You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (20 page)

Cosell and I worked together on a number of
Monday Night Baseball
games in the late seventies, and then our pairing became more regular in 1981. This was the year that the players went on strike in the middle of the season. Days before the work stoppage, we were in Kansas City, where the Yankees would be playing a Monday night against the Royals. Howard and I both arrived at the Alameda Plaza Hotel on Sunday afternoon. The phone rang in my room, and I heard that familiar, unmistakable voice.

“Alfalfa.
What
are you doing?”

Of course it was Howard calling, using the nickname that Bob Uecker had originally conferred on me. Howard had stolen the moniker and began to believe that he had copyrighted it.

“Nothing,” I said. “What’s up?”

“DINN-uh,” he growled. “Let’s go to the Savoy Grill for DINN-uh.”

And so a half hour later, we were walking into the Savoy Grill—Howard wearing that hideous yellow jacket, as usual. And par for the course, Howard consumed at least four or five glasses of vodka on the rocks before the food ever came. Howard could hold his liquor very well, but by the end of dinner, he’d had an aquarium’s worth.

In those years, the so-called golden years of ABC Sports, ground travel was exclusively by limousine. And in Kansas City, the one company that ABC had utilized for years not only had basic limos, but they were stark white and twice the average size. We also had a regular driver in Kansas City—a woman in her mid-fifties named Peggy, who had been driving ABC personnel for years.

Howard and I finished dinner at around 8:45, and as we walked outside the Savoy, it was still twilight. We got into the backseat as Peggy began to drive us back to the hotel through local surface streets. The route took us through a gritty, inner-city section of Kansas City, and soon we came to a traffic light. On the sidewalk to our left, we saw two kids, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, in the middle of a serious fistfight, surrounded by a knot of other teenagers egging them on.

Suddenly, Howard opened his door and began to get out of the limo. Peggy screamed, “Mr. Cosell! Mr. Cosell! No!” I tried to grab him. It was too late. He was out of the car and onto the sidewalk.

At this point in my life, I have a wife, an eleven-year-old son, and a seven-year-old daughter. Worst-case scenarios start racing through my mind.
If they jump him, am I really going to fight a pack of teenagers to stick up for Howard Cosell? Do I tell Peggy to drive away as fast as she can?
There are no cell phones in 1981—you can’t call a cop.

So now, Howard is standing on the corner—signature toupee on his head, cigar dangling from his mouth, ridiculous yellow blazer making him impossible not to notice. Suddenly the fight stops. The kids are looking at him, dumbfounded—each wearing this look of suspended animation, eyes and mouths wide open. They’re incredulous. It’s as if everyone, in unison, is saying, “WHAT THE #%$*^&!”

Howard certainly had their attention. And then, he began to speak. Feel free to do your own imitation of his voice here in your head. “Now LISTEN. It’s quite apparent to this TRAINED observer that the young southpaw does NOT have a jab REQUISITE for the continuation of this fray. Furthermore, his opponent is a man of INFERIOR and DIMINISHING skills. This confrontation is halted POSTHASTE!”

Total silence followed. Then came the moment of truth. “Howard Cosell? Howard Cosell!” one kid said. An instant later, they were all dancing around him like he was a maypole. Somehow, a pen got produced and the next thing you know, Howard was signing autographs and patting the kids on their heads.

Real life had been officially suspended.

Howard then got back into the limo, closed the door, and leaned back against the headrest with total satisfaction. Peggy was still in a state halfway between shock and disbelief. I was just happy to be alive.

What Peggy and I had just borne witness to was so insanely surreal that we were rendered temporarily speechless.

Peggy then drove off, and about a block down the street, she looked back at Howard through the rearview mirror.

“Mr. Cosell,” she said. “Excuse me, but I have to tell you something. I have been driving for twenty-five years. I thought I had seen
everything
! I have never seen
anything
like that.”

Howard took a long, deep drag on his cigar. He looked straight ahead.

“Pegaroo,” he said. “Just remember one thing. I
know
who I am.”

OFTEN WHEN HOWARD AND
I worked baseball together, we were joined in the booth by Bob Uecker. The concept was that Uecker was supposed to play the role of Don Meredith for the
Monday Night Baseball
telecasts. Johnny Carson, who had brought Uecker on as a guest close to a hundred times, once said that Bob might just be the single funniest man ever. He’s certainly in the argument. To this day, almost anything out of Bob Uecker’s mouth makes you belly-laugh.

Uecker has always had a collection of great lines, a lot them revolving around how inept a player Bob was during his career in the sixties. (“I signed with the Milwaukee Brewers for $3,000. That bothered my dad at the time because he didn’t have that kind of money.” Or, “I hit a grand slam off Ron Herbel and when his manager, Herman Franks, came out to get him, he brought Herbel’s suitcase.”) And Uecker’s always been quick with a rejoinder. That came in particularly handy when he was in the booth with Cosell.

Howard’s knowledge of baseball could probably best be described as shallow. He thought he knew everything about the game, but he really knew very little. If Cosell was in the booth for a Monday night Yankee game in May, with the opposing team leading 8–1 in the third inning, he might be expected to say that the Yanks should bring in Goose Gossage to put out the fire. There was little use explaining to Howard that, no, in the third inning, with the Yankees trailing by seven, it would border on insanity to call on their best reliever, a pitcher who would end up in the Hall of Fame. To Howard, the conventional analyst was just another dumb jock. He was Howard Cosell! He knew better.

In the early eighties, the three of us were doing a game at the Astrodome in Houston. At one point, late in the game, Cosell, as he was wont to do, called for a bunt, even though it was a situation in which no one would
ever
bunt. Uecker wanted to mildly chide Howard, but knew he had to be careful. “Well, Howard, I’m not really sure you want to bunt here,” Uecker said gently. And he went on to explain why.

Howard responded (and again, try to hear how Howard would articulate this in your brain), “Uecky, I get your point. But you don’t have to be so truculent. You
do
know what truculent means, don’t you?”

Uecker didn’t miss a beat. “Of course, Howard. If you had a truck and I borrowed it, it would be a
truck
-u-lent.”

Uecker didn’t need a Howard setup to come up with the perfect line. He could also use me as his straight man. Another time, we were talking about Charlie Finley, the eccentric owner of the Oakland A’s, and his proposal to manufacture all baseballs the same yellowish orange color as tennis balls. The idea was that the brighter baseballs would be easier for the fans to follow.

“It’ll never work,” Bob said flatly.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because,” he said in total deadpan, “they could never find enough diseased horses.”

NOW IT’S THE LAST
weekend of the 1982 baseball season. Three teams were still in contention to win the National League West and make the playoffs: the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Braves. Atlanta held the trump card—while the Dodgers were playing the Giants in San Francisco, the outcome wouldn’t matter if the Braves beat the Padres in San Diego—which they did. So Atlanta (managed by Joe Torre) won the division and advanced.

Cosell and I were set to work the National League Championship Series that year, and the third spot in the booth was still to be determined. Roone Arledge was always very big on bringing in someone of the moment, someone topical, someone in the news. So that Sunday night, the call went out from ABC to Tommy Lasorda. Lasorda had come a long way since his days as the manager of the Spokane Indians in the Pacific Coast League—he’d won three pennants with the Dodgers, and a World Series title the previous season. But now, with his club eliminated from the playoffs, would he be interested in a brief sojourn into broadcasting? The answer was yes.

Since he’d “discovered” me in Hawaii, Tommy and I had crossed paths countless times over my years with the Reds, the Giants, and ABC. Now we’re together in St. Louis for the National League playoffs. It’s the Cardinals versus the Braves. It’s baseball in October. Beautiful. Except that Tommy was very nervous. Frankly, he looked petrified. As we rehearsed the opening segment, I had to keep telling him, “Tommy, it’ll be okay, you’ll be fine.”

Cosell opened up the telecast. Then he brought me in. And then I brought Tommy in. We talked with him about the two teams.
The Cardinals do this, the Braves do that. Here are their strengths and weaknesses.
So far, so good. Then Cosell is ready to take us to a commercial. But before he does—and I’m going to paraphrase here, but not by much—Howard says, “Okay, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch are the children of the late Cardinals third baseman, Kenny Boyer, who succumbed a fortnight ago, at the age of fifty-one, to the ravages of lung cancer. Kenny Boyer fought that insidious disease tooth and nail to the very end. He went to Mexico for laetrile treatments and absorbed more radiation than anyone thought could be humanly possible.

“So when you look at the long and storied history of the St. Louis Cardinal franchise, you can go back and you can have your Rogers Hornsby. You can have your Joseph ‘Ducky’ Medwick and Jerome ‘Dizzy’ Dean, as well. You can take Albert ‘Red’ Schoendienst and, yes, even the Man himself, Stanley Frank Musial of Donora, Pennsylvania.

“Because when it comes to the embodiment of the St. Louis Cardinals franchise, look no further than the countenance of one Kenton Lloyd Boyer. He was a man’s man. And we’ll miss him.”

Howard then lowered his voice another notch. “We’ll be back after this.”

Know this about Howard. There was nothing he loved more than delivering a eulogy. He would affect a “half-mast” voice. Didn’t matter who it was. Cosell wanted to show you how much he knew about the deceased and how well he could put their life into context.

We went to commercial. We turned around. I was sitting on the left facing the field, Howard was in the middle, and Tommy was on the right. We had been using hand mikes—and now we were putting our headsets on. I started jotting something down in my scorebook. Howard, of course, was preening after delivering his Boyer tribute.

Then, I thought I heard sniffling in my headset. Then I heard it again. I looked over at Lasorda—his eyes were moist and I saw little rivulets running down his cheeks. Howard saw it, too, and said, “Tommy! What’s the matter?”

Tommy’s voice was breaking and he said, “Howard, in the minors, I actually roomed for half a season with Kenny Boyer. I loved him. He was one of my dearest friends. What a man. A tremendous man. Howard, I’ve never heard a eulogy like that. Only you could do it. That was just beautiful.”

There were a few seconds until we were back on the air. Cosell leaned back. He had the cigar going. He looks at Lasorda and then says, “Hey, Tommy, just understand one thing. Kenny Boyer was a
prick
!”

It was quintessential Cosell. Show everyone how smart you are, show that you know every player’s middle name—“Stanley Frank Musial, Kenton Lloyd Boyer”—and just make it part of the show.

But it actually calmed Lasorda down. And we went on with the game.

IN 1984, COSELL AND
I were in San Francisco to broadcast the baseball All-Star Game. Earl Weaver, who had retired as the manager of the Orioles two years earlier, would join us in the booth. Jim Palmer would be doing dugout interviews. Since Earl had managed in the American League exclusively, he’d not had the pleasure of visiting the dump that was Candlestick Park. It’s the day before the game, and the three of us go out to Candlestick for a meeting and to talk to some players. Afterward, in the limo back to the hotel, were Cosell, Weaver, myself, Palmer, and Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau. Few people could curse a blue streak in the mold of Earl Weaver. Every third word might be something you wouldn’t find in
Webster’s.
And this was Earl in the limo:
Jesus Christ, I’ve never been to a colder fucking place in my life. It’s the middle of fucking summer. The wind is blowing forty miles an hour. It feels like it’s twelve goddamn degrees. Who built this piece of crap?

As Earl is ranting, Howard has his eyes closed, and clearly has no interest in any part of the conversation. Or, at this point in his career and life, in any conversation. Howard was worn-out. He didn’t want to be with any of us, and we didn’t particularly want to be with him. Meanwhile, having worked at Candlestick for several years, I explained it all to Earl.
Back in the fifties, the mayor, George Christopher, knew this developer, Charlie Harney. When the Giants came out here from New York, they needed a new stadium. Harney had this piece of land. What else was he going to do with it? It was basically worthless. He and Christopher were in cahoots. Who knows who got paid what to do what, but it’s really simple. Candlestick Park is a monument to political chicanery.

Howard appeared oblivious.

The All-Star Game is the next night. The telecast wasn’t more than a few minutes old when Howard said, as I recall, over a blimp shot, “You’re looking at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Some would say it’s a monument to political chicanery. Nevertheless, it is the site of tonight’s All-Star Game . . . .”

Howard Cosell could be a lot of things. He could even be a parrot.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about Earl Weaver here. Apart from a lifetime membership in the Profanity Hall of Fame, he was a lovable crank. I’d first gotten to know him when I was covering the 1979 World Series for ABC. Earl’s Orioles were facing the “We Are Family” Pirates. The Pirates were managed by Chuck Tanner, who, a decade earlier, had been a good friend and mentor as the manager of the Hawaii Islanders.