IT’S A HOCKEY LIFE IN PITTSBURGH
Like Prince and Cope, he found his place in Pittsburgh. In turn, the city found a place in its heart for this kid — and his sayings — from California.
W hen I was a kid growing up in Latrobe, my parents had a rule. My brother, Vince, and I were allowed to watch the first period of the Penguins game on TV. Then, we had to go to bed. Begrudgingly, we’d trudge upstairs to our room. I’d climb the ladder to the top bunk, as my brother flipped on my grandfather’s 1960s-style Zenith tabletop radio. It was there that Mike Lange’s voice transformed our room into the Civic Arena. With his uncanny ability to anticipate plays, his quick wit, vivid imagery and – of course – his signature phrases, Lange made us fall in love with the game of hockey and sports storytelling, while at the same time strengthening the bonds of our brotherhood. “Well, first of all, you know I’m smiling like a butcher’s dog right now,” Lange said a few months back, as I relayed my fond childhood memory to him. Then, he paused… “Now, I’ll tell you a little story,” Lange continued. “My brother and I were in bunk beds too, when I was nine years old. I had the transistor radio under my pillow and I would listen to games. That’s when I decided what I wanted to do.” This week, the Bay Area-native who once drifted off to sleep while listening to the Sacramento Solons and later the San Francisco Giants announced he’s retiring after living the Hall of Fame broadcasting career of his dreams.
Lange, 73, is hanging up his headset after half a century in a broadcast booth. In his 46 seasons as the play-by-play voice of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Lange has provided the soundtrack to virtually every defining moment in the franchise’s storied history, including all five Stanley Cup-clinching calls.
He has seen Mario Lemieux do things you would have to be there to believe, smoked a bad cigar with Jaromir Jagr, made Evgeni Malkin a milkshake and been slapped silly by Sidney Crosby. Now ladies and gentlemen — after smiling like a butcher’s dog through it all — Elvis has just left the building.
“There are certain rare broadcasters who become part of the legacy of the team,” said Tom McMillan, the Penguins long-time vice president of communications. “He is one of those rare broadcasters.”
Lange has handed the headset to Josh Getzoff, a talented 32-year-old broadcaster whom Lange has embraced, mentored and publicly endorsed. But, even as Father Time’s forecheck caught up with Lange and he dialed back his duties to prepare for his inevitable retirement, he admits it’s never easy to say goodbye.
“I miss it. I don’t deny it,” Lange told the Post-Gazette this past week. “I miss it dearly. It’s been a part of me for all these many years. I just found that this was the time to make a move and give a fresh start. We’ve got a younger guy in there who has all the vigor and passion to succeed.”
Lange likens his career to a “storybook” — and it’s true that it would take many volumes to tell his complete story. But before the next chapter begins in the booth, let’s remember just some of the reasons Lange’s legacy will continue to reverberate through Western Pennsylvania long after his voice fades from the airwaves.
‘You never know’
Lange’s passion may have been broadcasting. But his sport? Baseball. See, the man who would eventually earn his enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2001 actually never saw a hockey game inperson until he was 20 years old.
“Nobody in their mind would think I would be involved in hockey at that point, really,” Lange said.
Studying for a broadcast major at Sacramento State in 1969, Lange will be the first to admit he didn’t know a blue line from a red line when a friend, Len Shapiro, asked if he wanted to work the penalty box at the Sacramento Ice Hockey Association.
“You never know,” were the now-infamous words Shapiro said to a skeptical Lange.
Lange tagged along and kept time of each infraction. Meanwhile, during the game, a PA announcer called the play-byplay live for the fans inside the arena.
That brief introduction to the game turned into an invitation into the booth the following season. The play-by-play broadcaster at the time requested $10 a game. So the cash-strapped club turned to
Lange.
Want to do it for $5?
“That’s enough money for a Shakey’s pizza, a pitcher of beer and I’ve got some money left over,” Lange said.
He agreed. Like that, the puck dropped for the first time on Lange’s hockey life.
‘A hockey night in Phoenix’
Upon graduation, Lange began applying for jobs — and he did so with a distinct Mike Lange flair.
If he sent a resume for a baseball gig, he wrapped it around a bat. A job in hoops? A basketball. Anything to be different and stand out. And so when it came time to apply for the Western Hockey League’s Phoenix Roadrunners, Lange found a stuffed roadrunner and shipped it on its way.
Al McCoy, who was at the time the Roadrunners’ play-by-play man, did his best to get the kid on his feet.
“I kind of took a liking to him because he was such an energetic, positive guy,” McCoy said over the phone this week. “I just had never been around anybody who had the love for the game of hockey like Mike.”
McCoy, who became a mentor and then a life-long friend, shared his contact book. Weeks passed as Lange scoured the country hoping to catch on with a hockey team. Nothing.
“He called me and said, ‘I’d like to talk to you some more. I just can’t find anything. No one wants to hire me,’” McCoy remembers.
The best McCoy could do for Lange was a part-time job crunching numbers in the stats department on an hourly basis. If the now-88-year-old McCoy’s memory serves him right, the gig paid $1 an hour. “He said, ‘I’ll take it! I’ll take it!’” Lange’s willingness to work for little more than a foot in the door eventually turned into a job in PR, and then later that season a chance to do some color commentary. McCoy taught Lange the nuances of the game, emphasized the importance of building a relationship with a fanbase, and gave him some pointers that Lange has passed onto his own mentees like Getzoff, current Penguins TV playby-play broadcaster Steve Mears, and many others.
“A lot of play-by-play broadcasters protect themselves by staying behind the play,” McCoy said. “I think you lose your sense of enthusiasm when you do that. I said, ‘Be on top of the play.’ I think that was one of his early strengths. He had a lot of excitement because he loved the game. He put that enthusiasm into his broadcast.”
The following season, McCoy took a job with the Phoenix Suns, where he’s become a Hall of Famer like Lange and will enter his 50th season in the booth.
McCoy passed along his job — and something more.
“When I left the Roadrunners and Mike took over, he said, ‘Can I use some of those phrases?” McCoy recalled. “I told him, ‘Sure, use whatever you want and then get some good ones for yourself.’”
“Great balls of fire” was one of those early slogans with the Roadrunners and then the Penguins. Lange also took from McCoy a phrase that might sound familiar: “It’s a hockey night in Phoenix.”
‘Fate’ and a perfect fit in Pittsburgh
A bleary-eyed Lange arrived in Pittsburgh in 1974 after an all-night flight from California. As he walked down the ramp and onto the tarmac, he was smacked in the face by the distinct sulfur smell of the steel mills.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” Lange remembers saying to himself.
Lange’s first game as the play-by-play voice of the Penguins was broadcast on KDKA radio. The then-27-year-old kid carried his equipment into the booth at Metropolitan Sports Center in Minnesota for Game 1 on Oct. 9, 1974, against the North Stars.
“I was scared [stiff] the first game,” Lange said. “You have to understand how big KDKA radio was.”
Heavyweight Bob “Battleship” Kelly gave the Penguins a 1-0 first-period lead, the first Penguins goal Lange ever called. And then Pierre Larouche, playing in his first NHL game, netted a breakaway goal in the second period as the Penguins captured a 4-2 victory. From there, Lange was off and running.
“Quite honestly, my aspirations were still first of all on baseball,” Lange admits. “I thought I would be here maybe a year or two. What happened was the city itself and the way of life and the people sucked me in.
“I honestly believe and am a firm believer in the man upstairs. You’re going to end up where you are meant to be, and he’s going to be a big influence on that. I just think it’s by fate that I ended up here.”
While the Steelers and Pirates turned Pittsburgh into the City of Champions in the 1970s — Lange himself attended the Super Bowl parade in 1974 — the Penguins sometimes struggled to earn their place in a crowded sports market. But maybe that was a blessing, in its own way. Lange had the opportunity to experiment with different styles, different calls.
During times when the team had few — if any — stars, Mike Lange was the star.
“The players, they came and they went, but Mike Lange stayed.” said Bob
Grove, a team historian who eventually worked on the Penguins Radio Network alongside Lange. “He grew the game so much. I know he increased my appreciation for it, without a question.”
Lange might be a fun-loving personality who enjoys a cold Miller Lite on ice and a good live blues band. But behind that affable nature, he’s a man with a hard-working attitude and perfectionist standards.
He rarely missed a morning skate. He conducted his own interviews in the dressing room. And on the rare instance Lange mispronounced a player’s name or guessed wrong when he couldn’t see a number, he’d pound the desk in front of him in frustration.
“He loved the preparation,” said Penguins longtime color commentator Phil Bourque. “He loved all the work he had to put in. When the lights came on and it was go-time for, ‘It’s a hockey night in Pittsburgh,’ he was at his very best.”
With Lange well-established and on his way to a Hall of Fame career, the Penguins finally turned the corner in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mario Lemieux came to town. Meanwhile, back home in Montreal, Lemieux’s mother, Pierrette, knew almost no English. She tuned into the games knowing she had the right frequency when she heard those patented catch phrases.
“When I said, ‘Elvis has just left the building,’ she would go crazy,” Lange said. “That was passed along to me. When we were in the playoffs, Mario’s mother came in. I knew that Elvis was in the building. It created a bond between us. She’d give me a big hug and I would return the favor every time I’d see her.”
Finally, in 1991, the hockey club that Lange helped popularize in Pittsburgh reached the pinnacle. Fittingly, Lange was back in Metropolitan Sports Center in Minnesota where his Penguins broadcasting career began, this time for the Stanley Cup final, Game 6, to call the Penguins’ 8-0 victory over the North Stars.
Lange had earned his notoriety for those phrases. But this time, he chose to go simple and sentimental as the final horn sounded: “The Stanley Cup has come to the city of Pittsburgh.”
“It just was the moment for the city of Pittsburgh to finally — finally — get there,” Lange said “You have to realize, the Steelers won four Super Bowls at that point. The Pirates had won two championships. Pitt had won a national championship. For me to be able to say that for the city of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, that was my feeling at the time.
“It just came from my heart.”
‘It’s a good story. Write it’
This past week, after the ongoing pandemic postponed long-delayed plans, I finally visited my brother and his young family for the first time at his new home in San Antonio. I walked through the front door.
And there it was, proudly displayed in his entry way — the old wooden radio.
So of course, it had to happen this way. With the brother Lange helped me grow
closer to by my side, my god-daughter under my arm and the radio where we first heard Lange’s voice nearby, the Penguins announced on Monday that the broadcaster who believes fate puts you places at the right time for a reason had retired.
“That’s a good story,” Lange said. “I’d put that story in there. Write it. I think you should.”
Well, as reporters, we’re taught to never make the story about ourselves. But when Mike Lange tells you to do something, you listen.
Now, I won’t pretend that Lange and I have become best friends, even if the legendary broadcaster began calling me “The real Motorcycle” when I told him about my Penguins-obsessed uncle’s nickname for me (Michael, Michael, Motorcycle).
Bourque said Lange is the kind of caring friend who you can call at 3 a.m., ask
for $3,000 and his car, and he’ll be out of bed in a heartbeat. (I’m pretty sure it was a metaphor, but a part of me also wonders why Bourque needed three grand). I never sat next to Lange on the team bus the way Jagr did for half a decade. We don’t have an unspoken connection through a fist bump the way Lange has with Crosby.
“He’s a friend and will always be part of the team,” Crosby said. “Whether it’s the fist bumps, hanging out chatting around the rink or hearing his calls, I’m going to miss having him around.”
But I do feel fortunate that my first two seasons covering the Penguins for the Post-Gazette coincided with his last two seasons in the booth. Really, though, you don’t have to ever dial Lange’s number or shake his hand to count him as a friend.
A good broadcaster forges this symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship with listeners. We welcome the broadcaster into our homes. They keep us company while we make dinner. They ride shotgun during long car rides. And, yes, they even tell us bedtime stories as we drift off to sleep.
Over time and shared sports experiences, a person who we never met and who doesn’t know our name feels like a friend.
With Lange, it goes well beyond that thanks to those famous sayings. The man who bought Sam a drink and got his dog one, too, resonated in a profound way in this shot-and-a-beer-town. We call them Lange-isms, right?
But they’re not exactly all his own creation. He encouraged fans to write him suggestions. Then, he would store them in a shoe box and pull out the very best ones in the biggest moments.
In that way, they’re not just his sayings; they’re ours.
They’re from 8-year-old Dylan in the junior reporter program, who first made Malkin a milkshake. They’re from the stock broker who was beaten like a rented mule during a market nosedive. They’re from the car salesman with the Texas drawl in Dormont who thought Michael would look good on a motorcycle.
There are great stories behind all those great sayings. But, as Elvis finally leaves the building, we have time for just one more.
“If I’m truthful? I was stopped in the South Hills somewhere,” Lange said. “There was a baseball game on the radio. When the ball was hit out of the park, the broadcaster said, ‘Elvis has just left the building.’ I said, ‘Wow. That would work with hockey.’
“I don’t know who the broadcaster was. I don’t know if I misheard him. He may have used it only once. I don’t know.”
But here in Pittsburgh, what might have been a fleeting moment on a car radio will live on long after the final goal horn sounds, the radio fades and we drift off to sleep with the voice of Mike Lange in our ears and the memories resonating in our hearts.