Sports journalist and New York Yankees play-by-play broadcaster
(1961– )
When I was in first grade, I was already reading To Kill a Mockingbird. The principal called my parents and said they wanted to skip me to fourth grade, but my parents didn’t agree. They said that I wouldn’t be adjusted and maybe I’d even be maladjusted if I were skipped. Since they didn’t allow it, I remained with my age group, which meant I was always one of the smartest kids in my class. My parents, especially since we weren’t well off, stressed education. I couldn’t do anything unless I got good grades. I mean, really good grades. It was tough for me because my sister was brilliant and I had to be just as smart. I’d go to school, come home, do my homework, and then I could go down to play.
There were so many kids my age in my building on Evergreen Avenue, it was unbelievable. There was a little park outside, with monkey bars and stuff like that and this little dirt part, where we played baseball. That’s where my love of baseball was first born.
I loved the Yankees. We didn’t have the kind of money where I could go to a lot of games, but occasionally we’d scrape together a dollar fifty to sit in the upper deck. That was my seat. Right behind home plate in the upper deck, last row. I tell people that I now have the same seat, but a lot closer. But as a kid I’d watch every game on Channel 11. That would be the only time I wasn’t outside. If the Yankees were on I’d be watching them. Who knows how many kids dream that stuff? I also knew that I couldn’t play well, so I was practical and rational, even as a nine-year-old. If I’m gonna be part of the Yankees, I’m gonna be that broadcaster! So I’d interview my friends with a tape recorder. They’d make believe they were other athletes and I’d interview them. “What about that hit?” and stuff like that. I get people tweeting me now saying they remember me saying at that time that I was going to be the Yankees’ announcer one day.
I was in P.S. 93, which was a block walk from our building. It became overcrowded, so the city converted a bowling alley four blocks up into a school—with no windows. It was such a weird school because of that, but I was in an accelerated class. The top class. We were like the outcasts that got thrown out of P.S. 93, because it was too crowded, so we were all in it together with unbelievable camaraderie. I still contend that those two years helped me become the person I am, more than any other two years of schooling, including Bronx High School of Science and Fordham University.
I had two teachers there who were phenomenal. One of them, in fifth grade, was Ken Wilkoff. My dad, who had emphysema and couldn’t breathe well, really couldn’t take me to ball games, so Mr. Wilkoff would take me and maybe two or three other kids to the games, ’cause he knew I loved the Yankees. In 1973, when I was in sixth grade, my teacher was Edward Baehr. I was in school when the Yankees were going to play the Red Sox with Ron Blomberg, the designated hitter, the first ever designated hitter in the history of baseball. Mr. Baehr had arranged something with Mr. Wilkoff because at two o’clock, when the game started, they wheeled in the TV, plugged it in, put it on, and said, “All right, Michael, you can see this.” Blomberg walked with bases loaded, they unplugged the TV, and walked out. These two young teachers who were in their twenties knew what I loved, and they cared. Mr. Wilkoff even took three kids and me to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I get goose bumps talking about what a great, great man he was. Both those teachers knew that I had an aptitude and they encouraged me. And my parents could see how special they were. They let those teachers mold me.
Although I was generally agreeable, I could also be an obstinate kid when it came to my fears. Our doctor was Dr. Loperfido and one time he chased me around his office to give me a shot. I was terrified. I picked up a shoe and I threw it at the doctor’s head. I actually hit him in the head. He said to my mother, “He’s got an anger management problem,” even before that became a term. “He’s going to be a problem.” And every time I’d be angry about something, my mother would say, “You know, that doctor was right.” I’m still terrified of blood. I knew that when they stuck that needle in, it hurt, and I didn’t like pain. Pain drove me nuts. I would get into flop sweat when we’d drive up that road to the doctor because I thought that every trip to the doctor meant me getting a shot.
To this day, whenever I go in for an exam, the doctor knows that they have to ignore the first blood pressure numbers they take because I have white coat fever. The doctor looks at me when I tell him that and he says, “Really?” and I say, “Let’s just do the exam and take the blood pressure again.” And at the end it’ll be 120 over 80.
Because I was always one of the smartest kids in my class, I thought I was superbright. When I went to Bronx High School of Science that all went out the window. I started to be interested in girls, and all that brightness just drained out of my head. If I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t go there, because I was definitely not the smartest kid there. I mean, I struggled to get a ninety-one or ninety-two. I think that was my average for three years, not four, because I had skipped one year from seventh to ninth grades. Ninety-two! And I busted my butt!
When I go to a reunion, I look at myself as a failure. They’re doctors and engineers and I became a baseball broadcaster. Why’d you go to Bronx Science to become a broadcaster? Everyone in that high school was the smartest kid in their elementary or middle school. They were the cream of the crop. I almost look at it like this: in baseball, when you get drafted, you go to a minor league team. Every kid who’s drafted is the best player in his city or town, and then all of a sudden he’s in where everybody was the best baseball player in his town. So in Bronx Science, everybody was the smartest kid in their school—and it was tough. It was very, very difficult for me. You start to doubt yourself. You start to doubt that you’re really smart.
I now give advice to kids. “Always work harder than everybody else, because you can control that. You can control effort but you can’t control being the smartest person.”
My struggles in high school actually made college easy. I went to Fordham and when I was done with Fordham I was done with school. I had had enough. If I weren’t a sportscaster, I know that I would be involved in something where I could use my creativity. I wasn’t really built for being a doctor or anything like that. I mean, can you imagine me giving shots? Thank God I’m doing well, but I still think that it can go away. My mom to her last day said, “You have to watch out. People want your job.”
My mom and dad got married in the Bronx County Courthouse. You could see that building from the broadcast booth in the old Yankee Stadium. I’d see that building all the time. In 2003, I was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame. The ceremony was in the Bronx County Courthouse, and my mom was there. And when my wife, Jodi, and I got our marriage license, we got it in the Bronx County Courthouse too.