Read Online You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television by Al Michaels, L. Jon Wertheim - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Al Michaels, L. Jon Wertheim
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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
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
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