Hi Fred, thanks for a very cool article.
Marcia
From: msb-alumni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <msb-alumni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Fred Olver
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2021 9:46 AM
To: MSB <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [msb-alumni] Fwd: Article from Detroit Free Press Sports Section 2021
02 18
Thought some of you might enjoy this article I found in the paper today happy
Friday
Sent from my iPhone
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From: NFB-NEWSLINE Online <publications@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:publications@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Date: February 19, 2021 at 5:52:45 AM CST
To: Fred Olver <fredolver@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:fredolver@xxxxxxxxx> >
Subject: Article from Detroit Free Press Sports Section 2021 02 18
Ray Lane looks back on 1968 Tigers, Cup-winning Wings Ray Lane looks back on
1968 Tigers, Cup-winning Wings By Bill Dow Special to Detroit Free Press
February 18, 2021 As part of his series on former Detroit sports figures, Bill
Dow caught up with former longtime Detroit sports broadcaster Ray Lane who
celebrated his 91st birthday on Feb. 9. How we remember him As one of the most
versatile and respected Detroit sports broadcasters ever, Lane at various times
was the voice of the Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, Pistons and the Cincinnati Reds.
He also called games for Michigan State, Michigan and University of Detroit.
The former Detroit television sports anchor and director at WJBK and WKBD, Lane
was a color analyst on Lions radio broadcasts from 1963-64 before joining
George Kell on Tigers telecasts in 1965-66. He is perhaps best remembered doing
play-by-play with Ernie Harwell on the radio from 1967-72. Twice named the
Michigan Sportscaster of the Year (1969 and 1980), he was the Red Wings TV
pregame, postgame and between-period host for 16 seasons, beginning in 1985.
From the late 90s and into the early 2000s, Lane would fill in on Tigers games,
too. The native Detroiter was a baseball and basketball star at Mackenzie High
and later graduated from MSU where he played baseball while earning a degree in
communications. Inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 1997, he is
the recipient of the Ty Tyson Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting
(2003) and the Ernie Harwell Lifetime Contribution Award (2014) from the
Detroit Sports Broadcasting Association. Today Lane lives in Farmington Hills
and was married 50 years to his high school sweetheart, Carolyn, when she died
in 2004. The couple have three children: Greg, an attorney in Bloomfield Hills;
Deanne, a retired TV news anchor in St. Louis and Jeff, a financial advisor in
North Carolina. Becoming a sports broadcaster "As a freshman at Mackenzie High
we had a small radio unit and it was run by our wonderful speech teacher,
Glendora Forshaye, who had worked on the Green Hornet and Lone Ranger radio
shows. She was very helpful and really encouraged me. When I was in summer
leagues games, and even at Michigan State, when I was out in the outfield, I
would do my own little play-by-play. My teammates would tease me and they
thought I was a little crazy but I loved doing it. His first work as a Lions
color commentator "I had started at WJBK Channel 2 in 1961, but I really wanted
to do game broadcasts. I worked for Van Patrick, our sports director who I
greatly admired. Just before the '63 football season, he asked if I had ever
done color. I told him I had but actually I had just done some play-by-play for
baseball in Waterloo Iowa. I had no formal audition and he took my word for it.
He was very powerful and close to William Clay Ford. He said, 'you'll be in San
Francisco a week from Sunday, but if you screw up you will be out of there in a
hurry. Bob Reynolds was the play-by-play man and he asked me, 'who made the
decision to hire you? I knew some of the Lion players but I didn't know a lot
about all the different aspects of pro football. But Wayne Walker and John
Gordy really helped me by tipping me off on some of the plays before the games.
Reynolds would ask me off the mic how did I know all of that when I made an
observation. I lied and said, 'just from going to all the practices.' Working
with Ernie Harwell "When I went to work with Ernie, he called me right away and
said, 'welcome aboard partner. He said, 'I have a lot of baseball materials at
my home and you are welcome to use them anytime for reference. Before the
games, he would go out of his way to introduce me to opposing players. Working
in the booth at Tiger Stadium was paradise because you were so close that you
felt like you could reach out and touch the field. You could easily tell all
the pitches. The first year we didn't have a screen and we were always dodging
foul balls. We didn't have a bathroom but we had a small sink and sometimes a
bucket that we sometimes had to use. Otherwise you had to really hurry to go to
the restroom between innings. Doing Tigers play-by-play "It was the most
favorite thing I ever did during my career. I worked the middle and extra
innings and I always hoped it would go extra innings. You had to be prepared to
tell the listeners what was relevant because you were their eyes. Ernie would
say, 'take a breath every once in a while, and let the audience breathe a
little bit and digest what you've said.' Broadcasting the 1968 world
championship season "In most years it could be boring because you knew you
weren't going to win it and that it was over by August, but that year was so
exciting to do the games because there was a different hero every day with so
many come from behind victories. You couldn't wait to get to the ballpark. I
had gotten to know the players quite well as we were fairly close in age but
you couldn't get too close because if you are going to be critical sometimes,
they didn't like it. But that's the way it goes. I remember a couple of Tiger
wives getting after me because I was a little critical of their husbands'
performance, even if I just said, 'he didn't have it tonight. I'll never forget
the locker room celebration after winning the pennant, getting sprayed with
champagne and being thrown into the hot tub like all the others. Working Red
Wings games for 16 years "It was great being a part of the team with Mickey
Redmond and Dave Strader and I enjoyed interviewing the players. Hockey was my
second-favorite sport. When the Wings won that first Cup in '97 after 42 years,
I remember getting to the ice right away to do the interviews and then going
into the locker room which was absolute pandemonium. ... It was crazy and
cramped in there because the players had let other non-media people come in to
celebrate. I remember Chris Osgood and Darren McCarty had trouble lighting
their cigars so I cut them and lit them. From them on, the players called me
'Razor. I had a lot of fun working those Red Wing games. Michigan .
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