Red Sox-Yankees, a classic rivalry, in a one-game playoff; winner gets an all-expense paid trip to the American League Championship Series; loser goes home for the winter.
Fenway Park was packed, nearly bursting.
The press box was overflowing - The Boston Globe alone sent 12 writers.
And there, above the first base line, huddling in a makeshift broadcast booth on a photo deck, Win Elliot and Ernie Harwell watched Bucky Dent hit one of the greatest home runs of all time.
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"He was really a Red Sox fan," Harwell recalled of Elliot, the one-time Michigan hockey goaltender-turned-sportscaster. "He had a hard time controlling himself."
Like most sports journalists, Irwin Elliot Shalek, who changed his name to Win Elliot early in his sportscasting career, was a homer. Whether it was the Red Sox or his alma mater, Michigan, he had to struggle to keep his emotions in check, to maintain the unbiased exterior. At his funeral two days ago, Elliot was buried in a maize-and-blue Michigan jacket.
Elliot is well-removed from his playing days, though. Since he tended the pipes for Michigan in the early '30s, the Wolverines have won eight national titles, moved their home ice twice and had six coaching changes.
Elliot didn't wear a mask when he was in net - not even one of those old, Jason-style white ones.
A zoology major at Michigan, Elliot found himself looking for a class to fill out the last few credits he needed to graduate.
He turned to the communications department. His professor was impressed and suggested sportscasting as a career.
After graduating in the early '30s, Elliot embarked on the rough road typical of a sportscaster at the time.
In the '40s and '50s, as television was just beginning to get its foot in the door of every living room in the country, Elliot split time between radio and the new medium.
On the radio, he anchored World Series pre- and post-game shows and covered boxing and horse racing. He also hosted radio call-in shows.
On television, he did play-by-play for the New York Rangers for two New York stations, and hosted "Schaefer Circle of Sports."
For nearly two decades, from the late '60s to the early '80s, Elliot hosted the Sports Central USA reports on the CBS Radio Network.
His specialty, Harwell said, was taking a sound bite and writing around it, writing lead-ins and lead-outs.
"He was a real expert at those cut-ins," Harwell said. "They were really very effective."
In his broadcasts, Elliot had a flair for the dramatic, but was still able to pinpoint what the viewer needed to know, whether he was announcing hockey, his specialty, or baseball.
"He was very forthright, intelligent and straightforward," Harwell said. "He really knew the game."
As the play-by-play man for the Rangers, Elliot managed to instill excitement in his game calls despite several dismal seasons. He took a conversational approach to broadcasting.
"I remember watching a rare Rangers playoff game," Michael Elliot, Win's son, told the New York Times last week. "My family gathered in the living room. In the third period, the Rangers tied the Chicago Blackhawks.
"We were going nuts. He was dramatizing the game, but always in control. We were throwing pillows. And he said, 'Stop beating the furniture.' The world stopped because it was like he was in the room with us."
- Josh Kleinbaum can be reached via e-mail at jkbaum@umich.edu.
09-22-98
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