Surprise! Two-fer post today!
The only real Finnish connection to this post is hockey. While Finland is the backdrop for the loose parameters of this blog, I reserve the right to veer slightly off topic when timing and circumstances dictate it.
I’ve been listening to JYP hockey games commentated in Finnish by the same guy every week. I don’t know what he’s saying. I bet he’s good and knows his hockey. What I noticed most was he’s alone, a single play-by-play commentator left to call and analyze the action as well, by himself. That's hard.
Stylistically, I think he’d benefit from some more tone nuance, but it’s super hard to find that commentating by yourself. Having done some of it, I get that and don't gig him for that analysis. Apart from it being a long haul for him, it’s exhausting and not optimal coverage no matter who is at the helm. But I remember last week thinking about who could do the one-guy hockey job, thinking Mike “Doc” Emerick could probably pull it off better than anyone.
I can’t and I won’t claim to be some long-standing fan of Doc’s. He has simply always been the bell who elicits a Pavlovian response that hockey is on TV for most of my adult life. Doc Emerick is the sound of hockey in America. Two days ago, he announced his retirement from sports broadcasting.
A lot of people are going to weigh in about how Doc is the best ever. I’ll be in that camp whether or not it’s true or even arguable. He is iconic. More specifically, his voice, precision, and aura are. I simply can’t think of a commentator with greater mastery of the job.
I met and talked to Doc once. It was an honor. And he was so nice. I’ve been around enough to tell you not everyone is nice in this business. Lots of competition for work. Doc's job is one that thousands would take aim at, yet he just rose there on merit. Which is the way to do it. There are a lot of great people still, and there are a lot of assholes. Doc was a genuine article with no pretense. That was obvious from my one encounter. I have to believe that's a big part of what made him great.
The NBC Olympic broadcast crew was cued in a white plastic tent-like appendage to the otherwise small Sochi international airport, waiting to board our charter flight back to New York following the 2014 Olympics. I heard the voice. It carried from beyond a small congregation of other NBC folks chewing the fat with Doc as we waited. It was kind of like he was holding court out of happenstance, such was his stature even among the heady resumes mingling about the room. He’s a diminutive figure and I remember kind of being blown away that the powerful voice came from that relatively small gentleman.
I waited a while and took selfies with Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, and caught up with Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, with whom I was friendly as an athlete and helped him some ahead of the Salt Lake games when he arrived earlier than the Norwegian team. When the scrum around Doc broke, I snuck in and snapped this selfie with him, possibly knowing I would say some day I met him and have the proof—then I let him be.
I boarded the flight to find my row mate to be Christin Cooper, the alpine analyst/reporter for those games. “Coop” as she’s known, was coming off a sobering end to the Games. I’d caught some of the gist of the scuttlebutt, but since I wasn’t watching US TV, I didn’t realize how heavy it was until we had 8 hours to talk. Looking back, I would have shriveled if it was me. She is so tough though, and so thoroughly reflective and just, and kind. And forgiving, within reason. I’m thankful for that flight to this day. We’d actually met on the drive into Rosa Khutor in the same van on the front end of the Games, so we’d met before. She is one of the greatest skiers our country has ever known. I’ve never told her, but even as a young cross country skier, I vividly remember the stories and pictures of her amazing career with her teammates in my Ski Racing Red Book, in what may be considered the golden age of US women’s alpine team in the early and mid-1980s. Since retiring as an athlete, she had been the best-spoken, most precise and clever commentator in alpine skiing in the US to that point. Her analyses were crisp, clear, and to the point. She took the job and her role seriously, and it was obvious. You got the sport when Coop was talking to you. She didn’t know it, but of her, I was already a fan. We became fast friends and have been pen pals ever since. She has been a cheerleader, an honest and helpful critic of my announcing, and a true friend—something that isn’t necessarily easy to come by in the world of broadcasting. She is, in a word, awesome! (If you’re reading, hi Coop! And thanks.)
So as Coop and I were in deep conversation that felt like it spanned the meaning of life and TV’s dinky role in it, I took a bathroom break, and ended up waiting for the bathroom behind Doc. I struck up a conversation with him. He was incredibly open, friendly, and candid. He told me his life story in broadcasting without much prodding. We talked a bit about what he knew of northern Minnesota hockey—which was a lot. He came back out of the bathroom and we continued for what felt like a half hour at least.
In context to everything, it was a moment of clarity in what was becoming more of a profession for me with each passing year. Between waxing poetic in depth with Coop and Doc’s willingness to share in the aisle on an airplane, I realized the greatest are the greatest because they are so human; so genuine. I noted to myself to stay genuine even if it meant losing the job.
Doc’s delivery as a broadcaster is, in a hyphenated word, other-worldly, possibly even more noticeably for someone who does this stuff. His presence behind the mic is natural. It’s conversational. He captures the real energy of a moment in words and tone effortlessly with an amazing depth of both hockey specific and life knowledge. There’s never anything superfluous when Doc is on the mic. The insecurities of even the most talented commentators are bound to come out, but they never seemed to with him. Doc felt like the most natural extension of what we were seeing in front of us coming out in a stream of consciousness that was better, more insightful, and more clear than thought itself. All this from a game that moves at the pace of a stirred up ant hill.
There are great commentators, don’t get me wrong. I’ve just never seen one better than Doc Emerick.