Ek's Note: I wanted to share this awesome tribute by Bruce "Scoop" Cooper regarding the great and mighty Doc Emrick for all to see...the Buzzcast will be at 3:45 pm today with Kevin Allen who is in Tampa for the Habs/Bolts game....
Sincere congratulations to my friend and colleague of 38 years, NBC's Mike "Doc" Emrick, who for the third time in four years won the National Emmy Award for "Outstanding Sports Personality - Play by Play" on Tuesday night at ceremonies held at Lincoln Center in New York beating out Bob Costas, Ian Eagle, Dan Hicks and Mike Breen. Doc, who has a PhD in Communications from Bowling Green University where he also broadcast hockey for the first time, became the first hockey play by play broadcaster to capture a National Emmy in 2011 before repeating that accomplishment for a second time last year and a third time on Tuesday. Few if any other men in the game -- including players, if I may be as bold to say -- have worked harder or done more to help sell our glorious game to US sports fans over the past four decades then this mild mannered giant in his field.
Like so many hockey players, Doc came to the national hockey stage from a small (pop 868) farming community, a town with the French-Canadadian sounding name of La Fontaine. Ironically, however, it is not located in Quebec, elsewhere in Canada, or the US hockey hotbed states of Minnesota, Michigan, New York, or in New England, but instead State road 15 in north central Indiana where his father was not a coach but the local high school's music teacher. And Doc grew up following not hockey, but instead was passionate about the baseball exploits of his still beloved Pittsburgh Pirates. (His doctoral dissertation was a study on announcing baseball.)
That all changed for him, however, on December 10, 1960 when he was a 13-year old 7th grader and convinced his parents to take him to a hockey game at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, IN, the home of the IHL Fort Wayne Komets.
"That game was an epiphany for me," Doc says. "I realized that it had ruggedness, it had fights, guys moved at a fast rate of speed and got mad, and there was a great deal of skill involved in scoring a goal. That first game I saw went into a ten minute overtime and two guys who were legends in that league fought with two seconds left in a tie game in overtime! And so I was thinking 'That's showing the spirit of the thing!'. By the time I was walking back to the car with my family I was hooked on hockey and knew that I wanted to eventually broadcast this wonderful sport."
It took Doc thirteen years before he did so professionally for the first time as the neophyte broadcaster for the IHL Port Huron Flags.
"I got to go to the games for free, talk to the players, do something I loved, and got paid $160 a week too," Emrick says now. "I couldn't believe my luck!"
In the 43 years since the now 68-year old Emrick has broadcast over 3,500 more hockey games and is still going strong.
The many local and national honors he has garnered such as the Lester Patrick Award, the Hockey Hall of Fame's Foster Hewitt Award, and enshrinement in the US Hockey Hall of Fame since first speaking into a live mic well more than 3,500 hockey broadcasts ago all attest to his extraordinary skill at his craft and dedication to bringing the best of the game he loves to millions. But "Doc" is far more than just a great broadcaster, he is a great human being and friend to thousands.
I first met Doc during the Flyers' training camp in September, 1977, and over the more than a third of a century since then we have worked together hundreds of times (the last time was last Tuesday on Game 6 of the Flyers/Rangers first round playoff series) both with the Flyers on cable (PRISM) and that club's various over the air stations, as well as on other TV outlets such as SportsChannel, MSG, FOX, ESPN, ABC, VS, and NBC as well as during his radio days with the AHL Maine Mariners in the late 1970's. I can truly say that I have had no closer friend in the game over that time than Doc. In addition to the countless hours we have spent together in various broadcast booths from coast to coast, there have been dinners at his home with his wife Joyce (whom I first met on the day Doc proposed to her in Portland, ME, in 1978), literally thousands of hours on the phone (many of those as he was unwinding after another broadcast and often from an airport while waiting to board yet another plane to head to the next city), sitting together in often hilarious pregame TV production meetings, and the annual exchange of birthday and Christmas gifts and greetings many of which somehow end up relating to SLAP SHOT, Monty Python, and most especially Fawlty Towers. (We NEVER mention the War, however.)
During most of his long career of calling games over the years as the TV voice of the Flyers, Rangers (radio), and Devils, the grind of broadcasting up to one hundred games (including playoffs) in a season was especially strenuous for him as EVERY broadcast was a road game requiring a commute by plane from his home in Michigan. Add to that the many network assignments he had on NBC, ABC, CBS, ESPN, FOX, and other outlets, working both summer (water polo) and winter Olympics, the odd college hockey game he did for "relaxation", All Star games in the NHL and AHL (a league Doc still follows as closely as he did when he broadcast the Maine Mariners in the late 1970s), and all four rounds of Stanley Cup action every spring, have kept him on the road constantly for almost four decades. And having worked stats with Doc over so many years I can tell you that for every hour he spends on the air he has done many more hours of preparation the product of which are spread out in front of him in the form of copious notes, charts, and fact filled scorecards all carefully written in his distinctive script. Doc's philosophy is to have about ten times as much material ready to use as he expects that he will get in because there is no way to know in advance which 10% the events of the game will dictate as being appropriate. (And sometimes, like in a blow out or multiple overtime playoff game, he may actually end up needing it all!)
Although I have known and worked with Doc hundreds of times over almost four decades, every time I have the privilege to do so again I am once again amazed and impressed not only by the shear skill, artistry, and extraordinary professionalism that he brings to every show, but also with the utter courtesy, humility, and consideration with which he treats everybody with whom he has contact during the course of the day from fans to star players and everyone in between. He not only knows the name of every elevator operator, press box attendant, security person, trainer, stick boy, player, press person (including many HockeyBuzz and other web bloggers), hockey writer, scout, and every other person in the countless rinks in both the NHL and many minor league cities as well, but has something personal to say to every one of them.
Often the first thing Doc will ask me when he calls after a game somewhere (often from an airport) is to check the internet for the scores of favorite teams (such as the Hershey Bears) in the AHL as well as many in the ECHL and IHL. And as often as he can, Doc works that information into his next telecast because he knows that hockey is more than just NHL hockey. (He is also famous for recognizing on air the birthdays of whatever hockey persons past or present are celebrating their's that day.) At the request of myself (and doubtless others as well), he has also been a mentor to a number of young broadcasters just getting started in the business offering advice and guidance.
One of these is Joe O'Donnell who is now the play-by-play voice of the AHL Iowa Wild, and a couple of weeks ago he helped out another mentoree of mine, 19-year old Jeff "Bones" Quake, a freshmen broadcasting student at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. Doc gladly took a half hour out of his incredibly busy schedule while he was preparing for the start of the Stanely Cup playoffs to do an extensive interview with Jeff for broadcast on his weekend sports talk show on the University's radio station, WESS-FM.
"I enjoy doing this," he told Jeff. "I remember what it was like for me at your age when I spent lots of time working on school stations. We always felt like we had accomplished something when we could interview people that we had heard about. While I'm not putting myself in that category of fame now," Doc continued with his typical modesty, "I am thrilled to be able to do this with you today as I always love talking to young people."
When I worked with Doc on another NBC network telecast of the Flyers and Penguins in Philadelphia a few days later he told me how much he enjoyed talking to Jeff and asked me to keep him up to date on his progress. There is nobody more generous with his time in the game then Doc -- the only broadcaster who is in both the Hockey Hall of Fame and the US Hockey Hall of Fame -- with helping replenish the ranks of future broadcasters of the sport.
"We don't cure people of dire ills or illnesses in our line of work," Doc says, "but I think we do something else that is heartening for people who listen but also for us. We take their minds off the troubles of the world for two-and-a-half to three hours. If they are fans they focus an awful lot of their enjoyment in life on following their team and their athletes. We're not the players, we're not that important, but we're the conduits between the fans and the players, and there's a responsibility there that enables us to treat this like a profession rather than a hobby."
The stories I could tell about Doc and the impact he has had on both the game and thousands of people in it would literally fill a book, and perhaps I will write one. (I've already written seven.) I can't think of a more deserving subject of a biography from the media side of the game then Doc.
So congratulations, Doc, on yet another National Emmy. And on Thursday night he will be right back behind the microphone in Minnesota calling the fourth game of the Blackhawks/Wild second round series for a national hockey audience on NBCSN.
And after his rare "night off" to be honored Doc will be back on Thursday to be calling more BIG drives and SCORES as he resumes broadcasting the thrilling 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs on NBC and NBCSN!!!
