Home > Al Michaels

He attended Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, California, where he was a football and baseball player. He later attended Arizona State University, where he majored in radio and television and minored in journalism.

He began his sports broadcasting career in HawaiiFor the 1959 novel and 1966 movie, see Hawaii (novel). Hawaii ( Hawaiian/ Hawaiian English: Hawai‘i with the ‘okina is the archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii constitutes the 50th state of the United States, and as of the 2000 in 1968, calling the games of the Hawaii Islanders baseball team in the Pacific Coast LeagueBaseball leagues The Pacific Coast League is a minor league baseball league operating in the West and Midwest of the United States and Canada. The Pacific Coast League has a long tradition on the West Coast, with teams with evocative names such as the San. He also called the play-by-play for the University of HawaiiThe University of Hawai`i formally the University of Hawai`i System and popularly known as UH is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, doctoral and post-doctoral degrees through three university c's American football and basketballBasketball is a ball sport in which two teams of five players each try to score points by throwing the ball through a basket. Basketball is highly suited to viewing by spectators, as it is primarily an indoor sport, played in a relatively small playing ar teams, and was named Hawaii's "Sportscaster of the Year" in 1969. In 1971, he moved to Cincinnati, OhioThis article is about Cincinnati, Ohio. For the town of the same name in Iowa, see Cincinnati, Iowa. Cincinnati 'The Queen of the West', is a city in Southwestern Ohio on the Ohio River and is the county seat of Hamilton County 6. Introduction As of the 2, where he became the number one broadcaster for the Cincinnati RedsThe Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are in the Central Division of the National League. Founded 1869, 1882, or 1890, depending on the account. See below. Formerly known as The Red Stockings in the 19th cent of Major League BaseballMajor League Baseball MLB is the highest level of play in professional baseball in North America. More specifically, Major League Baseball ("MLB") refers to the entity that operates North America's two top leagues, the National League and the American Lea. He covered the World SeriesIn baseball, the World Series is the championship series of Major League Baseball in North America, played in October after the end of the regular season between the pennant winner of the American League and the pennant winner of the National League. in 1972 for the NBC network. In 1974 he moved on to a similar position with the San Francisco Giants of MLB, and also covered basketball for UCLA before signing with ABC in 1977. Since then, he has covered a wide variety of sports in addition to those he established his career upon, including ice hockey, track and field events, figure skating, and many events of the Olympic Games. His current and longest-running assignment is that of the lead (play-by-play) sportscaster for the ABC television show Monday Night Football, which he has held since 1986.

Michaels has won numerous awards during his career, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality (Play-by-Play Host) four times, the NSSA Award from the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association three times (he was also inducted into their Hall of Fame in 1998), and "Sportscaster of the Year" once each from the American Sportscasters Association and the Washington Journalism Review.

Two of Michaels' more famous broadcasts were of the 1980 Winter Olympics ice hockey medal round match between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the attempted third game of the 1989 World Series.

In 1980, an unheralded group of amateur ice hockey players from the United States won the Gold Medal at the Olympic Winter Games. The medal round match on February 22—which, contrary to popular belief, did not assure the team of any medal—was of particular interest, as it was played against a heavily favored squad from the Soviet Union, and was in front of a partisan American crowd in Lake Placid, New York whipped into a patriotic fervor by the Cold War. Michaels' memorable broadcast of this game, including his interjection—"Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"—as time expired on the 4-3 U.S. victory, earned the game the media nickname of "The Miracle on Ice".

On October 17, 1989, Michaels was in San Francisco, California, preparing to cover the third game of the World Series between the home team, the Giants, and the visiting Oakland Athletics. While his broadcast partner, Tim McCarver, was assessing the Giants' chances for victory in the game, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. McCarver fell into a stunned silence, but Michaels astutely said into the microphone, "I'll tell you what, we're having an earth--!" just as it went dead, providing the only concurrent broadcast account of what had happened. Audio was restored minutes later, and Michaels gave an eyewitness account of the aftermath at Candlestick Park, the Giants' stadium, for which he later won an Emmy Award for news broadcasting, becoming only the second sportscaster ever to win the award.

He currently lives in Los Angeles, California.