Al Michaels’ famous ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ call came ‘out of my heart, at the moment’

Wednesday was the 37th anniversary of the United States’ famous upset of the Soviet Union at the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey tournament, and to celebrate the occasion, Rich Eisen invited Al Michaels onto his radio show to reminisce on his call of the game.

Michaels recalled fearing that the game would be a massive blowout and telling his partner Ken Dryden that “all he can ask for” was for the U.S. to be down only 3-1 in the second period.

Then Eisen asked how his famous game-ending call—”Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”—came to be. Here was Michaels’ response:

“Out of my heart, at the moment. Because there’s no way the U.S. is going to win the game. And as the clock is ticking down, I’ve never worked in a more intense state of concentration. Because first of all, the building is rocking and physically shaking. … We’re on a ricketty platform, which is in the front part of the balcony. So the building is shaking, the platform almost feels as if it’s coming down, the crowd is crazy. I’ve got a producer in my ear who is just yelling gibberish and garbage into my headset. I wanted to take my headset and throw it off. That would’ve been fun.

“And as the puck comes out to center-ice with about five or six seconds to go, all I was really thinking about in the last minute was, ‘Hey, call the game because the Soviets could score.’ And how stupid would it be if I had said something as I said, and the Soviets had scored to tie the game with a second to go?

“So when the puck comes out to center-ice, I just remember the word ‘miraculous’ coming into my head. Somehow it gets morphed into a question, and I answer it with, ‘Yes,’ and that was it. So if you had said to me two minutes after the game, ‘What’d you say at the end of the game?’ I couldn’t have remembered. I was just doing the game. And somebody once wrote it was probably the 9-year-old boy in me coming out. I’ll buy that.”

Michaels also discussed how he got the assignment to call Olympic hockey during those Olympics: Basically, he had called one hockey game in his life, which was one more than anyone else on staff.

And the rest was history.

You can listen to the entire Michaels interview right here: