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BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — The storytellers were Bob Miller, whose legendary broadcasting resume includes having his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and Tony Granato, whose return to his alma mater has already bordered on the stuff of legends with the revitalization of a dormant program after just one season.
From up-close and afar, they have earned each other's respect: Miller, 78, the former Wisconsin hockey play-by-play man and iconic voice of the Los Angeles Kings; and Granato, 52, the former UW star, Olympian and battle-scarred NHL survivor as a player (13 years) and coach (13 years).
"He's such a wonderful human being," Granato said.
"He was an individual who would do anything to win the game," Miller said.
Now for their story.
In late January of 1990, Granato was in Madison for the NHL All-Star break when he got word that he had been traded from the New York Rangers (along with Tomas Sandstrom) to the Los Angeles Kings for Bernie Nicholls. The following day, Granato flew to Vancouver to join his new team.
"When I checked in at the hotel," he said, "I asked, 'Who's my roommate?'"
This was before NHL players had single rooms on the road.
"They said, 'W. Douglas,'" Granato recounted. "So I was wondering, 'This is kind of strange.'"
That's because he was unaware of a W. Douglas on the Los Angeles roster.
Walking to the elevator, he bumped into Miller, the venerable Kings announcer.
"He welcomed me to the Kings and we were talking about Badgers stuff and everything else," recalled Granato. "And, then, I said, 'Hey, Bob, who's this W. Douglas that I'm rooming with?'"
Miller got a smirk on his face.
"Oh, you know what, that's Wayne's name that he registers with at the hotel," Miller informed Granato. "That's so people don't know it's Wayne Gretzky."
Miller picked up the story from there. "Tony says, 'What? I'm rooming with Wayne Gretzky?' I said, 'Yes, Gretzky.' And he says, 'Oh, my, God.'"
Yep, the one and only, the Great One, Wayne Douglas Gretzky.
"It's funny," Granato went on. "Gretz had played in the All-Star game (in Pittsburgh) and had been given an extra day off. So I get to the room and I'm in the room by myself for a day waiting for that knock on the door and for Wayne Gretzky to appear as my roommate.
"I can remember calling Donny (Granato, his younger brother) back here (in Madison) and saying, 'Donny, you're not going to believe this, but I'm sitting in a room right now and there's another bed in here and Wayne Gretzky is going to be in that bed — he's my roommate.'"
Keep in mind, Tony Granato was only three years removed from his senior year at Wisconsin. "All the college guys back in Madison," he said, "would call my room (in Vancouver) just to see if Wayne would answer the phone so they could talk to him."
Over the years, Granato became good friends with W. Douglas.
"He learned a lot from Wayne Gretzky," said Miller, who remembered Granato for his feistiness, enthusiasm and competitiveness as a Kings player. "I think that's still the way he is today."
Granato has fond memories of Miller, too.
"We had a connection right away from the Badger ties," said Granato, reflecting on his reception with the Kings. "He came up to me and shared his experiences back here in Madison and how special they were to him. We talked about Badger hockey all the time."
Granato spent seven years with the Kings (380 games).
"He's obviously a great broadcaster, a Hall of Famer," Granato said of Miller, "who has not only meant a lot to the Los Angeles Kings but to the NHL as well. It was classy how he represented himself and his retirement is sad from the standpoint that he's not going to be around calling games anymore."
After 44 years with the Kings, some 3,351 broadcasts, Miller will call his final two games of his storied career in what will be the final two regular-season games for Los Angeles on April 8 against the Chicago Black Hawks at the Staples Center and on April 9 against the Ducks in Anaheim.
"It's based on my health really and it's really not a tough call," admitted Miller, who has dealt with quadruple bypass surgery and two strokes within the last year (most recently in January). "I always said I wanted to retire when I'm still healthy enough to enjoy retirement. I was ready to do it.
"It was a good, long run and it was time to end it."
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• • • •
Ready or not, Miller became the original voice of Badger hockey on Dec. 13, 1968. He had no idea of what he was getting himself into when his program director, WKOW's Roger Russell, informed him, "Oh, by the way, we're doing the hockey broadcasts this weekend and you're doing the games."
Although Miller, a TV sports anchor in Madison, had experience doing football, basketball and baseball, he was a newcomer to the sport of college hockey, which was still a novelty and curiosity to most people in the community. Bob Johnson's budding program was just beginning to generate interest.
"What was in my favor," Miller said, "is that I don't know how many people in Madison had listened to hockey on the radio, so they didn't know how bad I was in those early days. It was the biggest challenge I ever had doing play-by-play just to keep up with the speed of the game."
In his debut, the Badgers upset No. 1 ranked North Dakota, 7-5, at the Coliseum.
"I really fell in love with the game," he said, "and I wanted to see if I could really do them well."
From 1969 through 1973, Miller, a Chicago native and University of Iowa alum, was the UW's Director of Radio and Television. He worked side-by-side with Jim Mott, the sports information director. Bob Leu was his color analyst on home games, while Phil Mendel handled the assignment on the road.
In 1972, Miller applied for the play-by-play job with the Kings. One of his references was Los Angeles Lakers announcer Chick Hearn. But owner Jack Kent Cooke acted on a whim and hired someone else. A year later, after the Badgers won their first national championship, the Kings position reopened.
Miller again sent them an audition tape. And this time, he was hired. "I had people tell me, 'Why would you take a job with the Kings? They're a terrible team,'" Miller related. "But I just wanted the opportunity to get into the National Hockey League and see where it would lead."
Miller's first impression of the pro game was not a good one.
"One of the worst games I've ever seen," he said. "We played Chicago. Tony Esposito shut us out, 3-0. It was as dull as it could be. My wife Judy and I were driving home and said, 'What have we done?' We left Madison where we had parties after games and everybody was upbeat.
"We came here (Los Angeles) and we don't know anybody and that first regular season game was terrible. There was so much more energy around the college game than there was the professional game. It was just a whole different atmosphere."
It didn't take long for Miller to make adjustments or find his niche in a legend-rich market. Besides Hearn, who passed away in 2002, there was the incomparable Vin Scully with the Dodgers. Last October, Scully retired after 67 seasons. What a hat trick: Scully, Miller, Hearn.
In fact, it was Hearn who set Miller straight on what it would take to succeed in LA.
"Be yourself," Hearn advised him. "You're not trying to be Chick Hearn, you're not trying to be Vin Scully, you're not trying to be anybody that you may have listened to growing up in Chicago (Bob Elson). Just be yourself. Don't mimic other announcers. Just do the game in your own style."
Humor has always been an integral component of Miller's style.
"People always asked me, 'Are you going to go as long as Vince Scully'" posed Miller, who would then deliver the punchline. "Let's see, I'm in my 44th year, he went 67 — that's 23 years difference. At my age, I'll tie him when I'm 101. I told my wife, 'It could happen.' She said, 'Not a chance.'"
Asked if he has gone to the Hollywood Walk of Fame to stand on his own embedded star in the sidewalk (No. 2,319), he cracked, "I've done that for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to make sure it's still there. Two, I wanted to see if Judy (his wife of 53 years) has been there to polish it.'"
Miller is one of two former Wisconsin hockey play-by-play voices to receive the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for overall professionalism and contributions to the game. The other is Chuck Kaiton who covered the Badgers in the late '70s. Both of their plaques hang in the NHL Hall of Fame.
Kaiton has been with the Carolina Hurricanes (formerly Hartford Whalers) franchise for 34 years. He has never missed a broadcast. "Chuck is a great friend, a great guy to be around. We've had a lot of laughs," said Miller, who will entertain/feed Kaiton when he's in Los Angeles. Kaiton does likewise for Miller in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Another former "Voice of Badger Hockey" also made the jump to the NHL. Chris Moore, who covered UW football and hockey, went on to become the play-by-play voice of the New Jersey Devils (1988-93) and the Florida Panthers (1993-99). Moore has excelled as a national talk show host.
"Chris Moore was here when I was here and we're great buddies," said Tony Granato, who enjoyed running into Moore, Miller and Kaiton during his travels in the league. "Being a part of Wisconsin hockey, like teammates, you feel like you have a bond. There's a brotherhood."
And now, it's Miller time — time for him to step away from the broadcasting fraternity.
"A lot of great things have happened to me," he said. "It's time to enjoy them with my wife and family and I hope to have a lot of good years left — meeting with fans, hosting some projects. It's not a complete break all-together from being around the team and people that I know."
The icing on an HOF career.
