RENO - Jon Miller remembers his first-ever trip to a Major League baseball game like it was yesterday. It was the day that changed his life and gave us one of the best baseball broadcasters of all time.
Miller was the guest speaker at the 21st annual Bobby Dolan Dinner held Monday night at the Silver Legacy, and the veteran broadcaster kept the media and guests entertained with his plethora of baseball stories and impersonations.
"I was 10 when my dad took me to see the Giants play," said Miller. "They played the Dodgers. It was 19-8. The Dodgers out-hit the Giants. The Dodger pitchers walked 10 batters. Billy O'Dell threw a complete-game 15-hitter. He went into the ninth inning with a 19-3 lead, and Alvin Dark had to get his bullpen up.
"Somebody asked Dark after the game if he was upset that the bullpen had to warm up. He said that O'Dell was fine, and just throwing strikes to get the game over quicker, and that he'd only thrown 150 pitches. One hundred fifty pitches! If a manager did that today, he'd be fired. I was having so much fun I didn't want to leave."
He got to see Willie Mays, Jim Davenport and Felipe Alou hit homers that day at Candlestick Park.
Miller said that his dad turned on his transistor radio during the game, and pointed out to young Jon where legendary broadcasters Lon Simmons and Russ Hodges sat during the game.
Miller said Hodges called a pitch and then shoved some French fries in his mouth between pitches, and the veteran announcer said you could hear Hodges chewing over the air. When Hodges washed it down with a soft drink, Miller said you could hear it on the radio.
"Right then I knew it was the life for me," he said.
From then on, Miller, who grew up in Hayward, would re-create games in the bedroom. He played baseball board games, including Strat-o-Matic baseball. He did the public-address announcing and supplied his own crowd noise.
He was in his own little world, and often times his parents would walk in and catch him frantically waving his arms around.
"The only difference between when I was 10 and now is that I don't have to do the crowd noise," Miller said. "I'm fairly confident I made the right decision."
And how.
IN THE PROS
He latched onto his first job, announcing the A's game in 1974 at age 22. He also worked with the Texas Rangers, Red Sox and Orioles before joining the Giants in 1997. He also has been the voice of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball for the past 16 years.
"Charlie Finley fired me after one year," he said. "When I was fired, I know I was the youngest broadcaster ever fired. I did the A's games in 1974 after they had won back-to-back titles. They played every aspect of the game beautifully."
His tenure with Baltimore lasted 14 years. He doesn't know why he was fired by owner Peter Angelos, but that things worked out for the best. Indeed. Fans in the Bay Area consider him a treasure, and you can tell that Miller, Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper make a nice team.
In fact, his relationship with the Krukow family is why Miller made the trip to Reno.
"Baker (Krukow) is a player here," Miller said of young Krukow, a sophomore on the University of Nevada baseball team. "He hit .307. I have to talk to coach Powers to see if he can get more than 75 at-bats. I said to Mike that I would take that upon myself."
Miller's been nominated six times (and won twice) for the ACE Award, which honors excellence on cable television. He's racked up a couple of Emmy nominations and has broadcast the World Series the last several years on ESPN Radio.
Miller has called some of baseball's biggest moments in the last 20 years, including Baltimore's Cal Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played and Barry Bonds breaking the single-season home run record.
When you ask for him to pin down his biggest moment, he just can't.
After most of the media and the UNR players had left for the ballroom, Miller talked at length about the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and Diamondbacks when Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius hit game-winning homers in the fourth and fifth games before Arizona solved Mariano Rivera and won the World Series.
The 2004 ALCS between the Red Sox and Yankees is another favorite because of all the drama involved. New York held a 3-0 lead and Boston was six outs away from elimination. What made the Red Sox comeback special, according to Miller, is that the team had gone 86 years between world championships.
And, despite all his success, he is a genuine nice guy and very approachable. After meeting with the media, he shared stories with some of the players and posed for pictures with them. All in all, a classy act that tells you volumes about the man.
THE STEROID ISSUE
Because he is the voice of the Giants, Miller was asked about the steroid rumors swirling around slugger Barry Bonds.
"Everybody is entitled to their own opinion," Miller said. "Ray Ratto (Bay Area columnist) wrote that we weren't born yesterday and that he wasn't buying it. That's fine. Everybody had made up their minds about Barry long before the story was written.
"They show a lot of pictures from back in 1989, and he's so much bigger now. Everybody is bigger 13 years later. Look at Hank Aaron. Between 1971 and 1975 he gained 30 pounds."
Miller said that if Bonds lied, law enforcement people would be coming after him, and that hasn't happened as of yet.
"I don't think they (steroids) have any place in the game," Miller said. "If you test positive the book should be thrown at you. It needs to be eradicated from the game."
With Bonds closing in on Babe Ruth's career homer record, Miller said it will be interesting to see how the fans react, and he said he will report it accordingly. If silence or boos greet the record, he said he would report it that way. If people cheer and get excited, Miller will report it in that vein.
"Some people feel that the new policy (adopted by the players and owners) isn't tough enough," Miller said "If a player tests positive he's suspended for 10 games. That's not a terrible thing. It's a stigma that will stay with him for the rest of his career.
"It was obvious to the player's association that something needed to be done. Every player was a suspect. The guys that were not cheating were fed up with it."