Mike Lange's Impact on Western Pennsylvania & Sports

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00:00I think, you know, Mike Lang kind of set the tone for that.

00:03His very nature was to have fun.

00:06And I think when you're like that, you tend to try different things and maybe push the

00:09envelope a little bit, which he was willing to do.

00:12He was an original.

00:13He was a very creative guy.

00:15He had an incredible knack of getting in touch with the people.

00:19He kind of tapped into the ethos of Western Pennsylvania.

00:23And they kind of tapped into him.

00:26And there was a connection there that he developed over time by going out in the community

00:30and actually touching the flesh with the people and talking to them.

00:33And of course, those people all gave him suggestions for his goal calls, all of those goal calls

00:38and those crazy sayings.

00:40Probably 98% of them were actually given to him by people.

00:44He would keep examples or samples of ones on little pieces of paper in a shoe box, and

00:49every now and then he'd go back and look through the shoe box and find ones that he liked,

00:53and then he'd use them.

00:54You can only imagine what that would have been like, you know, in terms of spreading

00:57like wildfire out in the community, when whoever came to him and said, Arnold Slick from Turtle

01:02Creek and wrote it down, call Arnold Slick from Turtle Creek.

01:06You know, everybody in Turtle Creek was aware of that.

01:08And so he had a knack of doing things like that to kind of endear himself to large swaths

01:15of the population of Western Pennsylvania.

01:17I thought the best one for my life was when he said, spit shine your shoes, we're going

01:22dancing with Lord Stanley.

01:24And then I just loved so many of them.

01:26When you were doing the games with him, like, did you lose your mind listening to him laughing?

01:34And like, I would have snapped because he was so like gifted and funny and brilliant

01:40with this timing of his shtick.

01:42And when he would say, you know, buy Sam a drink and get his dog one to beat him like

01:47a rented mule, scratch my back with a hacksaw.

01:50She wants to sell my monkey.

01:52When you were sitting there doing the games with him, were you losing it?

01:56Did you lose it ever with him in the booth?

02:00There were times when I would laugh and I'd have to catch myself because, you know, we'd

02:04be moving on to the next thing in the telecast, like a replay or whatever.

02:08But yeah, he I could tell that he got a kick out of it when I would react.

02:11Like if I laughed at things that he came up with and I hadn't heard them before, he knew

02:15that at least there's at least one person who likes it.

02:18Believe it or not, he did put those things out there and test them and make sure that

02:22people appreciated them, which we always did.

02:25But yeah, you know, that spit shine your shoes one, that's an example, I think, of his preparation

02:32because he knew that the chance of that happening was there when he was calling the game.

02:37And so he made sure that he had something cool to say at that moment.

02:42And yet it didn't sound contrived, if you know what I mean.

02:46The way he would deliver something was like a musician delivering a riff or, you know,

02:51a sequence, you know, in the middle of a song.

02:56It was, you know, and you can spit shine your shoes because we're going dancing with Lord

03:02Stanley.

03:03You know, he didn't just say it, he delivered it, you know, in a way that was really, really

03:09palatable.

03:10And he was great at that.

03:12He was truly a virtuoso, I would say, and I use the musical term because I really do

03:19think his love of blues and blues guitar players actually influenced him in the way that he

03:24made his deliveries and the way that he used his voice.

03:27So his voice was truly an instrument.

03:31And you know, that's a hard thing to develop.

03:35And another thing I was thinking of when you were talking about all those sayings, it isn't

03:38just the sayings, it's the fact that he could incorporate them instantaneously in the middle

03:43of the action and never screw it up.

03:45You know, he would write them down on his legal pad at the top.

03:50He'd write down a few of the sayings that he liked, maybe he hadn't used them in a while,

03:53and he'd write them down so that when the time came, he was ready and he could just

03:58look down and see it and say it right away instead of having to conjure it up in his

04:02mind for a second.

04:03And that extra second made a difference to him in terms of when he was going to deliver

04:07those sayings.

04:08That was a real art form.

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