 And now, with another tale from the crib. Come to my house, have a rib. Here's Michael Cain. Aw. All right, so a new feature on the show. I'm going to tell you about how I got the Yankee gig on radio. OK. So I'm a writer for the Daily News, and I'm covering the 1991 World Series between the twins and the Braves. And I get a call in the hotel room before game one. Would I be interested in coming in and talking about joining John Sterling in the booth? Yeah, I'd be interested. So I hung up the phone. They said, well, when the World Series is over, you come in to the, you know, it was the WABC offices on two-pen plaza right by the garden. You come in. So I hung up the phone. I said, oh, I guarantee this will be a seven-game series. And the last game will probably be 25 innings. It was a seven-game series, and the last game was 10, and it was a great game. And the twins ended up winning the World Series over the Braves. Anyway, fast forward to the meeting. Joe Angel had been John's partner, and they did not get along at all. And Joe Angel just quit and left. Just left. He didn't have another job. He didn't like John, and John didn't like him, so he just left. He couldn't make it work. So the guy who ran ABC at the time said, would you like to be the guy working with John? And I mean, he was essentially offering me the job. And I said, yeah, of course. He goes, okay, so this is the offer. We'll give you a two-year deal, and then he gave me a number, and he gave me the number for the two years. And I said, that's for one year? He goes, no, no, that's for the two years. And I said, I make double that at the Daily News. And the guy looked at me and said, I could get Kukla Fran and Ollie to do the Yankee games on radio. If they're good, people will listen. If they're bad, they won't. Take it or leave it. Strong. So I said, well, in fairness to everybody who has this job around the world, although it's my dream job, I can't fiscally, responsibly take that. I've got to turn it down. And he goes, well, you're a fool. He said, you just had your one-chance opportunity, your dream job, you're a fool. So I walked out of Madison Square Garden, crushed because I said I just gave away my chance. But then the gods were shining down on me. The next day, that guy got fired, lost his job. So they bring in another guy to run the station by the name of Don Belukis, who had no idea that this guy had offered me the job. And I get a call, would you like to be considered to join John Sterling in the Yankee booth? And I said, sure, never letting on that I'd already been offered the job. So you never said a word. Never a word. That you'd already been in for this exact same conversation days early. Right, because I thought that that would play against me. It's such a Costanza move, I respect it. So then there's like, obviously, there's thousands of people that want this job, and they start doing like tryout tapes. And the only thing they were uncertain with me is whether or not I could do play by play. And so they kept, they had me come up and do play by play alone off a television screen. And the game that they showed me was a Memorial Day game. You guys can all look it up, where Mel Hall hit a home run into the second deck at the old Yankee Stadium against Jeff Reardon, who was a game I had covered as a writer. So I did it. I didn't think I was very good. But they had me come back and do four other tryout tapes off the same game. Now it's Christmas. Or the night before Christmas, as they call Christmas Eve in the business. And I get a call at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, could you come in and do one final tape? I said, it's Christmas Eve. They said, yeah, but we need to get this done. So I went up, did the tape. I remember walking outside Madison Square Garden afterward, and it was snowing. And I was almost crying because I said, I didn't do a good job. Anyway, it's first week of January. I get a phone call, and they go, is this the voice of the Yankees? I said, excuse me? They said, you're Michael K. right? I said, yeah, well, you got the job. And then I was told that all the people in the corporation that had listened to it, this is the kicker of the story, they were amazed at my play-by-play tape that I knew exactly, it sounded like I knew exactly what was gonna happen, that I was foreshadowing everything. Well, weird or better not throw Mel Hall a strike here, he throws him a fastball on the inside corner, Hulke had ended on one swing. So I looked like a genius, but I had seen the game five times. They didn't figure that out. And they offered me the job, and that's how I became the Yankee announcer, 29 years ago. That's how you come in hot and start tales from the crib. That's it, that's what people are here for. Wow. The fact that Peter even enjoyed it. And I'd heard it before. It was like listening to your parents tell you a bedtime story, but it's your favorite bedtime story. You just wanna snuggle up and go to sleep. Hopefully they didn't, especially if they have a meter, but that was a tremendous story. I just think it's so great that they were impressed that I knew what was gonna happen. None of them, one hand did, that's why executives usually don't know what they're doing. They didn't know that I was working out the same tape five times. So what was your take me, once you find out it's official? Take us through the phone calls you made and what did you do that night? Was there a celebration? Take us through it. I just, I hung up the phone and I was like stunned. And I had to call the daily news and tell them that I was, you know, I was leaving. Obviously I told my mom. She was, you know, my mom was really, my mom was always, always worried about, you know, if it was gonna be a job that I could keep. And she said, you know, you got a good job at the deli news. You know, this is kind of a chance. And I said, yeah, I know, but they offered me a five-year contract. Five years guaranteed. And how much better was the money than the original terrible offer? Triple, wow. And here's the best part, why I love Don Balucus, who ended up going back and running WFAN. I was really rough in my first year, really rough. And they were getting letters how bad I was. And Don Balucus called me into his office in the middle of the season. And he said, do you believe that you could do this job? I said, yeah. He goes, then I believe it too. He goes, you'll be here all five years of your contract. He said, don't worry, relax, and do your job. That's why he's one of the greatest men who ever lived. Wow, that's amazing. And Don Balucus. And did you go out and celebrate? Did you have a meal? You know, I think it was just a normal day.