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Do you believe in miracles? (Heck) yes!
Well, I definitely do now. That’s because my boyhood idol called me out of left field.
That’s right, Al Michaels, one of the best sportscasters of all time, called an everyday guy like me. Fo’ real kine. Better yet, we reminisced in an engaging conversation.
It was a “pinch me” moment that got this old grandpa so excited I started to sweat — and it was 6 in the morning when he called.
Michaels wanted to read, but couldn’t access, an article that ran in our paper May 12 by Bob Sigall, who writes the weekly “Rearview Mirror” column for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Sigall’s column was titled “Broadcaster started career calling for Hawaii Islanders” and featured Michaels and excerpts from his book.
“I couldn’t access it. But it showed a fantastic picture of the Termite Palace (Honolulu Stadium) and I just loved it,” he said.
Back in the day Hawaii boasted a Triple-A minor league baseball team called the Hawaii Islanders. Michaels called it “the cream of the minor league crop.” The franchise played here for 27 years starting in 1961 and Hawaii became a training ground for rising sportscasters, such as Harry Kalas, Michaels, Mel Proctor, Al Elconin and more.
But Michaels, who works for NBC Sports and Amazon Prime (NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” games), reached legendary status with that iconic call — “Do you believe in miracles? … YES!” — when the USA hockey team stunned the USSR in the 1980 Olympics. He also was on the call during the 1989 Battle of the Bay World Series earthquake game between the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, adroitly describing in detail all the areas in peril.
After emailing Sigall’s story to Michaels, I asked him if I could ask him a few questions.
“Oh sure, but I feel like you wanna go back to sleep,” he said.
Not on this day. Not on your life. So I asked and he did what he does best — talk — and I did what I don’t do best — listen.
And oh, did he take me on a wonderful trip down memory lane.
He mentioned how indebted he was to Islanders general manager Jack Quinn, who hired him. Michaels said he still keeps in touch with Quinn’s daughters and actually set up an internship for one of those daughters’ own daughter — a DePaul student — with Michaels’ son’s production company in Los Angeles.
What follows are the stuff for the Hawaii sports archives — Michaels’ time in Hawaii, how things seemed to come full circle, his recollection of a flamboyant Islanders pitcher and his initial meeting of President Barack Obama.
Coming to Hawaii
“I went over there in ’68. When Jack brought me in and what happened was he had an announcer Marty Chase … and Marty’s reserve unit (Hawaii National Guard at Schofield) was called up.
“I had flown over to Honolulu and met with Jack Quinn, in 1968, early in February.
“It was arranged by a mutual friend named Frank Valenti. Frank set me up and I flew over and met with Jack in the bowels of Termite Palace. And I left him a tape, reel-to-reel tape. I had gone to Arizona State. When I went to Arizona State and I’m announcing games on the campus station. … And among the players I’m talking about on the tape are Sal Bando, Rick Monday and a new freshman coming up, Reggie Jackson. (All future World Series winners.)
“I’m in school with all those guys at the same time and that’s on the tape.
“So Jack says if anything happens, blah, blah, blah, we’ll keep you in mind. And sure enough on the eve of the season or shortly after the season had started, I got a call from Jack. ‘Hey listen, can you come over and do a few games’ because he didn’t know what Marty’s situation was going to be down the line.
“He said, ‘How soon can you be here.’ I said, ‘Next plane.’”
“So (I) flew over, got on the air and wound up doing that whole season, and University of Hawaii football and basketball, and then all ILH football and basketball games. And I’m on television twice a day, that time was KITV, with Chuck Henry and Ken Kashiwahara.”
(Both Henry and Kashiwahara became Emmy Award- winning journalists. Henry retired last year after 50 years in TV news, mostly in the Los Angeles market, and was labeled as a news TV icon. The Kauai-born Kashiwahara was one of the first Asian American newsmen on national TV and also won numerous other awards. He was an ABC San Francisco- based correspondent for decades.)
Coming full circle
“In ’68 when I get over there we (the Hawaii Islanders) are the White Sox farm club. In ’69 they changed affiliations and we go with the Angels. And what that did is that brought Chuck Tanner (as manager) in for two years.
“And Roland Hemond was the farm director for the Angels and Roland oversaw this whole thing. And Roland was Jack Quinn’s brother in law.
“So at the end of the ’70 season, which the Islanders had a fantastic team, but we get blown out in four games by Spokane. That’s the famous (game where) you know Bobby Valentine got hit in the face. Oh my God, he got hit in the face on the first pitch of Game 4 by Greg Washburn.
“At the end of the season Roland gets hired as the GM of the White Sox. And Roland is going to bring Chuck to the White Sox to manage, which he did.
“And he told me … as soon as the season is over they want me to come to Chicago and they’re going to talk to the owner about getting me the White Sox job.
“The season ends I’m back doing all the football games with Chuck Leahey and I get a call from Roland, and he says to me, the owner of the White Sox, a guy named John Allyn, loves the tape, thinks you’re great, but it’s Chicago and he’s afraid to bring in a 25-, 26-year-old kid in to be the guy in the second market. So they wound up hiring Harry Caray to do the games. He’d been fired in St. Louis. (There was a reported scandal involved.).
“Two weeks later I get a call from the Cincinnati Reds — out of nowhere. … So I go there for three years. I go to the Giants in San Francisco for three years because they tripled my salary.
“When I go to ABC full time in 1977, one of the things I’m doing is ‘Monday Night Baseball,’ so I did the middle three games of the 1979 World Series, Pittsburgh against Baltimore. The Pirates managed by … Chuck Tanner.
“So I mean you talk about all the threads get connected at the end.”
The playboy pitcher
“Was Bo Belinsky in your time?” I asked Michaels.
“Yes he was,” Michaels said.
“And I am the only person on Earth — I can say this with almost certainty, even though I can’t document it — I’m the only person on Earth to see both of Belinsky’s no-hitters.
“As a high school kid in Los Angeles in 1962, I think the date was May 5 (it was), I’m in my last year of high school. And my friends and I went to (Chavez Ravine) Dodger Stadium, where the Angels were playing while they were building the stadium in Anaheim.
“And I saw with my own eyes Bo Belinsky pitch a no-hitter against Baltimore. Was a Saturday night, it was tremendous.
“Fast forward to like 1969, and Bo’s with the Islanders. He pitched a no- hitter against Tacoma.
“Bo, he was married to Jo Collins, the (Playboy) playmate. They had a baby. I took my cameraman from Channel 4 and took all these pictures of that baby. That baby would be in the 50s now. Ay yai yai.”
Meeting the president
“What’s so funny, I had never met Obama (until) after he left office in 2017. I met him by chance at a golf club in Palm Desert.
“A friend introduced us by saying to Obama “Mr. President, do you know Al Michaels? And he stood up, shook my hand. ‘Do I know Al Michaels? Everybody does.’
“And he said to me (that) we shared that great love of Hawaii. He knew that, so we started talking about the ILH and Punahou. We talked about Dave Eldredge, Eldredge’s brother was his favorite teacher (‘That was me,’ Pal Eldredge said.). We talked about Milton Holt. We talked about Arnold Morgado, big Jim Nicholson. We were laughing. I remember Kaimuki Bulldogs, Kalani Falcons, Kam Warriors, Farrington Governors, and we had a laugh and a great time.”
Frequent Hawaii visitor
“We were coming over at least twice a year. Grandchildren are obsessed with it,” Michaels said. “We had plans during the 2020 year, but we couldn’t because of the pandemic. We couldn’t do it in ’21.
“My grandkids are now older. Before we could round them up like cats and get them on the plane and get them over. But they’re all doing like 15 different things now, so trying to combine their schedules is difficult.
“We love Hawaii, love, love, love.”
Michaels also was a keynote speaker at a Honolulu Advertiser athletic banquet in 1984. (Note, though I worked there, I didn’t interview him then.)
“(Advertiser editor) Buck Buchwach, Buck invited me to come over.”
Michaels did a Howard Cosell impersonation during the banquet. “That was my go-to thing,” he said.
Michaels, while working for ABC, did the first Pro Bowl in Hawaii in 1980.
What does he miss most about Hawaii?
“The ambience, you get off the plane, it’s just a different feeling, it smells great, the warmth, the people were so great, we had a lot of good friends there. I loved everything about it, wasn’t anything I didn’t like about it.”
What if …
“I always tell people that if I had not been so ambitious as a kid and dreaming about doing the major league stuff and the Olympics and things — which I dreamed about as a kid — if I had not grown up with that mindset, we loved it so much, that I might have stayed and I might have been like Joe Moore or Bob Sevey. They loved it. They stayed forever. I probably could have been in that mold.
“Don Robbs was my boss … at KHVH (“Broadcast partners,” was how Robbs described it.)
“When I left for Cincinnati, Les Keiter had come back,” Michaels said. “I worked with Chuck Leahey, I worked with Ken Wilson. All these other guys came through there, Mel Proctor, some of the ESPN kids came through. Hawaii was a great breeding ground.
“Forever grateful. It goes back to Jack Quinn. Without Jack I don’t know if any of this stuff happens.”
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