You Can't Make This Up

You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television by Al Michaels

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


There’s a good chance that you just watched the Super Bowl. It was a good game, a real barn-burner, and it all came down to one play on the one yard line, where an inexplicable play call blew the game for the defending champion. You probably didn’t pay too much attention to the man behind the microphone, who has now announced nine of them in his career.
And that’s exactly how he wants it.
Al Michaels is one of those guys that’s been around so long and is so ubiquitous that you almost don’t give him a second thought. But he’s been there, through Super Bowls and World Series’ and boxing matches and the Miracle at Lake Placid, calling the action for over forty years. You Can’t Make This Up is a collection of all the stories that he has announced and been a part of.
For my money, the best chapters are about the Miracle on Ice, or the 1980 U.S Olympic hockey team, who upset the Soviets in a classic, framed by Michaels’ call, “Do You Believe in Miracles? Yes!!!” One of my favorite movies, “Miracle”, based on this U.S Olympic Hockey triumph, is named from his iconic call. I also very much enjoyed his take on Howard Cosell, a man whom he loved (and sometimes hated) in that way that you can only feel about family. The story about Cosell breaking up a street fight by pontificating about the merits of each fighter and declaring it to be a mismatch (words to that effect: I really can’t do justice to this story!) by itself is worth the price of admission.
I burned through this in a matter of days; very quick reading, very entertaining book, as I knew it would be. It’s not exactly a deep and penetrating look into the man, the myth, the legend that is Al Michaels. But that is not the point. In writing, as in his broadcasting, Al Michaels knows how to stay out of the way of the story.
If you are a sports fan with any interest in sports media, this is probably the book for you.




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