He’s been in a fixture in our living rooms throughout the years, and for many of us he’s been one of the leading figures in broadcasting since before we were born. Al Michaels, 75, is still the NFL’s pre-eminent play-by-play voice, which makes him a national figure. But his Bay Area ties are strong, beginning when he called games for the Giants in the mid-1970s, continuing with his work on “Monday Night Football” when the 49ers were in their heyday and, of course, his memorable night presiding over the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake that postponed Game 3 of the 1989 World Series at Candlestick Park.

Advertisement

Michaels will call NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” game at Levi’s Stadium between the Rams and 49ers with Cris Collinsworth this weekend, and yes, they’ll be wearing masks as they call the game.

“Santa Clara County officials have compelled us to wear masks, so that is the story,” Michaels said at the start of his broadcast of 49ers-Eagles at Levi’s on Oct. 4.

During the third quarter, he joked that he and Collinsworth had been “good boys” and as a result would “get lollipops at the end of the game tonight.” Though he might not have been all that pleased to wear a face covering for the first time in his 35 seasons calling prime-time games on Sundays and Mondays, he was happy to discuss a variety of topics over the phone on Wednesday, including his time calling Giants games, his relationship with Bill Walsh and a couple of horse racing mentions sprinkled in. Here’s our conversation.

You called Giants games from 1974 to 1976. I looked at the attendance figures and you’re talking about less than 10,000 fans per game. What do you remember about the Candlestick Park environment back then?

Well, it was tough in the sense that I had done the Cincinnati Reds for the prior three years, ’71, ’72 and ’73. And I had the Big Red Machine, and they won a pennant and another division title, and I had Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, the late Joe Morgan, César Gerónimo, Davey Concepción, Sparky Anderson. So I left there after three years because in San Francisco, the Giants rights were held by the radio station, by KSFO. And they offered me three times the money that I was going to be paid in Cincinnati. So I came out there. And obviously, it was a play for the bucks. It turned out the salary tripled.

But the downside was the Giants weren’t very good. The ballpark was terrible. The team was running out of money. It would eventually be sold in 1975 by Horace Stoneham to Bob Lurie. And it was three years of doing Major League Baseball. I’m still very young, so a lot of that was fun, but it was not a lot of fun going to Candlestick. Because we were living in Menlo Park and I would be playing tennis in the afternoon with my shirt off. So I’d go home, get in the shower and get in the car. Turn the air conditioning on. Come up 280 and get to 92. Air conditioning is off. Make it back to 101, come up to about Millbrae and turn the heater on. So you get all the climates in one 35-minute drive.

Advertisement

Two years with a guy named Art Eckman, and another guy, Bill Thompson. One year with Lon Simmons, who I’d actually replaced. Lon had come back after a two-year hiatus, his wife had died. He needed some time off. And then Lon and I did the 1976 season together. And one good memory; one memory, anyway, I wouldn’t say it was necessarily good, but funny, was that one night they handed me the attendance figure. It was like August 1975. Against the Padres, 20-some-odd games out of first place. It’s a terrible game on a terrible night and nobody’s in the stands. And they handed me the attendance figure, I can remember what it was. It might’ve been something like 3,000. And I said, “Well, here’s tonight’s attendance … why don’t I just tell you who’s here?” And we had a lot of fun with that. So that was the only way to kind of get through that with terrible teams. It was pretty bad.

I enjoyed tremendously (working with) Lon Simmons, who’s a Bay Area icon. Lon would do the third inning and the fourth and maybe the seventh inning. So one night, he’s finished with the seventh, I’m coming on for the eighth. And he’s gonna turn it over to me. And Lon says, “Well, the score is San Diego 9 and the Giants nein. Unfortunately, the Giants are playing in German. Here’s Al.” So we did have a bunch of laughs over the years, but it was pretty bad.

How much of that experience helped you when you were there for Game 3 of the World Series in 1989 when the earthquake happened and you turned into Peter Jennings for a night? Did the experience you had in the Bay Area help you you in terms of steering the coverage and knowing where everything was?

There’s no question about that. Obviously, I’d lived there for a number of years and knew the area. But I’m the kind of guy who, I’ve always loved maps. And I’ve always loved aerial photography. And I’m one of those people who has about 15 of those coffee table books. You know, above San Francisco, above New York, above Paris, above London. And I love those books. So having loved maps and having spent a lot of time really just looking at aerial photography, I probably could have done something similar in a lot of cities. Because I understand geography. And I loved looking at my Rand McNallys in those years.

But it certainly helped obviously, not only knowing San Francisco, but having been to a lot of those streets. I can tell you where that the fire was in the Marina, because I’d been there. So there was an extra level of what you might call familiarity with the Bay Area because of that, so that was how I was able to navigate my way through that.

Was there anything that happened that night that maybe no Giants fans or A’s fans would know that you had to deal with, just from being inside Candlestick Park that evening?

It’s only 31 years ago, but there was no social media. There was no internet. And it was very difficult to get information from the outside. Now, if this were to have happened now, within five seconds it would be on Twitter, people would be talking about it. But then people were in the dark.

Advertisement

I guess the only way you could have found out in Candlestick is to maybe have a transistor radio tuned into KCBS or something. Otherwise, the fans had no idea. They knew there was an earthquake. They knew the stadium was still in one piece. The players are out on the field, looking around. But after about 10 or 15 minutes, what I recall is the crowd began chanting, “Play ball! Play ball!” They thought the game could start. And it wasn’t until a significant amount of time later that everybody understood, hey, we have problems all over the Bay Area. The ballpark may be intact, but there are other problems. But that is what the fans did not know in Candlestick until probably a lot of them walked out and were able to get to a radio to discern what had taken place. So that was a novelty that could only have existed up until about 30 years ago.

It seems like the balance of power in the NFL has kind of shifted in recent years to the NFC West and the AFC West. You live on the West Coast, is it nice that you get to stay around here a little bit more often?

Oh, I’m the happiest guy in the world, trust me. Because in all these years that I’ve done this, we’ve had a very Eastern-dominant schedule and Midwest. Very few games through the course of my 35 years of doing this have been played on the West Coast. When I say very few, maybe we’d get a couple a year. The 49ers were good for a lot of years, so we would do a lot of games in San Francisco. The Chargers were in and out while they were in San Diego, when we might get a couple of games a year. There were times when we’d have no games on the West Coast. Other times, maybe one. Once in a while, the “grand slam,” I might get four or five.

But this year, to have six of the first eight on the West Coast is great. I haven’t been out of the Pacific Time Zone since the opening night game in Kansas City on Thursday night. I’ve been to LA, Seattle, San Francisco, Seattle again, San Francisco this week and then Vegas next week. So it’s been fun. What can I tell ya?

While researching for Sunday’s game, what have you noticed on the 49ers’ side? People here are a little perplexed. Obviously, the injuries have taken a massive toll, but I don’t think anyone around here was expecting them to get absolutely shellacked by the Dolphins.

Yeah, that was surprising. You can trace that back to — nobody wants to complain about injuries and all that, but when (Nick) Bosa went down in New York, I mean that was the beginning of the waterfall. And then Solomon Thomas goes down. (Richard) Sherman is out after Week 1. We know what a mess that secondary was. And that poor guy, Brian Allen, they were picking on him the entire game and he was just kind of lost in space and Miami got off to that big lead.

It’s interesting in a way, Philadelphia might have been the forerunner to what took place last week. Because they came in, they were as banged up or more banged up than the 49ers were and managed to figure out a way to pull off a win. The other one was sort of a shock.

I don’t want to say the season is on the brink, (but) when you’re 2-3 and you’ve got a team in your division that’s already undefeated after five weeks, this is a gigantic game for these guys. And hopefully, they’ll get some people back and (Jimmy) Garoppolo is healthy. He clearly wasn’t last week. That can make all the difference. And again, you don’t want to talk about all the injuries, etc, etc. But you look at that secondary. And you look at the fact that the pass rush doesn’t resemble what it did last year. That in a nutshell would be what happened here. And then the other day, Miami, two good drives, 14-0 before you know it, and away they went.

With so many great teams that are always featured on these Monday and Sunday games, do you have a team you’d choose as the best that you saw on person?

The Niners had that fantastic two-decade run, which you don’t have (a lot). And everybody thought, well, nobody will do that again. And then the Patriots have done it. So you go back to New England, when (Tom) Brady comes in in ’01, and they’re still rolling. Even without Brady, and they’ve got Cam Newton and, of course, they lost the other night. They’ve still been so good. They’ve been great. The 49ers were great for all of those years. And then the Cowboys were great in the early ’90s. And very spotty since then.

Advertisement

So I look at those two (49ers and Patriots) dynasties as amazing in a way. In a league that is built to have equality and parity to a degree and is restricted by a salary cap, to be able to have a 20-year run, is something that I didn’t think I’d ever see. Especially in recent years, too.

But the Niners put it all together. I was living there in those years. And I watched the beginning of it and I understood what was going on. The one thing I do recall, very, very clearly is that when Ed DeBartolo bought the team, they got off to a very rough start. And Eddie was in the crosshairs. Everybody was saying, “Who is this guy? Get this young guy out of town. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. What the hell’s going on here?”

And the Niners, in Eddie’s first couple of years, were not very good. In fact, they were less than not very good. They were bad. And then, the seminal moment for the 49ers was the hiring of Bill Walsh. So Bill came in, one of the great coaches of all time, understood personnel. You go out and you get Joe Montana, you get Jerry Rice, you get two of the more iconic players in history and others as well to play for the 49ers at that time. So that organization, to me, the 49ers, through the ’80s and ’90s were the model franchise in sports. And pretty much the Patriots have been that way over the last 20 years.

You guys get to talk to the coaches and different players before doing these games. What do you remember about your interactions with Bill Walsh?

I loved him. Because not only did I do (his games) on “Monday Night Football,” but Bill lived in my neighborhood. So I got to know Bill. Actually, believe it or not, when I was doing the Cincinnati Reds in the early ’70s, Bill was an assistant for the Bengals under Paul Brown. And the Bengals shared Riverfront stadium with the Reds. So occasionally the Bengals would come over to Riverfront and practice in the early afternoon and then get off the field so that the Reds could come out and take batting practice before the game.

Walsh was a very big baseball fan. And I first met him around the batting cage in Cincinnati in the early ’70s because he loved baseball. And I was the Reds announcer at that point and we started talking about baseball. And then ironically, he goes out to the West Coast. And I go out with the Giants. And Walsh lives, maybe three-quarters of a mile from me? So I knew Bill on a social level, as well. And then we’d laugh about the fact that we’re both coming out of Cincinnati and going to the Bay Area. And then, of course, he does what he does and I wind up on “Monday Night Football” in the mid-’80s.

I had a great relationship with him. In fact, when the 49ers met Miami in the Super Bowl after the ’84 season, it was Dan Marino’s only Super Bowl, as it turned out and the Niners winning their second (Super Bowl, this one) in Stanford Stadium. I was the host of our pregame show. This was before I go on Monday night, and it’s ABC’s game and I’m doing a pregame. And the word went out to Bill, who — Bill didn’t look for a lot of publicity in those years and he was introspective to a certain degree. And I know that when they reached out to him and they said, “We really want to do like a 10-minute feature on you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Bill said to them, “As long as Al does it, I’ll do it.” So it was a pretty cool thing. Geri Walsh was there, I went over to the house. Talked about Geri and their marriage and the whole thing. And that was cool. I loved Bill, I thought that he was fantastic.

The only other story I can tell you, it’s tremendous. When Bill was coaching Stanford in ’78, and I’m at ABC in my second year there, doing college football, doing the No. 2 game. The No. 2 game happens to be at Stanford. It was Washington at Stanford. And my partner was going to be Frank Broyles, the old Arkansas coach, who at that time was the athletic director at Arkansas.

Advertisement

So Frank flies out and we go to the campus. And for me, that was like a six-minute drive. I was living in Sharon Heights. I meet Frank there and we sit with the coaching staff. We watch some film, we go to practice. Then the production meeting was going to be at my house because I wanted all the boys to come over and, you know, have some deli stuff. And we drove to Sharon Heights, so I put Frank in the car with me.

Frank Broyles said, “I’ll tell you something. That young coach we just met, that’s the brightest young mind I have ever seen in coaching.” Of course it was Bill Walsh. It was 1978, before Bill gets the Niners job.

And then we started talking politics. And he says, you know, we’ve got a young attorney general, in Arkansas, who I think someday, he’s very special, he could be the president of the United States. So this, of course, was Bill Clinton.

So Frank and I had a great relationship. I went to the NFL in the mid-’80s. I didn’t see Frank for a while, didn’t talk to him for a few years. But in ’92, when Clinton got elected president — and by that point, Walsh had won his three Super Bowls and left them a Super Bowl team for (George) Seifert the next year. So I called him up, I said, “I just have to wing it here.” I said, “I’ll never forget that conversation we had on the way to my house in ’78 when you said that young coach was as bright a young coach as you’d ever seen.”

And he said, “Well, he was very impressive.”

He was downplaying it a little bit, but I said, “C’mon.” And I said, “Do you remember that conversation we had about you telling me about that attorney general could be president of the United States, and it’s 14 years later, and this guy just got elected?”

“Well, you know, I always had a lot of admiration for him,” the way Frank would talk.

I said, “Frank. I’m only calling you for one thing. Who do you like in the fifth today at Santa Anita?”

Advertisement

2020 has been an awfully weird year. What was it like doing games with no crowds and all the different protocols at the different stadiums?

Well, surely not as much fun as it would be. We have to do certain things. I understand that. So we just kind of follow the protocols, we want to stay safe, too.

Not having fans, I really miss ’em. We’ve done two games now in Seattle in the last four weeks. Both went down to the end, were both fantastic games. And to look around that stadium, which is always as raucous as any stadium in the NFL, and not have any sound emanating from there, is strange.

Cris Collinsworth and I have talked about it, before we did the first game — you know what I liken it to? I’m a horse with blinkers. So when the horse is coming down the stretch, he’s not looking inside or outside. He’s looking straight ahead. And I feel that way when I’m doing these games. I don’t want to look at the stadium. I don’t wanna look at the stands, because I know they’re empty. And eerie. Just concentrate on the game. Do the game. So we’ve been able to do that and that’s how we go through it. But boy, oh boy, I can’t wait for the fans to come back.

(Photo: Joe Nicholson / USA Today)