Working with Howard Cosell was not easy. Al Michaels knows that for a fact. On Friday, he joined The Dan Patrick Show to talk about the late Tim McCarver. Patrick pointed out that going from Cossell to McCarver as his partner on ABC’s baseball coverage had to be a complete 180.
“Number one, I loved Tim! Loved him!” Michaels began. “Hall of Fame human being, Dan.”
It seemed like he had a completely opposite feeling about working with Cosell. During the 1985 season, Cosell was one of several analysts that Michaels worked with. He said that the mood of the crew changed whenever Cosell was working a game.
“Howard Cosell had become cantankerous, to use a word he loved to use all the time, and bitter. He would pretty much cast a pall over the entire crew because he didn’t want to be there and we didn’t want him to be there.”
In his book, I Never Played the Game, Cosell took several shots at ABC boss Roon Arledge and the network. Al Michaels said that was the last straw.
He got a call from his producer saying that Cosell would not be coming back. The booth for ABC during the playoffs would be Michaels with analysts Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver.
“That was one of the greatest phone calls I ever had in my life,” Michaels laughed.
The trio worked four World Series’ together. Al Michaels has covered a lot of sports and worked with a lot of partners in his career. He said that Palmer and McCarver are among his favorites to work with.
“Three-person booths are tough. You know that. It’s very tough and I have had a few of them in my career. This was one, I have to say, where the three of us together, Palmer, McCarver, and myself, we were better as a threesome than any combination of the two of us.”
The trio worked the 1989 World Series. Game Three of that series was postponed after an earthquake rocked San Francisco during the pregame. Al Michaels remembers that Tim McCarver was in the middle of breaking down a play from the previous game when the ground started to shake.
“Tim put a death grip on my leg,” he said. “Tim would always say I grabbed his leg and I would say ‘Tim, I have the scars on my leg to prove it.”
