RIP Mike Lange

One of the side effects of growing up a sports-obsessed kid in a house without cable television is a lot of radio consumption. So it was for me, the kid whose family didn’t have cable – my father thought it would rot our brains, or something – until 2002, when ESPN and the rest of the sundry delights of cable finally made their way into my home.

For the first 17 years of my life, I was deprived of things like Sunday Night Football, Big Monday, the NBA on TNT, and so on. What I missed out on the most, however, were Pirates and Penguins games. Then, as now, regional cable sports networks carried the majority of the games. What you now know as Sportsnet Pittsburgh was then called KBL, or PrimeSports KBL, and I didn’t have access to it.

It was radio, or nothing. A very old-timey existence, you might say.

I have memories of listening to Pirates games in that era, but let’s be honest: Then, as now, the Pirates sucked. The recollections are scattered, random games burned into my consciousness for seemingly no reason. One in particular that stands out is the Bucs randomly battering the then-formidable Kevin Millwood of the Braves for four solo home runs en route to a 7-1 win. For those games, Lanny Frattare was the one painting the picture with words, my mind’s eye creating the image.

Baseball on the radio, though, is as much about what’s said between pitches as it is calls of the action itself. Not so with hockey.

To hear Mike Lange call hockey was to hear one of the best to ever do it. That goes for any city, and for any sport. It wasn’t just the catchphrases, either, although there were hundreds of those. It was his ability to call an exceptionally fast-moving sport in a way that perfectly balanced professional pacing with a keen sense of anticipation that something big was going to happen.

This is hardly an original observation, but Lange could be calling a game where little was happening, perhaps even doing a little baseball-style storytelling (he did call some Pirates games too, after all) and all of the sudden, his voice would rise with some urgency.

“Look out here,” came the call, and your back would straighten, and your ears lock in on what was coming next. Lange didn’t deploy the phrase often, and it almost always meant that an odd-man break was coming, one that frequently led to a goal.

If you’ve watched hockey, you know how quickly the run of play can go from innocuous to frantic; sit high up enough on either side of the ice, and you can see plays develop a second or two ahead. Lange was two or three seconds ahead of even that pace, his gift of foresight one honed through decades of observation and practice.

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He was the voice of an entire sport in Pittsburgh, someone who captivated younger, sports-crazed fans and made them hockey fans for life, and someone whose trademark calls became so iconic, they’d occasionally get tweaked and used – admiringly, I’d say – by SportsCenter anchors. The calls were great, and will remain great for all time – “How much fried chicken can you eat?” tops my personal list – but what occasionally gets forgotten is how great Lange’s voice was for the medium. Call him the soundtrack to Penguins hockey if you’d like; the comparison works, because he enhanced the product with his presence. Go watch your favorite action movie and try to imagine a big sequence without any music, and see if you like it as much. You won’t.

Every remembrance of Lange has included plenty of details about his generosity with broadcast partners, often former Penguins players who already knew him well, but who were novices in the field, and towards regular fans. I’d wager there are several hundred people who can tell a tale about seeing Lange at a bar or musical venue, and having a great interaction with him. He was every bit a Pittsburgher, despite coming here from Sacramento.

Those remembrances have also included plenty about just how hard he worked at his craft, even late in his career, when he was a living legend, and could have coasted on reputation and accrued knowledge. He always put in the time, always knew the names and numbers and arcane pronunciations, never went into a game flying by the seat of his pants. There’s a good lesson in there for anyone trying to break into the business; having a unique style can be a big help, but the work still matters.

The other thing about Lange that was so impressive, at least from my vantage point, was his ability to call games flawlessly while they were being simulcast. He managed to perfectly serve the radio audience, which needed a detailed call, while somehow not over-calling the game for the television audience, which could see the action happening. It’s an exceptionally difficult needle to thread, and he did it with ease.

One could go on and on with stories about what made Lange great, and how influential he was in the Penguins becoming as popular as they are, but his is a legacy that does not require extensive exposition. If you heard him even once, you understood immediately why he was so beloved, and why no one else could possibly fill his shoes. Often imitated, never duplicated.

The word legend might get overused sometimes, but in Mike Lange’s case, it falls short, if anything. There will never be another like him, and he will be missed.