Article by Gino Ferretti for Pittsburgh Sporting News
The only bad thing about Mike “Doc” Emrick is that he has to sleep.
Because there’re moments in our daily lives that would be more interesting if he was calling them.
Hit the snooze button one too many times? Here’s Doc with the play-by-play as you scramble for your work clothes, and fumble around looking for your wallet and keys. Consequently rushing to work and get pulled over for speeding? Here’s Doc to theorize a way you may get out of the hole.
Because there’s always a way out of the hole.
Even when your team is in a deficit, Doc always convinces you to believe your team will muster a come back. Like the true artist he is, he gently scrapes the poop off your Warhol masterpiece of expectations until it’s picture perfect again.
The reason why there’re not enough fan favorites in national sports broadcasting, is because the fan always feels a bias by said announcers at varying parts of a game or series. Not Doc, though. He’s consistent in his infatuation. His love is hockey. Every team. All of it. The agony of defeat. The jubilee at the pinnacle of success. The sportsmanship and unsportsmanlike conduct. He reels it all in, and he packages it for the viewer tied with a bow.
There’s no doubting Doc’s staunch affection for all things hockey, but that’s not his greatest feat. Above all, that’s what he’s known for. It is, however, his personal connection to the off the ice trials of the game’s players, that truly is the affirmation of his identity.
The day before Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Rangers winger Marty St. Louis received word that his mother had abruptly died. He immediately flew to Montreal to be with his family. He unexpectedly returned to the team in time for Game 5, verses the Penguins, at the behest of his father who felt St. Louis’ mother would have wanted it that way.
The Rangers won that night.
While the days after were filled with sports scribes outlining a rallying cry for the down and out Rangers, it felt as though the focus on the personal loss St. Louis was experiencing, had been cast aside for the sake of a Cinderella team story. But during Game 6, Doc, in perhaps his finest moment as a broadcaster, changed that unfortunate angle and made it what it was truly about: the human condition.
“Sometimes, to dramatize is to trivialize,” he sadly said to his NBCSN audience. “And we aren’t intending to do that. But we do need to fill those of you in who don’t know the story and the resulting impact it has on him.”
At that moment, you knew anything that had happened in the series, or what was about to happen on the ice, was insignificant. Doc put all viewers on notice that something this grievous could very well be lost in the speed and excitement of the game. Therefore, he urged them to pump their brakes. He indirectly asked them to look outside of their television boxes, and take in a deeper, more richer picture. He spoke to the human element of the game that goes beyond goals and saves. Hits and high sticks. Because even to a professional like St. Louis, there’s a moment of fragility. A fragility not often respected in the exhausting spotlight of the postseason.
The measure of a good broadcaster goes as far as their emotional connection with their audience. Fame is gained by the relationships they birth. From the assassination of JFK to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the broadcasters of those horrific moments in history are often more remembered for their commiseration and mourning with their viewers, more so than their every day delivery of the news. They were us. Americans brought together by tragedy. And somehow the thing they simply considered a job, became the one thing people found most comfort in: their view.
For all of Doc Emrick’s contributions to the game of hockey, the appreciation for his compassion should be as equal.
For you, the viewer, to walk away from any of Doc Emrick’s broadcasts more intelligent about the game, more witty, and most importantly, more sympathetic to the human condition of the players, is exactly his intention.
In fact, it’s just what the Doc ordered.
