Playboy Interview: Al Michaels

Do you believe in destiny? Two years ago Al Michaels got two new partners in the ABC Monday Night Football booth—Dan Fouts, a fledgling broadcaster, and Dennis Miller, a comedian who had attended only one pro football game. Michaels, the consummate play-by-play man, did his job, but he knew that MNF had hit a new low. And now—boom!—here comes his reward, a weekly date with the great one. This month John Madden joins Michaels every Monday night. They are a match made in football heaven, a duo that could make TV's number one sports show bigger than ever. "John and I are going to click," Michaels says. "We can't wait to get going."

Michael's voice is familiar—crisp, a bit nasal—but not all that distinctive. Not boyish like Bob Costas' voice or indelible like Vin Scully's. Yet Michaels, 57, is gaining acceptance as the best, most versatile sports voice of them all. He won't say it himself—not publicly—but such acceptance means the world to a Brooklyn-born sports nut who was five when he attended his first ball game at Ebbets Field in 1950. While everyone else in the stands watched the game, Michaels couldn't take his eyes off Red Barber in the broadcast booth. Soon the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, breaking Brooklyn hearts. But little Al was happy. By coincidence, his family was also moving to Los Angeles, where he played high school baseball but already knew his destiny: "As much as I liked playing, I never wanted to be a big leaguer. My dream was always to be in a big league booth, calling the game."

He got his start in Hawaii, calling minor league baseball. Then, in 1971, the Cincinnati Reds called. At the age of 26 he became the radio voice of the Reds on their flagship station, WLW. A year later he covered the World Series for NBC radio and TV. There were bumps along the way, and he remembers them all, every rejection, every criticism. But his discipline, intellect and ambition steamrolled the speed bumps. At every stop, from Hawaii to Cincy to San Francisco to New York, he outworked everyone else, memorizing stats and factoids as if he were cramming for finals. On air he parlayed the homework and a natural glibness into a style that listeners loved. Hearing him call a game was a treat, as easy and as edifying as a class with the best professor you ever had.

At the 1980 Winter Olympics, sports history and sports TV enjoyed a harmonic convergence. The underdog U.S. hockey team, which Michaels knew had no chance to upset the mighty Russians, did just that. With mere seconds to gather his thoughts, he made his most famous call of all: "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" He would soon be named Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association for the first time. Fans still thump his back and repeat that line to him, though he has called far more football and baseball. Michaels has also covered basketball, figure skating, track and field, cycling, golf horse racing, cliff diving and even celebrity obstacle-course racing.

In 1989 he was on the air when an earthquake stopped the World Series. Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver were just starting their telecast from San Francisco's Candlestick Park when they felt the booth slide toward home plate. "I thought we were going down into the lower deck," he says. He kept cool long enough to tell millions of viewers, "We're having an earthquake." Then the power died. When the red light lit up again, he morphed into a news reporter, ABC's correspondent from the disaster zone. He stayed up all night, reporting to Nightline's Ted Koppel, describing blimp shots of the wreckage in San Francisco, where he had lived from 1974 to 1976, when he was the Giants' play-by-play man. Michaels won an Emmy for his work that night—a news Emmy.

Michaels won Sportscaster of the Year again in 1983, 1986 and 1991. Good luck finding those trophies. They might be at his home in Brentwood, where he lives with Linda, his wife of 36 years—maybe in the closet behind his golf clubs. A former tennis nut, Michaels caught the golf bug from his friend O.J. Simpson.

Michaels is a hell of a character—a thinker who runs at the mouth for a living, a lifelong baseball fan now drawn to football, a FOOJ (Friend of O.J.) who now thinks the Juice might be poison. But for all his dimensions, Michaels has a single ambition: to call the next game perfectly, whether it's the Super Bowl or a Bengals–Colts exhibition.

We sent veteran sportswriter Kevin Cook, who works by day as executive editor of T&L Golf, to join Michaels in the booth—a booth in a Raleigh restaurant. Cook reports:

"Full disclosure: I grew up in Indianapolis, listening to Michaels and Joe Nuxhall call Cincinnati Reds games on my transistor radio. His voice is part of my boyhood. But I wasn't sure I would like him. Many radio and TV people call Michaels the best in the business, but there are others—like his former Monday Night Football partner Boomer Esiason—who call him a perfectionist and, worse, a prima donna. On my flight to Raleigh, North Carolina, where I was to meet Michaels between games of the Red Wings–Hurricanes Stanley Cup finals, I read Boomer's bitter quotes. He said he was undermined by a devious Al Michaels, then fired by ABC—'Al's Broadcasting Corporation.'

"It was plausible. Almost everyone calls Michaels a fierce personality, a nearly neurotic perfectionist. So I was willing to turn on my tape and let Michaels hang himself. Instead, he made me laugh. We had planned to talk for three hours and wound up talking for two, then continuing over dinner for three more, then meeting for breakfast the next day to talk some more. He loves sports and can go on and on—as I can—about Tommy Helms, Jack Clark, Cesar Geronimo and a thousand other names that have dotted the sports landscape. I can't tell you if he is a pain to work with, but I can say he is good company. He is well paid—$3.4 million a year—and has no trouble selecting the best cabernet from the wine list at the best steakhouse in Raleigh. We touched glasses and started with football."

[Q] Playboy: You and John Madden are a lot of fans' Monday night dream team. Is it your dream team?

[A] Michaels: I don't see how it misses. We share a passion for this game and this show, and we can't wait. We thought we had Madden signed at the end of the 1992 season, but it didn't happen. We made another play for him in 1997—no again. So I've had time to wonder what it would be like to work with him. I loved my 11 years with Frank Gifford and Dan Dier-dorf, and the past two years with Dan Fouts and Dennis Miller have been enjoyably bizarre. With John it'll be different—I'll be the provocateur.

[Q] Playboy: You're going to provoke him?

[A] Michaels: We all know who John is. He is almost universally regarded as the best colorman ever. But I'd like to hear him talk more about the broader issues in the National Football League, to delve.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Michaels: A few years ago, John was covering the Super Bowl between Green Bay and New England. The big story was, will Bill Parcells come back to coach the Patriots? There were rumors all over the joint. And as I sat at home, listening to John, it became apparent to me that he had inside information: Par-cells had told John he was not going to New England. I rise up in my chair and say, "That's the story!" But it wasn't pursued. That's what I'd want to pursue.

[Q] Playboy: Have you and Madden practiced together?

[A] Michaels: Our producer asked us, "You guys want to do a practice game? We can roll some old tape." We said, "Why? Let it fly."

[Q] Playboy: You two are all the rage now, but do announcers really matter?

[A] Michaels: Writers love to say, "Who cares who's in the booth? People tune in to watch the game." That's mainly true, but good announcers can keep you watching longer. I don't know how many eyes John and I will draw to the game, but I know we can keep them watching longer than if they'd watch another game. That's our job.

[Q] Playboy: You and Madden may not practice, but you did run an old tape when you auditioned Rush Limbaugh——

[A] Michaels: Politics aside, that guy can connect with an audience. Rush had been talking on his radio show about how Don Ohlmeyer, our producer, should call him in to audition. So Don, whose operative phrase at the time was "outside the box," did. We brought Rush to this little studio in North Hollywood and ran a Tennessee–Buffalo playoff game—the Music City Miracle with that crazy play at the end. Melissa Stark was there, pretending to do sideline reports, and Rush was terrific.

[Q] Playboy: Better than Dennis Miller?

[A] Michaels: Similar. Dennis was a huge football fan and he retains everything. He'd throw out names you hadn't thought of in 20 years.

[Q] Playboy: Old TV stars?

[A] Michaels: Football names—third-string running backs from 1975. Dennis never missed a second of the NFL draft. As he put it, one year he's sitting in his undies munching peanuts and watching Monday Night Football, and a year later he's in the booth.

[Q] Playboy: Give us a line from his audition.

[A] Michaels: His was a Packers–49ers game. I happened to mention a Packers lineman by the name of Cletidus Hunt. Dennis says, "That's not a player, that's a raid on a sorority."

[Q] Playboy: Could he say that on the air?

[A] Michaels: I've wondered about that. Network TV is changing, becoming more like cable. You can't say fuck, but can you get away with Cletidus Hunt as a panty raid? Unfortunately, we never found out—he went on injured reserve.

[Q] Playboy: Did you lobby for Dennis Miller?

[A] Michaels: I didn't have to. After his audition, we knew we had the guy.

[Q] Playboy: What about Rush?

[A] Michaels: He already had a job. Rush gets paid a gazillion dollars to do his radio show, and Monday Night Football isn't a sideline. There are meetings all week, talks with the players and coaches. You don't just show up on Monday. Rush had an obligation to his radio show.

[Q] Playboy: Amid all the fuss over Dennis you got another new partner, Dan Fouts.

[A] Michaels: Dan's a mensch. People kept telling me I had a tough job, breaking in a neophyte like Dennis, but I've worked with a hundred analysts over the years. Dan had never even worked in a three-man booth, and he started in a booth with Dennis. But Fouts was tremendous—he'll be around for a long time.

[Q] Playboy: Miller won't. Now he'll be sitting in his undies again, watching you and Madden. Why did the Dennis Miller experiment fail?

[A] Michaels: Dennis didn't fail. The network had a chance to get Madden, that's all. But I will say one thing about Dennis that nobody noticed, which is that Monday Night Football is basically radio. You hardly ever see us, and that's tough for a comedian. Comics use facial expressions and mannerisms, but on our show you couldn't see Dennis, and that made it harder for him.

[Q] Playboy: Which is a bigger deal, Monday Night Football or the World Series?

[A] Michaels: I don't want to diminish anything I've covered, but there is a special buzz about Monday Night Football. I've done it for 16 seasons—that's 17 games a year, plus playoff and preseason games, so I'm approaching 300 Monday night games. We'll usually get to the stadium when there's still a little sunlight, then the artificial lighting slowly takes effect. The crowd files in, the music starts and by the time we get to the Hank Williams song I'm like a player: Let's go!

[Q] Playboy: It's a national holiday.

[A] Michaels: I've covered the World Series, the Super Bowl and the Hagler–Hearns fight, which may have been the fight of the century. The Olympics, too—I called the Miracle on Ice, which may be the greatest sports event of the 20th century. But I never forget that I'm part of the longest-running sports show in television history. Monday Night Football—those three words are still magic.

[Q] Playboy: Were you upset when ESPN started playing your Hank Williams music on Sunday nights?

[A] Michaels: I was. I used to sign autographs with the words to that song, our song: "Are you ready for some football?" Now Disney comes in, putting ABC and ESPN under the same umbrella, and suddenly it's on Sunday night football. Even the players were startled. They heard our music and said, "What night is it?"

[Q] Playboy: An example of corporate synergy in action——

[A] Michaels: There is synergy that's helpful and synergy that is garbage, and this wasn't helpful.

[Q] Playboy: Is football the real national pastime?

[A] Michaels: It is. I love baseball, but I'm not consumed by it anymore. My friends who still love the game love it because they're nostalgic.

[Q] Playboy: How did baseball go wrong?

[A] Michaels: Times changed. In the radio era you'd listen to baseball and imagine the game. Now everything's on cable, more games than you can keep up with, and there are cameras in the concession stands. There's nothing left to imagine.

[Q] Playboy: But football hasn't suffered.

[A] Michaels: I was talking to Jimmy Johnson and he summed it up. "On television," Jimmy said, "a four-yard run seems like Armageddon. But if you're in the stadium, a four-yard gain is a four-yard gain." Football is actually better on TV than in person.

[Q] Playboy: For a few days in 1980, hockey was the national pastime. At the end of the U.S. hockey team's Olympic win over the Soviet Union, you asked millions of viewers, "Do you believe in miracles?"

[A] Michaels: Of course I had no idea that anyone would remember that. Everyone knew the U.S. had no chance. Going in, my partner Ken Dryden and I were hoping it wouldn't be 6–0 Soviets early. But our team has the lead as the clock winds down. The arena goes crazy and the only word in my head is miraculous. Even the production guys are going nuts—all of a sudden they're fans, too, shouting and dancing. But I have to call the game.

[Q] Playboy: The word miracle seems to be germinating——

[A] Michaels: Hockey happens so fast. The Soviets are skating hard, trying for a last-second shot on Jim Craig. With 10 seconds left the puck slides out toward the blue line, the U.S. clears it and I have four or five seconds to capsulize the game. I came out with "Do you believe in miracles?" and answered the question as the clock ran out. "Yes!"

[Q] Playboy: Do people still come up to you and repeat that line?

[A] Michaels: All the time. It's synonymous with hockey, synonymous with crazy things in sports. At this year's Stanley Cup finals a fan had a sign: Hey, Al, do you believe in miracles? I was surprised after the 1980 Olympics to get a lot of mail—long, handcrafted letters from people saying how much the miracle at Lake Placid meant to them. I thought, Why tell me? Then it dawned on me: They couldn't write the team. An Olympic team disbands in a week. I was the conduit, the link. I had an address: ABC Sports, 1330 Avenue of the Americas, New York City. To this day I have boxes of those letters. Sometimes I take them out and read a few.

[Q] Playboy: In addition to Super Bowls, World Series and the Olympics, you've covered some really big events.

[A] Michaels: Yes, like Motorcycles on Ice. This was 1977, on a rink in the Bavarian Alps in front of 15,000 drunken Germans. The crowd has been tailgating for about nine hours, waiting for these bikers with spikes on their tires to come riding in. I had just signed with ABC and was game for anything, so I agreed to ride into a spotlight and say, "Welcome to Inzell, West Germany." Of course I didn't tell anyone I'd never been on a motorcycle. Just before the show they're outfitting me in the leathers of some Russian biker, giving me instructions in broken English: "Thees is clutch." I didn't know a clutch from a Big Mac. So I'm accelerating with my right hand as my left is about to release the clutch, and, thank God, somebody grabbed my arm. Had I released that clutch I could have gone 80 feet up in the air.

[Q] Playboy: Quite an entrance.

[A] Michaels: So I take off the leathers. Plan A is down the toilet. I'll open the show five minutes late, wearing my yellow ABC blazer. But now there is a German voice on the PA, and I've got bottles flying at me. People are whistling like crazy, throwing bottles. I ask our interpreter, "What the fuck was that?" He says, "The PA announcer said, 'Be patient, please, American television needs time to prepare." We got the show done, but that's as close as I've come to getting killed.

[Q] Playboy: Not quite. There was also the World Series earthquake.

[A] Michaels: Right, the 1989 Series. Tim McCarver and I had just gone on the air from Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The cameras were in back of the booth. We had our backs to the field when all of a sudden there's a horizontal thrust. We go backward. To this day Tim says I grabbed his leg, but he's wrong. He grabbed mine. I could feel Tim's right hand digging in.

[Q] Playboy: A former catcher's hand. That must have hurt.

[A] Michaels: It still hurts. At that moment I thought we were being thrust out of the booth into the lower deck. The lights go out. We're off the air. Then the cameraman says he has power back in his camera. His viewfinder is connected to the production truck, which gets him the feed from the Goodyear blimp. There in the booth, I look into his viewfinder and see a severed section of the Bay Bridge. I said, "Jesus, this one was big."

[Q] Playboy: What were the fans doing?

[A] Michaels: Chanting "Play ball, play ball." They had zero idea. But now I can see the devastation. They linked me with Ted Koppel on the East Coast and I became a correspondent on the scene, describing the pictures from the blimp.

[Q] Playboy: How did you know what you were seeing? You don't spend much time in blimps.

[A] Michaels: People say, "Al used to work in San Francisco, so he knew the town," but that doesn't always help with aerial shots. What helped was that I love maps and I'm an aerial photography buff. I have all those books, Above Los Angeles, Above San Francisco, Above London. So it's not just San Francisco. I could have done it in St. Louis. Or Paris.

[Q] Playboy: When did you leave the ballpark that night?

[A] Michaels: I opened Good Morning America and left the park at five A.M. There was no power in the hotel, so I'm walking up 13 flights, wondering how many people had died. For all I knew it was thousands. It turned out to be much lower—no solace, obviously, to those who lost fathers, mothers. There I am in this dark hotel room, the sun just coming up, and I start to think about wives waiting at home for their husbands. Are they under rubble somewhere? Family members dying their own deaths, waiting for phone calls—it hit me all at once and I stood there, weeping, I don't know for how long.

[Q] Playboy: People were surprised that you won an Emmy for news reporting, not sports.

[A] Michaels: I was surprised that they were surprised. Do they think we're so insular that we know nothing but "Hit behind the runner" and "Blitz on third and seven"?

[Q] Playboy: Do you listen to yourself on tape?

[A] Michaels: Yes, because I want to avoid bad habits—sometimes I'll use a pet phrase too much. I'll put the sound on low and go off to a corner of the room, just cringing. When it's not perfect I want to disappear. And it's never perfect.

[Q] Playboy: The Miracle on Ice wasn't perfect?

[A] Michaels: The last few seconds were good. The rest of the game, there were a hundred things I could have done better.

[Q] Playboy: What's the closest you've come to a perfect game?

[A] Michaels: Red Sox–Angels in the 1986 ALCS was close. Just a fabulous game with a thousand components, and I was in tune with it. Boston trailed by three in the top of the ninth and got four. The Angels tied it and had a chance to win the pennant in the 10th. The police horses are ready. With two out, Jerry Narron, now the Texas manager, is the runner at first with Gary Pettis at the plate. Pettis is a slap hitter, no power. He hits an opposite-field drive to left. Jim Rice goes to the wall and makes the catch. If not for Rice's catch, Narron scores. The Angels win and Dave Henderson never gets to hit his pennant-winning homer in the 11th. That night I'm driving home, replaying the game in my head. I'm happy. Then I say, "Why in hell was Rice playing deep enough to catch a ball Gary Pettis hit to the wall the other way?" And it dawns on me: The night before, Pettis hit one over Rice's head for a double. Son of a bitch! Why didn't I remember that and tell people?

[Q] Playboy: John McNamara, the Boston manager, was a step ahead of you.

[A] Michaels: Or Rice. Probably Rice was remembering the night before.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about Howard Cosell.

[A] Michaels: Howard was a fascinating man. He called me Alfalfa.

[Q] Playboy: That's almost as bad as Dennis Miller's calling you Albeeno.

[A] Michaels: Howard stole it from Bob Uecker. We got along. I think he wanted to be a mentor for me.

[Q] Playboy: Cosell once called you "a smart boy who could go far in my profession."

[A] Michaels: Howard was the kind of man who could never be happy. If he were a senator, he'd want to be president. If he were president, he should be king. If he were king, he should be God. We did a lot of baseball together, a hundred or more games, but it fell apart at the end.

[Q] Playboy: You've said you were embarrassed to be part of those telecasts.

[A] Michaels: Howard could hold his booze like nobody else. He'd sit there and sip vodka throughout a game and you couldn't tell. But toward the end, after he'd left Monday Night Football, he was having four or five drinks before we left the hotel and then drinking all through the game. We were in Kansas City for the 1984 American League Championship Series, the game went extra innings and he was making a fool of himself. Jim Palmer and I tried to keep him from sounding like an imbecile, and Howard took offense. After the game he castigated me for not agreeing with his ramblings, and I screamed at him, "I protected your ass. You're drunk and you're full of shit."

[Q] Playboy: What did he say?

[A] Michaels: He walked away. Now I'm the one who needs a drink. I went back to the dressing room at Royals Stadium. There was a bar there, and a girl who served us after the games. I handed her a cup and said, 'Just fill this with vodka." She holds up the vodka bottle and says, "Sorry, Mr. Michaels. Your colleague drank it all."

[Q] Playboy: Did Cosell stay mad?

[A] Michaels: We flew to Detroit. I'm still so angry I won't talk to Howard. The next day he comes to my hotel room. He's got his cigar going. He sits down and says, "Alfalfa, I want you to know something. It was Palmer who pissed me off."

[Q] Playboy: How ratlike.

[A] Michaels: I told [ABC Sports chief] Roone Arledge there could be no more drinking in the booth. Roone said, "I promise you." So I worked one more season with Cosell. It was 1985, his last year on the air, and to my knowledge Howard didn't have one drink in the booth.

[Q] Playboy: By then you were the guy in the Monday Night Football booth.

[A] Michaels: My TV contract was expiring. The network was being taken over by cost cutters. On the day I ascended to the play-by-play role on Monday Night Football I got a call from Alex Wallau.

[Q] Playboy: The ABC bigwig?

[A] Michaels: Yes, and my great friend. Alex says, "Congratulations. You got invited to the orgy after the girls went home."

[Q] Playboy: The "classic" MNF of Cosell, Gifford and Don Meredith was actually not as popular as the Michaels-era show.

[A] Michaels: Correct. It wasn't a top 10 show. More like 21 out of 54. Now we're always top 10. When I read about our show's having "the lowest ratings ever for Monday Night Football," two words enter my mind: lazy reporting. Are they saying it's better to be 21st out of 54 than seventh out of 140? Who's doing that math? It's a different TV universe—in the supposedly halcyon days you had three networks in a rabbit-ears world. There was no cable, no Internet, no Sunday Night Football. Other networks wouldn't program against Monday Night Football. Now they'll put Everybody Loves Raymond up against us. Fox puts baseball on against us. We're successful as hell.

[Q] Playboy: Before ABC hired Miller and Fouts two years ago, you said your dream team was you, Shania Twain and Maureen Dowd.

[A] Michaels: I was thrilled when Maureen Dowd sent a note saying, "Sounds great to me."

[Q] Playboy: Name someone other than Rush who auditioned but didn't get the job.

[A] Michaels: Tony Kornheiser. He was terrific, but Don Ohlmeyer wanted a bigger name.

[Q] Playboy: Your colleagues speak highly of you, with one exception. When Boomer Esiason got fired three years ago he ripped you. At least he had a good line: He said he had no chance at ABC, "Al's Broadcasting Company."

[A] Michaels: It's a good line if it rings of truth, but I don't see any truth. Look at my colleagues since I came to ABC: Frank Broyles in college football; Jackie Stewart, one of the best race-car drivers of all time; Ken Dryden, maybe the most erudite athlete of all, and Patrick Roy, maybe the best goaltender; McCarver and Palmer in baseball; Peggy Fleming in figure skating; in tennis, Arthur Ashe, a close friend; and in football, guys from Gifford to Dierdorf to Dennis Miller. I'm lucky enough that they were all my friends. Some of the best notes I ever received came from those people, notes saying, "Thank you for caring and making me better."

[Q] Playboy: Is it disappointing that Esiason went off on you?

[A] Michaels: I feel sorry for him.

[Q] Playboy: He said you didn't tee him up—ask him questions that would make him look good.

[A] Michaels: Maybe that's the problem. There are ways of teeing people up. It varies. I tell my analysts, "I don't need you to say what you'd do on third and seven. Let's go past the rudimentary stuff." Most of them thrive on that. I was mystified by his reluctance to accept helpful advice, which he must have thought was destructive. I guess I could say, "Hey, you were a quarterback and I wasn't. What do you do on third down?" But I asked him to go beyond, and he cast me as the black hat.

[Q] Playboy: You've survived German bikers, Howard Cosell, Boomer Esiason and an earthquake. What's the key to your longevity?

[A] Michaels: No vegetables. One of my earliest recollections is being offered $50 to eat a plate of asparagus. I was seven and I said no way. I still don't eat vegetables; the sight of them makes me nauseous.

[Q] Playboy: You don't eat lettuce?

[A] Michaels: Never.

[Q] Playboy: Ketchup?

[A] Michaels: Ketchup's OK. I'll eat a potato. Potatoes are starch, like bread.

[Q] Playboy: How about a V-8?

[A] Michaels: I could drink a V-8, but all eight things that go into it—I hate them.

[Q] Playboy: What does your doctor say about that?

[A] Michaels: He says, "Keep doing what you're doing."

[Q] Playboy: Judging from our time with you, your main food groups are steak and steak sauce.

[A] Michaels: And I never get sick. I have never missed an assignment for ABC. Never missed a game with the Reds. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey, Wide World of Sports—we're talking 2000, 3000 events. It's mind over matter. If I feel a cold coming on I'll take some vitamin C and make my flight.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe we should all eat steak and run from asparagus.

[A] Michaels: That's right. In 200 years they will say, "Those morons in the 21st century killed themselves by eating all those vegetables."

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about your childhood. Wasn't your father a talent agent who represented singers?

[A] Michaels: He worked for an agency in New York, and one day a client of his came to our house. It was Pat Boone, white bucks and all, and the neighborhood erupted.

[Q] Playboy: Did you want to be a crooner?

[A] Michaels: With me it was always sports. We lived in Brooklyn, 10 blocks from Ebbets Field. My dad took me to my first game when I was five. That day I had my first conscious thought: The grass is so green! The Dodgers' uniforms were wedding-cake white. Our seats were near the broadcast booth, and I could see the announcers. What a job they had, talking about the game every day.

[Q] Playboy: You must have been crushed when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.

[A] Michaels: By sheer coincidence, we had moved there the same year. My father was working in sports by then, at MCA, where Lew Wasserman and Sonny Werblin started the sports division. In 1960, when the American Football League was being formed, my dad brokered its first TV contract. One day when I was in the 10th grade, I come home and the AFL television contract is on the kitchen table.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't your dad also create Battle of the Network Stars?

[A] Michaels: He was involved in it.

[Q] Playboy: Al Michaels' father invented trash sports?

[A] Michaels: He may have facilitated its proliferation. Those early shows were kind of fun—The Superstars, with baseball and football players running obstacle courses. But then TV runs it into the ground. It's like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. They say, "This works, so let's do 15 of the same thing," and a good concept gets bastardized, regurgitated, crapped up.

[Q] Playboy: Was there an immortal call on Battle of the Network Stars? What was that show's answer to "Do you believe in miracles?"

[A] Michaels: There was a Cosell line. Howard was doing that show, and one event was kayak racing in a swimming pool. Now, Howard's had four or five drinks out there in the hot sun, saying, "Ne-go-tiating a kay-ak——"

[Q] Playboy: Let the record show that Michaels does a killer Cosell.

[A] Michaels: "Ne-go-tiating a kay-ak around a buoy is the tough-est thing in the world."

[Q] Playboy: Cosell wasn't the only eccentric you knew. When you were a kid, your parents encouraged you to handicap horse races.

[A] Michaels: They'd go to the races at Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, New York, so I studied the Racing Form and gave them advice. I sold them and their friends a tout sheet called Big Al at Westbury. Charged them $1.50 apiece. One day I picked a horse that paid $73. Now I'm a neighborhood legend. People can't wait for my next tout sheet.

[Q] Playboy: The Racing Form is a great document.

[A] Michaels: Every father should teach his kid to read the Racing Form at an early age.

[Q] Playboy: What did your mother think of your oddsmaking?

[A] Michaels: My mother, Lila, was and is a free spirit. In California you had to be 16 to get into the track, but with fake ID and a parent, I got in.

[Q] Playboy: Your mother was OK with a fake ID?

[A] Michaels: She'd get me out of school to go to the track with her. The first post was at two o'clock, so she'd come by about one with a note for the teacher: Alan has to go to the dentist.

[Q] Playboy: And nobody found out?

[A] Michaels: A couple of my buddies did. So she wrote notes for them, too.

[Q] Playboy: They had to go to the dentist?

[A] Michaels: We all had dental appointments. My dad didn't know—I doubt that he would have been happy with her yanking me out of school.

[Q] Playboy: Did you graduate on time?

[A] Michaels: Yeah, and went to Arizona State, where my journalism professor, Gordon Jones, became my hero. Gordon went on to be the racing writer for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. One day in class he mentioned horse racing and we got to talking. Before long he and I were going to Turf Paradise, a track in Phoenix. The first race was at one o'clock, so I'd show up for class about 11:15 and Gordon and I would go over daily double bets. If there were something that we liked, he would end class early so we could hit the windows.

[Q] Playboy: After Arizona State, you got your first job in TV.

[A] Michaels: Office boy on a game show. Sixty hours a week, making $95 a week with Chuck Barris Productions. Chuck was the man behind The Dating Game and he was just starting The Newlywed Game. I did a little of everything and at one point became the guy who pre-interviewed Dating Game contestants. It was a meat market. I'd run a mock game and choose the best girls.

[Q] Playboy: A dream job for a single guy.

[A] Michaels: But I was married. Linda and I married young; I was 20. She worked for Chuck, too—my wife was assistant prize coordinator on The Newlywed Game.

[Q] Playboy: So you never lived the single life on the road. Are there groupies for play-by-play men?

[A] Michaels: The only groupies are girls who want tickets. And I'm not susceptible. I met Linda in the 10th grade. We became pals, then romantic pals and then we got married. I love my wife more every day. I have two great kids and a career I dreamed about.

[Q] Playboy: But back to the groupies—Wilt Chamberlain said he had sex with some 20,000 women. What's your total?

[A] Michaels: Postmarriage, zero.

[Q] Playboy: How about premarriage?

[A] Michaels: Let me think. OK, eight.

[Q] Playboy: Eight good ones might be better than hundreds of Wilt's.

[A] Michaels: Who said eight good ones? I'd say three real good ones, two average, at least one not so hot.

[Q] Playboy: Are pro athletes hornier than other guys?

[A] Michaels: I doubt it. Guys working for minimum wage might love to be at strip clubs, too. They have the same sexual desires as NBA guys, but less money. Look at the crowds we had in Raleigh for the Stanley Cup finals. Some of those guys are drinking 15 beers apiece. Are they going to go home, sleep it off and go to church? No, they're going to keep drinking and looking for broads.

[Q] Playboy: Pro jocks don't have to go looking.

[A] Michaels: Some women want to be with a guy they see on TV. I can't believe you'd get in the sack with somebody because he just played against the Orlando Magic, but there have always been women like that. When I was traveling with the Reds and Giants, they'd be hanging around the hotel. The guys are bigger stars now, but the women are the same. They're either looking to get laid or looking to set up a player for extortion. And guys, being guys, enjoy them.

[Q] Playboy: How did you go about getting your first sports job?

[A] Michaels: I wrote to every major league team. No go. Finally I got a minor league job: the play-by-play man for the Hawaii Islanders.

[Q] Playboy: By that time your father was a partner of super-agent Mark McCormack. Wouldn't they make a few calls for you?

[A] Michaels: I was intent on making my own way. I'm still proud that the people in Hawaii never knew who my dad was. Cincinnati and San Francisco, my first big league jobs, they never knew about him. By the time I got to ABC in 1976, I was there on merit.

[Q] Playboy: Before going to Hawaii you had a detour with the Los Angeles Lakers.

[A] Michaels: What a horrible experience. I got a job with California Sports, which owned the Lakers. One day the owner, Jack Kent Cooke, said, "Go to Salt Lake City. You're going to be Chick Hearn's colorman."

[Q] Playboy: Hearn's the longtime Lakers announcer. Back then he always worked alone.

[A] Michaels: So I show up, this 22-year-old kid, and it's not a warm reception from Chick. I worked the start of the 1967–1968 season, four TV games, and didn't utter a single word. I was also the team's traveling secretary, which means I had everyone's plane ticket. Before the fifth game I'm at the airport with Elgin Baylor's ticket, Jerry West's ticket. Bill Van Breda Kolff, the coach, says, "Give me the tickets. You're not on the flight." That's when I knew I was fired. I was embarrassed as shit.

[Q] Playboy: What did Cooke say?

[A] Michaels: I had a meeting with the fabled Mr. Cooke. He said it would turn out for the best. I wanted to say, "Go fuck yourself," but I was a kid. And here's an irony: Twenty years later I call my first Super Bowl. It's Denver against Washington, Jack Kent Cooke's team.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever hear from Cooke?

[A] Michaels: Yes. He called me Alan, like my mother. "Alan," he says, "I always knew you'd make it." And I'm rolling my eyes. I must say I harbored a lot of animosity. I hated the Lakers for years and loved it when they lost.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever run into Chick Hearn again?

[A] Michaels: Chick's a friend now. When I look back, it was all Cooke. I was a sacrificial lamb to get Chick to accept a color-man, who turned out to be Hot Rod Hundley.

[Q] Playboy: And later Pat Riley.

[A] Michaels: I was always angered that Cooke and the Lakers tried to take a little credit for my career. They could have ended it.

[Q] Playboy: You have played yourself in more than a dozen films, including Baseketball.

[A] Michaels: One of the worst movies in history. But it was made by one of the Zucker brothers, who had done great work. He had a big budget at Universal and signed up a few sportscasters, including Bob Costas and me. I had what's called a "most favored nations" clause, which means similar people get paid the same. I was told that the sportscasters would do two days of work for $10,000. Which made me look at the film's $40 million budget and think, We are getting fucked. Not that $10,000 is a paltry sum, but it wasn't enough. Gifford, Dierdorf and I got less than $10,000 apiece for doing Jerry Maguire, which grossed almost $200 million.

[Q] Playboy:Baseketball was no Jerry Maguire.

[A] Michaels: Costas and I thought our first scene was funny, but the second scene wasn't and the third was terrible. We're joking, saying, "Holy shit, it's the end of our careers," and Bob says, "At least it's a decent payday." Now time stands still. I look at Bob, he looks at me. Which one will say what he's getting paid? So we flip a coin and I lose, so I have to fess up. "It's only $10,000," I say, "but I got an extra five for travel."

[Q] Playboy: Now it's Costas' turn.

[A] Michaels: Yeah, and he says, "Fifty thousand." He got 50! Now I have steam coming out of my ears. I threaten to walk off. The producers tell my lawyer they'll pay me $20,000. I say, "Bullshit. I want 75. I want what Bob got plus $25,000 in fuck-you money." So they threaten to fire me from this awful movie, which is just what I want! My lawyer says, "Great. He's out." Twenty-four hours later, they pay $50,000.

[Q] Playboy: Back to baseball. In the majors, you started as the radio voice of the Cincinnati Reds.

[A] Michaels: Pete Rose was there then. Rose, Johnny Bench and later Joe Morgan. Sparky Anderson was the manager. I got my Ph.D. in baseball from them, mainly Sparky and Pete. Those were great baseball minds. Rose taught me how to absorb and analyze every situation, every pitch.

[Q] Playboy: Should Rose be in the Hall of Fame?

[A] Michaels: Instead of yes or no I'll say this: Of all the athletes I have covered over 36 years, Pete Rose is my favorite. Whether it's spring training in Florida or the seventh game of the World Series, he knew only one speed: all out. He was the embodiment of baseball. Then all the crap happened.

[Q] Playboy: Baseball banned him for betting.

[A] Michaels: I know what the famous Dowd Report says. Pete disputes it. Who knows what really happened? But if he would simply say, "I did it," he goes in.

[Q] Playboy: He's too proud. And he says the agreement he signed with the commissioner's office says there was no finding that he bet on baseball.

[A] Michaels: He is parsing stuff nobody cares about anymore. But the fact is, he has paid an enormous price.

[Q] Playboy: You must want him to say, "OK, I bet on baseball. Now let me in the Hall."

[A] Michaels: I know there is some consternation among guys who like Pete, former teammates, who want him to step up and get it done.

[Q] Playboy: Do you mean your TV colleague Joe Morgan?

[A] Michaels: He's one of them.

[Q] Playboy: Is football gambling out of hand?

[A] Michaels: Little kids ask me for an autograph and say, "Are the Niners going to cover?" But if you asked sports leagues, "Should we have mandatory 10-year jail sentences for gamblers?" they would run the other way faster than Michael Johnson. They have to appear to be concerned—and they must make sure the games are on the up-and-up—but they know that if gambling stopped, sports TV ratings would drop 20 to 25 percent.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about M.J. and O.J. You've played golf with Michael Jordan.

[A] Michaels: A couple times. Golf can tell you a lot about people—who they are, what risks they'll take. Michael doesn't look at the green, he looks at the pin. It's funny—I have played with John El-way, too, and while John might be a better golfer than Michael, he plays a wholly different game. John is more conservative. He sees the green. Now, why is that? Maybe it's the sports they played. In Michael's sport a bad error, a (concluded on page 166)Al Michaels(continued from page 76) turnover, is far less consequential than it is in John's sport. Elway had to avoid interceptions——

[Q] Playboy: You don't want seven points going the other way.

[A] Michaels: Right. But for Michael, a mistake is momentary. If you lose the ball, you get it back and score. If you miss the green, you chip up and save par. And there's something else about Jordan: his vision. One day we played golf in Hawaii. We're having a couple drinks in the clubhouse, sitting 50 feet from this little 27-inch TV set over the bar. Up pops a panel on the screen. It's a blur to me, but Michael, without so much as squinting, says, "Sosa, two-for-three with a double and a home run." Imagine how the rim looks to someone with vision like that.

[Q] Playboy: How long has it been since you've seen O.J. Simpson?

[A] Michaels: Five or six years. I wasn't one of O.J.'s party friends, but we worked together a lot at ABC. We were pals. I knew his wife Nicole very well. And no, I never saw an explosive or violent side of O.J.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think he killed Nicole and Ron Goldman?

[A] Michaels: The evidence seems to indicate he did. For a while I was doubtful about the timeline. I had made enough trips with O.J. to know he had a certain traveling anxiety. He'd figure out how long it would take to pack, when we should leave for the airport—lots of worrying and planning. So when that story broke I had a different reaction from anyone else. But as it all plays out, the evidence against him looks overwhelming.

[Q] Playboy: NFL coaches—they're robots, aren't they?

[A] Michaels: They're like CEOs. They're intelligent, organized and interested in control. I deal with them on a weekly basis. During the week before a Monday night game I'll meet with both coaches. We talk strategy, but they know I won't discuss what I know before the game. The point is that as a strategy plays out I can say, "This is what he's been working on all week."

[Q] Playboy: Are they more secretive before big games?

[A] Michaels: I've done four Super Bowls. The first was Denver and Washington, Dan Reeves and Joe Gibbs. Dan was straight with me. Joe played it closer to the vest. My second Super Bowl was Giants–Bills, with Parcells and Mary Levy. Marv's the best, but Parcells was secretive. He'd even throw you a curveball.

[Q] Playboy: He'd lie to you.

[A] Michaels: He would say a player was healthy and then the guy wouldn't play.

[Q] Playboy: Because he thought you'd leak the news?

[A] Michaels: No, it's just a power trip. "I'm controlling the information." I think Bill saw things differently when he went from the Giants to NBC.

[Q] Playboy: Who's your favorite player?

[A] Michaels: Brett Favre isn't just an MVP, he's a joy to watch because he's so expressive. And tough? He's a guy who keeps sticking his head in the middle of the action to own the record for consecutive starts by a quarterback. That's phenomenal. Randy Moss is wonderful to watch—nobody can do more from the wide-receiver position—but we all know the baggage he brings. He says that he doesn't run hard all the time; he wants to conserve his energy. But did Jerry Rice conserve his energy? Did Steve Young?

[Q] Playboy: You're sounding nostalgic.

[A] Michaels: I'm not. I recognize that today's athletes are better than ever. I like the guys who go all out, that's all.

[Q] Playboy: What's your most memorable blooper?

[A] Michaels: Reds on the radio. One night we're playing our Triple-A affiliate in Indianapolis. I tape my pregame show with Sparky Anderson and give our tape recorder to my partner Joe Nuxhall, who's still in the Reds radio booth today. But Joe thought his career was over that night. He tapes his "Turfside" show by the batting cage, gives the tape to me and I hand it to our engineer. Now it's 25 minutes before the game. I take a walk with my transistor radio and pick up our station, WLW, clear as a bell. Joe's show comes on and I hear this: "Hi, everybody, this is Joe Nuxhall. The Reds are in Indianapolis playing their Triple-A—get out of here, you son of a bitch, you cocksucker. Five, four, three, two, one. Hi, everybody, this is Joe Nuxhall." Mother of God, he didn't erase his original tape. Nuxie comes bounding up the stairs and I say, "Joe, we've got a little problem." When he hears it, he's suicidal. He's sure he'll be fired. Sure enough, we get a call from Dick Wagner, the club president. Get back to Cincinnati. Meet Mr. Wagner in his office. Now, Wagner had an impish quality even though he was a prick. I could tell he thought this was cool, but he had to crack down. "Tonight," he says, "you're going to apologize." Joe breathes this huge sigh of relief—he's saved! But that night he says, "Geez, Al, I don't know what to say." I said, "Joe, it's simple. You say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I am very sorry I said cocksucker.' "

[Q] Playboy: Nuxhall pitched for the Reds in 1944, when he was 15—the youngest player in big league history. Now he's 74, still signing off with his trademark line, "Here's the old left-hander——

[A] Michaels: "Rounding third and heading for home." Nuxie wasn't sure he'd get home safe that night.

[Q] Playboy: Your Emmy awards—where do you keep them?

[A] Michaels: At home. They're in closets.

[Q] Playboy: With coats and hats and the Emmy you won for your work that night with Ted Koppel?

[A] Michaels: It's not that I'm unappreciative. But I've been in TV long enough to see people accepting Emmys who are basically banana peels. Everyone who worked with them says, "That guy was in the way. We had to avoid slipping on that banana peel, and he gets the Emmy."

[Q] Playboy: We've heard some stories about your IQ.

[A] Michaels: Don't believe them.

[Q] Playboy: How high is it?

[A] Michaels: I don't know, but the trend is worrisome. My golf handicap's going up, my IQ is going down.