You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television by Al Michaels, L. Jon Wertheim Page A
Authors: Al Michaels, L. Jon Wertheim
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on at the bus. Rose, who was sitting near the front, got up, stood in the aisle, looked back at his teammates, and yelled out, “Do or die, boys! Do or [bleeping] die!” He’d have a ton of extra security at the stadium. And later that afternoon, in the twelfth inning of a 1–1 game, he’d homer off Harry Parker to win it for the Reds, and send the series to a decisive fifth game.
I sat across the aisle from him on the bus ride back to the hotel. I said, “Pete, try to put into words exactly what you’re thinking when you know the ball is gone.” Rose says, “I was rounding first base. And when you round first base at Shea, you can look directly into our bullpen in left. And I was thinking, ‘Sparky, better get Tom Hall [a lefthander] up, because the Mets have Staub and [John] Milner [left-handed batters] coming up in the bottom of the twelfth.’” Pete had just hit the home run every kid dreams of—and barely a second later, he was already thinking about the lefty-lefty matchups his team could get in the bottom of the inning. Again, there is no one who’s ever been more totally into a baseball game than Pete Rose. For the record, Sparky would go with Pedro Borbon, a right-hander, in the twelfth, and he retired the side in order.
Still, despite all that drama, my shot at doing back-to-back World Series on national television went down the drain the next day in Game 5 when Seaver and the Mets beat the Reds, 7–2. It was clear, though, this was an extraordinary team—and the question was not whether Big Red Machine would win a World Series, but how many.
Even if I knew that my days in Cincinnati were numbered.
LATE IN THAT 1973 season, the Giants had been expressing interest in me again. Their longtime play-by-play announcer, Lon Simmons, was only fifty years old, but he was retiring because of the death of his wife. (Lon would eventually unretire and we would work together in 1976.) Now the question would become, did I want to go to San Francisco, and work for a station group owned by Gene Autry? My three-year contract in Cincinnati was coming up for renewal and the Giants were offering me the chance to do television as well as radio. They were also offering me more time off so I could accept potential network assignments, like regional NFL games. Oh, and they were going to more than triple what the Reds were paying, with a starting salary in six figures.
In August, with a sense that the Giants were going to come after me following the season, and with the Reds leading the National League West, we had a Saturday night game at Riverfront Stadium against the Cardinals. The atmosphere was electric. There were fifty thousand fans in the stadium on a pristine summer night. You had Bench, Rose, Morgan, Perez, and Dave Concepcion in the lineup, and Sparky in the dugout. Earlier that day, the Reds had called up the top prospect from their Triple-A farm club. He was the starting right fielder that night and went 2-for-4. His name? Ken Griffey. Senior. And I’m thinking, Oh my God—here comes another Reds superstar. And I’m also thinking, am I really going to leave this behind?
The season is over and in comes the offer from San Francisco. Linda and I talked about it and tried to figure out what it would take for us to stay in Cincinnati. We had grown very comfortable with the town and had a lot of good friends. We decided that we would probably stay in Cincinnati if the Reds came up to $70,000 or $75,000. It would mean more than doubling my salary. But it would still be considerably below what the Giants were offering. I still didn’t have an agent, so I went into a meeting with Howsam and Wagner for the renegotiation. They offered me $40,000, and felt that a 33 percent raise was more than fair. I remember saying to Howsam, “I’m sorry, but we’re not really even close. If that’s the final offer, I have to go to San Francisco.”
There was one slightly messy postscript. Several months later there was a
I sat across the aisle from him on the bus ride back to the hotel. I said, “Pete, try to put into words exactly what you’re thinking when you know the ball is gone.” Rose says, “I was rounding first base. And when you round first base at Shea, you can look directly into our bullpen in left. And I was thinking, ‘Sparky, better get Tom Hall [a lefthander] up, because the Mets have Staub and [John] Milner [left-handed batters] coming up in the bottom of the twelfth.’” Pete had just hit the home run every kid dreams of—and barely a second later, he was already thinking about the lefty-lefty matchups his team could get in the bottom of the inning. Again, there is no one who’s ever been more totally into a baseball game than Pete Rose. For the record, Sparky would go with Pedro Borbon, a right-hander, in the twelfth, and he retired the side in order.
Still, despite all that drama, my shot at doing back-to-back World Series on national television went down the drain the next day in Game 5 when Seaver and the Mets beat the Reds, 7–2. It was clear, though, this was an extraordinary team—and the question was not whether Big Red Machine would win a World Series, but how many.
Even if I knew that my days in Cincinnati were numbered.
LATE IN THAT 1973 season, the Giants had been expressing interest in me again. Their longtime play-by-play announcer, Lon Simmons, was only fifty years old, but he was retiring because of the death of his wife. (Lon would eventually unretire and we would work together in 1976.) Now the question would become, did I want to go to San Francisco, and work for a station group owned by Gene Autry? My three-year contract in Cincinnati was coming up for renewal and the Giants were offering me the chance to do television as well as radio. They were also offering me more time off so I could accept potential network assignments, like regional NFL games. Oh, and they were going to more than triple what the Reds were paying, with a starting salary in six figures.
In August, with a sense that the Giants were going to come after me following the season, and with the Reds leading the National League West, we had a Saturday night game at Riverfront Stadium against the Cardinals. The atmosphere was electric. There were fifty thousand fans in the stadium on a pristine summer night. You had Bench, Rose, Morgan, Perez, and Dave Concepcion in the lineup, and Sparky in the dugout. Earlier that day, the Reds had called up the top prospect from their Triple-A farm club. He was the starting right fielder that night and went 2-for-4. His name? Ken Griffey. Senior. And I’m thinking, Oh my God—here comes another Reds superstar. And I’m also thinking, am I really going to leave this behind?
The season is over and in comes the offer from San Francisco. Linda and I talked about it and tried to figure out what it would take for us to stay in Cincinnati. We had grown very comfortable with the town and had a lot of good friends. We decided that we would probably stay in Cincinnati if the Reds came up to $70,000 or $75,000. It would mean more than doubling my salary. But it would still be considerably below what the Giants were offering. I still didn’t have an agent, so I went into a meeting with Howsam and Wagner for the renegotiation. They offered me $40,000, and felt that a 33 percent raise was more than fair. I remember saying to Howsam, “I’m sorry, but we’re not really even close. If that’s the final offer, I have to go to San Francisco.”
There was one slightly messy postscript. Several months later there was a
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