Conversation between LPN and Al Micheals revisiting the 1980 hockey game
THE LAKE PLACID NEWS: Why do a special program about the 1980 Olympic hockey team, and could you tell us a little about it?
AL MICHAELS: It’s in conjunction with NBC’s coverage of Vancouver, the Olympic Games coming up in February, and 30th anniversaries are always very special. This is a story that can’t be told enough. People love to hear it. Most of the people that I know never get tired of hearing about this. And I think (the upcoming program), it’s just a great way to look back and remember something that was so extraordinary and so special that it’s lived through time like no other sports event I can think of. When you look at all the events that took place in the 20th century in American sports, it’s number one and I think whatever number two is, is a far, distant second. This (program) will be part and parcel of our coverage of the Olympics.
LPN: So were some of the players here?
AM: Mike Eruzione was here, Mark Johnson was here, and Jim Craig was here. We had a great reunion, and we taped it all too, so that was great.
LPN: So this program is something you and the players were eager to do?
AM: Very much so. There’s a special bond. I feel very fortunate to have been pretty much embraced by the team. I didn’t play, so don’t credit me with any of the things that they accomplished, but they’ve been great about including me in a lot of their reunions and golf events. I’ve stayed very close to Mike and Jim in particular through the years, and I’ve run into a lot of guys as well from time to time. We all got together when they had the premiere of the movie “Miracle” about four or five years ago, so most of us got together then. I’m kind of like the unofficial mascot for those guys. It’s always good to see them.
LPN: What is it like when you reunite with one or more of those players for the 1980 team?
AM: When you share something like that with people, it’s always a very joyous occasion. And they’re great guys. You’ve got that bond and no one can ever take that away from you. So when you’re a part in any way of something like that, it’s just wonderful. It was one of those rare moments in time when an entire country just felt a lot better about itself, and (the 1980 hockey team) created that. So you know when you get together, you’re going to have good times.
LPN: What’s it like for you to return to Lake Placid, and do you still feel that “magic” feeling coming back?
AM: Yeah, there’s no question. This is only the second time I’ve been back since the Olympics, but sure. Driving in last night at three o’clock in the morning, I said, “Oh boy! This was something and a huge part of my life, and obviously the player’s lives, the people who were here during the Olympics.” So when you come into town, you know they say “returning to the scene of the crime,” but this was like returning to the scene of a great joyous event. Last time I came back, which was in ‘92, I felt the same way. It was kind of emotional because I hadn’t been here in 12 years ... and just to revisit it and walk into the building (1980 arena) and think about what took place woke up a lot of echoes.
LPN: Was 1980 your first visit to Lake Placid?
AM: Yes.
LPN: What was your impression?
AM: I kind of knew a lot about it and since Lake Placid had hosted the 1932 Games — I wasn’t around for that — I had studied a lot of Olympic history and I knew how unusual it was to have an Olympics Games in a setting like this. I knew plenty about Lake Placid. It wasn’t a surprise. I knew I was coming into a small town, quaint, pretty. It was exciting coming into a place where you know you were going to spend two weeks as part of a coverage team for the Olympics.
LPN: No one really talks too much about the Soviets. But after the game, did you have any interaction with them? Did you feel that the Soviets had a sense of just how historic that moment was?
AM: I didn’t have any interaction with them after the game ... there was a language barrier. We had a couple of liaisons people we dealt with to get information about their hockey team. I don’t want to say they were amused by what happened, but I think they were intrigued by the reaction of the U.S. team ... how excited they were. (The Soviets) were a very unemotional team, and probably reflective of their society at that point. The Soviet Union was not the happiest place on earth; it wasn’t Disneyland. When the U.S. team reacted with unrestrained joy, I remember the looks on some of their player’s faces as if to say “Wow, look at those guys. They’re having a great time.” I always wondered if some of those guys were thinking to themselves “Man, I wish we could’ve or should’ve reacted like that when we won.” But they won so often it wasn’t that big a deal for them.
LPN: I would imagine that you’re not as much of a household name in the former Soviet Union?
AM: I wouldn’t think so ... I guess when they’d look at me, if they even knew who I was, they might think of me as “Do you believe in debacles?”
LPN: Do you think the Miracle on Ice will ever lose its magic, and why do you think that moment is so engrained in sports history?
AM: I don’t think it will lose its magic, certainly not in our lifetime. Now, most of the people in this country are of an age either not born to see this or too young to really understand what took place. But it’s like anything great in history that’s passed down. I run into a lot of 45-to-50-year-old fathers with maybe 10 or 12-year-old sons, and they’ll come up and start to talk about it, and you can tell they’ve already engrained in their son or daughter the story of Lake Placid.
I think the HBO documentary was terrific. I thought the movie (Miracle), even though it wasn’t a documentary, brought a whole new generation into play in terms of what took place and an understanding of how important it was. Not that we’d ever want to have a Cold War with anybody, and obviously there are enough problems in the world right now, but when you consider everything going on at that time, I don’t think you could ever recreate anything like this, so I think it’s going to live forever because of that .. and also because it was a tremendous upset.
Just on a sports sense alone, if you took everything else out of the equation and just reduced it to sports, it was a gigantic upset. It was something that couldn’t have happened, and it did. And it happened in the home country of the team that was able to pull it off. To this day, everyone that I talk to is very excited to talk about it, can’t hear enough stories and has a smile on their face. I don’t know if it will last forever, but it will last for a long, long time.
LPN: You’ve been a professional broadcaster for many years. In 1969 most people think about the Mets, but you were Hawaii’s “Sportscaster of the Year” that year, correct?
AM: Right. That was a miracle too!
LPN: You began covering regional NFL games in 1971 for NBC and had a taste of “big games.” The 1972 National League Championship Series (Reds-Pirates), and even covered hockey games in the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan.
AM: One game — right.
LPN: And I know about your role on Hawaii Five-O. Do you remember working with Christopher Walken on the episode you were in?
AM: I don’t remember him; I know that he was in the scene with me. I remember working with Jack Lord. He was in the scene with me too. And he had (the scene) cut. I thought I had done something bad, maybe screwed up my lines and was going to get fired from a job that was going to pay me $25. It’s funny to think back upon that and also to know that once every four months in my mailbox a residual check shows up ... the last one I got was for $1.76, and that’s before taxes.
LPN: Then the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid came along. How did those games influence and alter your career?
AM: Obviously for the positive. I was on kind of a fast-track and it worked out very well to get the assignment here. In terms of a career move, what it meant ... obviously all good things. The irony was that I had done the World Series in 1979 just a few months before, and then after Lake Placid, I’d be in an airport going to a baseball game the following year, and people would come up and ask: “Hey, you do baseball too?” And I’d say, “Like, yeah!” They were thinking about me as the Olympic announcer. It was great.
All things considered, I don’t know how (my) career would be different ... the best thing about it is that it’s a wonderful calling card. It’s something that’s attached to you for the rest of your life. Attached to the players for the rest of their lives, to have been in some way a part of what took place here, I couldn’t think of a better thing to have attached to your name in terms of your profession.
LPN: What was the greatest moment you’ve ever had as a broadcaster?
AM: Oh, there’s not even a question about it (being the Miracle on Ice). Number two would be a far distant second, and that might be the Angels-Red Sox (playoff) game 5 in 1986 ... the last Super Bowl was pretty good too. But this stands alone; it won’t be topped. You can’t even dream of something that’s going to beat it. This is number one, and will be forever for me; it’s not even close.
LPN: I understand you will be the host for NBC’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, correct?
AM: Daytime and weekend. Bob Costas still hosts prime time.
LPN: With those Games right around the corner, obviously, since NHL players now compose most Olympic hockey teams, a team such as the 1980 team will never represent the U.S. again. First, can you share your thoughts on that, and secondly, do you ever think there will be another moment like the Miracle on Ice?
AM: No, I don’t think there will ever be another moment like that. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to hockey in the Olympics. There’s talk of not having professionals down the line, but I don’t know. The way the Olympics have evolved, I think it was good to have the best players in the world, professional or amateur, compete. But (the Olympics are) all professional, it’s all based revenue, it’s all based on money. Not that it wasn’t in 1980; there wasn’t a clear line of demarkation.
The U.S. team was an amateur team, but for the Soviets that was their profession. They might have well been in the NHL. When it come to the future, I can’t predict what’s going to happen, but you’re never going to have this (Miracle) happen again.
LPN: There are few sports moments that are recaptured in an announcer’s call. For example with Bobby Thompson’s home run in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, one can connect that game with the call of “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” So connected is your phrase “Do you Believe in Miracles? Yes!” Can you share your thoughts on what it means to you to be so connected to that event?
AM: First of all, I was very lucky that the words came to my mind. I had no idea when I said those words that the phrase would live on. It was a way to end the game and sort of put a punctuation mark on the game. I had no conception at that point as the clock wound down. The luck part was that the puck came to center ice with about six seconds to go, so I didn’t have to call the actual play-by-play.
I was working in such an intense state of concentration at the end of the game. The Soviets were putting pressure on Jim Craig ... and you don’t want the game to end and you’re saying something and they’re scoring. I had to be true to the craft of play-by-play. When the puck came out it gave me those few seconds, and thank God those words came into my head. But I had no idea what they would mean and how they would play out over time. Was it better than counting down the clock? I don’t know. That was one of those things that was serendipitous. You look back now and say, “Wow, that worked.” It’s just having the right thing come out at the right time.
Some people think that line was so good, that he had to have thought of that before-hand. Are you kidding me? Number one, I didn’t think we had a chance to win the game. And number two, I couldn’t have come up with that before-hand. See, the great thing about this business is, the best calls are the ones that are spontaneous. Because if you sound like you’ve thought about it, it will just sound like it was scripted ... and will never resonate in time. Again, I was real lucky.
LPN: Looking back, is there an “untold story” or antidote that stands out in your memory about those Games or the Miracle?
AM: There were a lot of things that took place, but they were all secondary. I think people forget about two things. They forget about the fact that the Soviets outshot the U.S. 39-16 in that game. So the Soviets really dominated. The U.S. overcame three deficits. They were able to answer each of those goals. A one-goal game is one kind of a game, but a two-goal game against those guys, and I think your chances of winning are next to zero.
And the other thing is that people, even though they know the story, keep forgetting they still had to win a game on Sunday (for the gold against Finland). It was 11 o’clock in the morning. We wouldn’t be doing this interview today if they would have lost that game.
LPN: Do you still have your copy of the Lake Placid News from the 1980s and the Miracle on Ice?
AM: You know, I don’t, but if you could send me one, that would be fantastic. I’d appreciate it. There were so few newspapers to be had at that time. When I got down the following morning, they were all sold out.
LPN: I’ll see if I could find one.
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AL MICHAELS: It’s in conjunction with NBC’s coverage of Vancouver, the Olympic Games coming up in February, and 30th anniversaries are always very special. This is a story that can’t be told enough. People love to hear it. Most of the people that I know never get tired of hearing about this. And I think (the upcoming program), it’s just a great way to look back and remember something that was so extraordinary and so special that it’s lived through time like no other sports event I can think of. When you look at all the events that took place in the 20th century in American sports, it’s number one and I think whatever number two is, is a far, distant second. This (program) will be part and parcel of our coverage of the Olympics.
LPN: So were some of the players here?
AM: Mike Eruzione was here, Mark Johnson was here, and Jim Craig was here. We had a great reunion, and we taped it all too, so that was great.
LPN: So this program is something you and the players were eager to do?
AM: Very much so. There’s a special bond. I feel very fortunate to have been pretty much embraced by the team. I didn’t play, so don’t credit me with any of the things that they accomplished, but they’ve been great about including me in a lot of their reunions and golf events. I’ve stayed very close to Mike and Jim in particular through the years, and I’ve run into a lot of guys as well from time to time. We all got together when they had the premiere of the movie “Miracle” about four or five years ago, so most of us got together then. I’m kind of like the unofficial mascot for those guys. It’s always good to see them.
LPN: What is it like when you reunite with one or more of those players for the 1980 team?
AM: When you share something like that with people, it’s always a very joyous occasion. And they’re great guys. You’ve got that bond and no one can ever take that away from you. So when you’re a part in any way of something like that, it’s just wonderful. It was one of those rare moments in time when an entire country just felt a lot better about itself, and (the 1980 hockey team) created that. So you know when you get together, you’re going to have good times.
LPN: What’s it like for you to return to Lake Placid, and do you still feel that “magic” feeling coming back?
AM: Yeah, there’s no question. This is only the second time I’ve been back since the Olympics, but sure. Driving in last night at three o’clock in the morning, I said, “Oh boy! This was something and a huge part of my life, and obviously the player’s lives, the people who were here during the Olympics.” So when you come into town, you know they say “returning to the scene of the crime,” but this was like returning to the scene of a great joyous event. Last time I came back, which was in ‘92, I felt the same way. It was kind of emotional because I hadn’t been here in 12 years ... and just to revisit it and walk into the building (1980 arena) and think about what took place woke up a lot of echoes.
LPN: Was 1980 your first visit to Lake Placid?
AM: Yes.
LPN: What was your impression?
AM: I kind of knew a lot about it and since Lake Placid had hosted the 1932 Games — I wasn’t around for that — I had studied a lot of Olympic history and I knew how unusual it was to have an Olympics Games in a setting like this. I knew plenty about Lake Placid. It wasn’t a surprise. I knew I was coming into a small town, quaint, pretty. It was exciting coming into a place where you know you were going to spend two weeks as part of a coverage team for the Olympics.
LPN: No one really talks too much about the Soviets. But after the game, did you have any interaction with them? Did you feel that the Soviets had a sense of just how historic that moment was?
AM: I didn’t have any interaction with them after the game ... there was a language barrier. We had a couple of liaisons people we dealt with to get information about their hockey team. I don’t want to say they were amused by what happened, but I think they were intrigued by the reaction of the U.S. team ... how excited they were. (The Soviets) were a very unemotional team, and probably reflective of their society at that point. The Soviet Union was not the happiest place on earth; it wasn’t Disneyland. When the U.S. team reacted with unrestrained joy, I remember the looks on some of their player’s faces as if to say “Wow, look at those guys. They’re having a great time.” I always wondered if some of those guys were thinking to themselves “Man, I wish we could’ve or should’ve reacted like that when we won.” But they won so often it wasn’t that big a deal for them.
LPN: I would imagine that you’re not as much of a household name in the former Soviet Union?
AM: I wouldn’t think so ... I guess when they’d look at me, if they even knew who I was, they might think of me as “Do you believe in debacles?”
LPN: Do you think the Miracle on Ice will ever lose its magic, and why do you think that moment is so engrained in sports history?
AM: I don’t think it will lose its magic, certainly not in our lifetime. Now, most of the people in this country are of an age either not born to see this or too young to really understand what took place. But it’s like anything great in history that’s passed down. I run into a lot of 45-to-50-year-old fathers with maybe 10 or 12-year-old sons, and they’ll come up and start to talk about it, and you can tell they’ve already engrained in their son or daughter the story of Lake Placid.
I think the HBO documentary was terrific. I thought the movie (Miracle), even though it wasn’t a documentary, brought a whole new generation into play in terms of what took place and an understanding of how important it was. Not that we’d ever want to have a Cold War with anybody, and obviously there are enough problems in the world right now, but when you consider everything going on at that time, I don’t think you could ever recreate anything like this, so I think it’s going to live forever because of that .. and also because it was a tremendous upset.
Just on a sports sense alone, if you took everything else out of the equation and just reduced it to sports, it was a gigantic upset. It was something that couldn’t have happened, and it did. And it happened in the home country of the team that was able to pull it off. To this day, everyone that I talk to is very excited to talk about it, can’t hear enough stories and has a smile on their face. I don’t know if it will last forever, but it will last for a long, long time.
LPN: You’ve been a professional broadcaster for many years. In 1969 most people think about the Mets, but you were Hawaii’s “Sportscaster of the Year” that year, correct?
AM: Right. That was a miracle too!
LPN: You began covering regional NFL games in 1971 for NBC and had a taste of “big games.” The 1972 National League Championship Series (Reds-Pirates), and even covered hockey games in the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan.
AM: One game — right.
LPN: And I know about your role on Hawaii Five-O. Do you remember working with Christopher Walken on the episode you were in?
AM: I don’t remember him; I know that he was in the scene with me. I remember working with Jack Lord. He was in the scene with me too. And he had (the scene) cut. I thought I had done something bad, maybe screwed up my lines and was going to get fired from a job that was going to pay me $25. It’s funny to think back upon that and also to know that once every four months in my mailbox a residual check shows up ... the last one I got was for $1.76, and that’s before taxes.
LPN: Then the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid came along. How did those games influence and alter your career?
AM: Obviously for the positive. I was on kind of a fast-track and it worked out very well to get the assignment here. In terms of a career move, what it meant ... obviously all good things. The irony was that I had done the World Series in 1979 just a few months before, and then after Lake Placid, I’d be in an airport going to a baseball game the following year, and people would come up and ask: “Hey, you do baseball too?” And I’d say, “Like, yeah!” They were thinking about me as the Olympic announcer. It was great.
All things considered, I don’t know how (my) career would be different ... the best thing about it is that it’s a wonderful calling card. It’s something that’s attached to you for the rest of your life. Attached to the players for the rest of their lives, to have been in some way a part of what took place here, I couldn’t think of a better thing to have attached to your name in terms of your profession.
LPN: What was the greatest moment you’ve ever had as a broadcaster?
AM: Oh, there’s not even a question about it (being the Miracle on Ice). Number two would be a far distant second, and that might be the Angels-Red Sox (playoff) game 5 in 1986 ... the last Super Bowl was pretty good too. But this stands alone; it won’t be topped. You can’t even dream of something that’s going to beat it. This is number one, and will be forever for me; it’s not even close.
LPN: I understand you will be the host for NBC’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, correct?
AM: Daytime and weekend. Bob Costas still hosts prime time.
LPN: With those Games right around the corner, obviously, since NHL players now compose most Olympic hockey teams, a team such as the 1980 team will never represent the U.S. again. First, can you share your thoughts on that, and secondly, do you ever think there will be another moment like the Miracle on Ice?
AM: No, I don’t think there will ever be another moment like that. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to hockey in the Olympics. There’s talk of not having professionals down the line, but I don’t know. The way the Olympics have evolved, I think it was good to have the best players in the world, professional or amateur, compete. But (the Olympics are) all professional, it’s all based revenue, it’s all based on money. Not that it wasn’t in 1980; there wasn’t a clear line of demarkation.
The U.S. team was an amateur team, but for the Soviets that was their profession. They might have well been in the NHL. When it come to the future, I can’t predict what’s going to happen, but you’re never going to have this (Miracle) happen again.
LPN: There are few sports moments that are recaptured in an announcer’s call. For example with Bobby Thompson’s home run in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, one can connect that game with the call of “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” So connected is your phrase “Do you Believe in Miracles? Yes!” Can you share your thoughts on what it means to you to be so connected to that event?
AM: First of all, I was very lucky that the words came to my mind. I had no idea when I said those words that the phrase would live on. It was a way to end the game and sort of put a punctuation mark on the game. I had no conception at that point as the clock wound down. The luck part was that the puck came to center ice with about six seconds to go, so I didn’t have to call the actual play-by-play.
I was working in such an intense state of concentration at the end of the game. The Soviets were putting pressure on Jim Craig ... and you don’t want the game to end and you’re saying something and they’re scoring. I had to be true to the craft of play-by-play. When the puck came out it gave me those few seconds, and thank God those words came into my head. But I had no idea what they would mean and how they would play out over time. Was it better than counting down the clock? I don’t know. That was one of those things that was serendipitous. You look back now and say, “Wow, that worked.” It’s just having the right thing come out at the right time.
Some people think that line was so good, that he had to have thought of that before-hand. Are you kidding me? Number one, I didn’t think we had a chance to win the game. And number two, I couldn’t have come up with that before-hand. See, the great thing about this business is, the best calls are the ones that are spontaneous. Because if you sound like you’ve thought about it, it will just sound like it was scripted ... and will never resonate in time. Again, I was real lucky.
LPN: Looking back, is there an “untold story” or antidote that stands out in your memory about those Games or the Miracle?
AM: There were a lot of things that took place, but they were all secondary. I think people forget about two things. They forget about the fact that the Soviets outshot the U.S. 39-16 in that game. So the Soviets really dominated. The U.S. overcame three deficits. They were able to answer each of those goals. A one-goal game is one kind of a game, but a two-goal game against those guys, and I think your chances of winning are next to zero.
And the other thing is that people, even though they know the story, keep forgetting they still had to win a game on Sunday (for the gold against Finland). It was 11 o’clock in the morning. We wouldn’t be doing this interview today if they would have lost that game.
LPN: Do you still have your copy of the Lake Placid News from the 1980s and the Miracle on Ice?
AM: You know, I don’t, but if you could send me one, that would be fantastic. I’d appreciate it. There were so few newspapers to be had at that time. When I got down the following morning, they were all sold out.
LPN: I’ll see if I could find one.
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