Mike Emrick’s connection to hockey is so strong — and his play-by-play so vivid — that it may be surprising that he has such a strong love for baseball.
But Emrick, 69, grew up listening to the
Pittsburgh Pirates on KDKA Radio, with Bob Prince on the microphone; played baseball in tiny, rural La Fontaine, Ind., where 200 or 300 people would turn out for Little League games; and looked up to baseball coaches as his heroes. And on Aug. 9, 1959, he, his parents, his older brother Dan, and another family drove four hours in a station wagon to Forbes Field and saw the Pirates play the
Chicago Cubs. It was the first major league game that Emrick attended, in general-admission seats behind home plate.
“If anything could follow up on the radio appeal of the Pirates, it was seeing Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski play in person and see Elroy Face’s 15th win,” he said. “He was 15-0.”
Face was on his way to an 18-1 season, all in relief.
Emrick kept that scorecard.
Fifty-seven years later, Emrick will call a game with
Bob Costas for M.L.B. Network when the Cubs play the Pirates on July 8 at PNC Park.
Costas, an NBC colleague of Emrick’s, contacted him late last year, after he learned of Emrick’s bucket-list desire to call one inning of a Pirates game during a segment of “Real Sports” on HBO.
“I said, ‘Look, if you want to call a baseball game, we can make it happen,’ ” Costas said.
Emrick is a hockey broadcasting star. He calls the game at a feverish pace, using a wildly creative glossary of verbs (where pucks are feathered, acked, paddled, skittered or pinwheeled) and tossing in stories and rule explanations. He is not worried about slowing his rhythm. The main challenge, Emrick said, will be to focus on the field from the somewhat distant perch at PNC Park and not to keep looking at the monitor beside him.
“I just want to make sure that what I do is at least at M.L.B. Network level — maybe the bottom of the bar they set, but I want to be halfway professional,” Emrick said with characteristic modesty.
Costas said he would call the first three innings, during which he and Emrick would talk about his connection to the Pirates as a fan and his favorite broadcasters.
“And then I’ll say, `To take us through the next few innings, here’s Doc Emrick,’ ” Costas said.
