‘Like a horse with blinkers, look straight ahead, don’t get caught up in this.’
“I’m doing the fundamental play-by-play because you don’t know what is going to happen next. The Soviets are putting the pressure on, but they are skating on insanely short shifts. [Their coach, Viktor Tikhonov] got guys coming off the bench every 20 seconds, trying to find the right combination. The clock is ticking down.”
Michaels kept looking up at the clock, the fan in him alive and well.
“The clock was like quicksand,” Michaels said.
The United States clung to a 4-3 lead with a minute remaining.
“The clock is just in slow motion,” Michaels said. “I want it to tick down all the way. Now, you get down to the last minute, to the last 30 seconds, so the puck is in the US’ end. I have to concentrate here. The Soviets could tie the game. I’m not thinking of anything to say. I’m just calling the play as it exists.”
Finally, with less than 10 seconds left, the puck was cleared.
“I can only tell you this: The thing came out of my heart,” Michaels said. “There was a word that popped into my head: miraculous. Miraculous got morphed into a question, and I answered it with a yes, like Marv Albert always says, ‘Yes!’ That was it.”
The greatest call in the history of sportscasting. That was it.
Michaels still has that Olympic book his grandparents gave him. He still calls it “the perfect gift.” Little did he or they know, he would one day be a part of all future editions.
Forty years later, Michaels may be more famous than any of the players on that Olympic team. He remains the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which has been No. 1 in prime time for nearly a decade.
But, despite all the Super Bowls, World Series and other big events, Michaels will always be best known for those six words.
“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
“Somebody once wrote it was like the 9-year-old in me coming out,” Michaels said. “I’ll buy that. At that point, I’m like a fan. I’m like everybody else. I’m expressing my thoughts. Thank God the right words came out.”
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