A very happy 70th birthday today to my friend and colleague of almost four decades, Mike "Doc" Emrick!! Being nine months older than Doc, when I spoke to him on the phone this afternoon I "welcomed" him to the 70s "and I don't mean the 1970s" I said. To this he responded "yes those were not great years" (remember the gasoline shortages, Watergate, and the icey coldness of the "Cold War" among other things), "but the hockey was pretty good in Philadelphia (Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975) and Maine" (Calder Cups in 1978 and 1979 with Doc behind the Mariners' mic).
"Doc" Emrick at his post wearing one of his three Stanley Cup rings from 21 years of broadcasting the NJ Devils
Instead of being in Rio working water polo for NBC in the summer Olympics this year, however, Doc and Joyce Ann are instead relaxing at some of their favorite rural vacation spots in Michigan and his native Indiana as he prepares for another season calling NHL hockey as America's all time most honored hockey play-by-play announcer having garnered among his many awards four national Emmy Awards (no other hockey play-by-play broadcaster has won even one), the Lester Patrick Award, the Hockey Hall of Fame's Foster Hewitt Award, and the only broadcaster enshrined in the US Hockey Hall of Fame since first speaking into a live mic those well more than 3,600 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.
Doc is the only hockey play-by-play broadcaster to have won a national Emmy Award -- and he was FOUR of them
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 almost four decades since then we have worked together hundreds of times 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/NBCSN 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 Ann (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.)
So once again Happy Birthday to Doc Emrick and thanks for four decades of friendship and good times. And according to the NHL on NBC/NBCSN schedule it looks as if he will be working at least five games in Philadelphia this year which means that I'll be sitting next to him (and Edzo) in a radio or TV broadcast booth again as I have hundreds of times before since I first did so in 1977!!
Working with Doc and Edzo in the NHL on NBC booth at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia 
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