(LOS ANGELES) -- Jim Cramer is a Wall Street guru who has graduated from cult status to mainstream media darling as his CNBC television show "Mad Money," has rapidly become one of the most popular financial shows in America.
Cramer wins over viewers with his infectious enthusiasm about the stock market and common sense investment principles. One of Cramer's golden rules is to always invest in the "Best of Breed" companies in any stock market sector.
When you talk about NHL television broadcasting, the Los Angeles Kings team is all about best of breed.
One is a Hall of Famer, the other a former player who still remains a leader in many of his former team's scoring categories; together, they are the best announcing pair in the NHL.
Bob Miller and Jim Fox have called Kings' games throughout Southern California for the past 25 years and spoil fans with their work effort, preparation, knowledge of the sport and their ability to entertain.
While other announcers like Doc Emrick and John Davidson get more notoriety on the national front, Miller and Fox deliver every night.
The Chairman of the Board
Bob Miller is in his 33rd year as the television voice of the Los Angeles Kings. He was inducted in to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2000 and has called over 2,500 Kings games including regular, pre and post season contests. He's seen the best and the worst in LA, from Juha Widing to Wayne Gretzky and resides in the same class with the other two broadcasting legends in this town, Vin Scully of the Dodgers and the dearly departed Chick Hearn of the Lakers.
Without a recognizable tag line like Mike Lange in Pittsburgh ("he beat him like a rented mule"), Miller has achieved legendary status through understatement.
"I guess I never came up with (a tag line) that good," Miller joked.
His calm on-air demeanor makes the viewer comfortable, not unlike listening to a favored uncle spin a tale during the holidays, but when there's a game deciding play at hand, there's always drama in his voice.
Referencing the father of hockey broadcasters, Foster Hewitt, Miller subscribes to the "less is more" school.
"I know it's been used before, but I still think the best way to describe a goal is 'he shoots, he scores,' and if you can get the player's name in there, it's the best way to do it," he said.
Of the thousands of games he's called, there's three that Miller relishes the most; the night in Los Angeles when Gretzky broke Gordie Howe's point record ("the Great One has become the Greatest One" was his succinct call), the Kings Game 7 win at Toronto in 1991 that put them in the Finals for the first time, and the match that will be forever known as the Miracle on Manchester (when the Kings rallied from a 5-0 third period deficit to beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers in the 1982 playoffs).
"Game 7 in Toronto had so much meaning (for the Kings) and when the puck came out to center ice at game's end and I said 'the Kings are four wins away from the Stanley Cup,'" he said. "No believed that would ever happen."
Broadcasters approach their craft in different ways and from early on, Miller chose to go the old-school journalistic route.
"While my job is to inform and entertain, it's also to be truthful in order to get credibility in the way you call a game," he explained. "I was taught that if the opponents make a great play, you talk about how great it was. If the Kings are playing lousy, you're not going to fool the viewer by saying they're having bad breaks or the referees are against them. That's phony, if they play great one night and lousy the next and you say that on the air. You're not a homer. It's always in my mind, that I must do an honest broadcast."
With respect to others that are guilty of the sin of bias Miller points out, "I grew up in Chicago and they have the biggest homers in that market. It's always 'we' and 'us' and in those areas those broadcasts go over very well."
With respect to the Los Angeles market, he schooled by Hearn on how to play to the crowd.
"Chick once told me, 'We both want our teams (Lakers and Kings) to win. But there are so many transplants out here that still have allegiances to the teams where they grew up that you have to be slightly in favor of the Kings without getting the fans of the other teams upset.' Again, I think it comes down to honesty."
But for all his accomplishments, Miller's greatest achievement may be how dignified he is given his stature in the history of the game.
Some of our most enjoyable moments covering the Kings are in the pressroom during pre-game. Most nights you can see him holding court at one of the tables in the room while diners are prepping for the game. You can usually tell at which table Miller is sitting because that's usually the one where the loudest laughs are.
In addition, he seems to know everyone's name in the building, from the GM on down to a random Staples Center worker. We inquired as to how Miller remains so grounded given how robust his accomplishments are.
"I was working in Madison (Wisconsin) early on in my career and I was down in Chicago doing some interviews at Wrigley Field," he said. "I was in the park early and I saw Lloyd Petit (a Cubs and Blackhawks broadcaster at the time) sitting by himself. I introduced myself and after chatting he invited me up to the broadcast booth while he did the seventh and eighth innings of the game. I always remember that he went out of his way for me.
"So when someone calls me up to listen to their tape or wants some advice, I've always enjoyed that. It's not a chore for me to talk with the fans after games. To me, the day when they STOP asking for autographs or to talk with you is the day you start worrying."
With over three decades of memories in the books, we posed the question about the balance of his Hall of Fame career. Does he envision being like Hearn, doing broadcasts for the rest of his days on the planet?
"No, no, I couldn't do that," he laughed.
His contract expires at the end of this season, but there are no plans for retirement.
"I'll probably sign another one. I'm 67 and another five years would give me 50 years in radio and television and I've told people that those figures don't mean anything to anybody but me. They are milestones that you would like to reach from a personal standpoint."
And although he has no regrets, he does think that another path would have given him more notoriety on the national scene.
"I honestly think that if I had taken a job in the East, I would have had a greater opportunity to do more network games. Having said that, I've never wanted to do a regular 'Game of the Week' where I didn't have an interest in either team winning. I'd much rather be involved emotionally with one team and have the peaks and valleys during a season. If my role was just to call a game where I didn't care who wins, I don't think I'd be good at it."
Highly unlikely, Mr. Miller.
Although this announcing team is both highly regarded and respected league wide, you don't see them nationally, either when Fox and ESPN had broadcast rights, or in its current incarnation at OLN. Miller is sharp in his criticism of the selection of the broadcasts.
"I think it's ridiculous that broadcasters from Washington and Florida come in do our (the Kings' OLN games) when they rarely see us. There's a definite East Coast bias towards announcers."
With three decades of Los Angeles hockey in his body of work, it begs that question of how Miller motivates himself to do a broadcast.
As he explains, "A lot of the motivation for me is that we're doing a live telecast and that still excites me. For three hours, we're doing a live, mostly unscripted telecast and we're trying to do it with a minimum of mistakes.
"Every night is different; you never know what you're going to see. All I have to do is go back to February 12 (when the Kings rallied from a third period four goal deficit to defeat Dallas) and we come back and the crowd is going crazy. That's the beauty of sport, you just never know.”
Sly as a Fox
Jim Fox's story is the polar opposite of his on-air teammate.
Not classically trained as an announcer, Fox enjoyed a solid career as a forward for the Kings' franchise until knee injuries forced him out of the game in 1989. He took a role in the Los Angeles PR department and soon found himself on-air as Miller's analyst, an intimidating task.
"Some nights I took off my headset and my head was buzzing," Fox said. "You have the director talking to you (in the headset) while you're trying to watch the game and talk. I was awful at the beginning. It took me four years to get to a point where I was really comfortable calling a game."
Miller recalls that after their first telecast, a pre-season game against Pittsburgh in St. Petersburg, Fl., "Jim said, 'I didn't even know our guys (the Kings) let alone the Penguins."
Miller knows why Fox struggled early and it's common with ex-players that transition to the broadcast booth after their playing days are over.
"There's so much more that goes into a broadcast that players never know; the preparation and trying to talk with the director talking in your ear," Miller said. "After they retire they think they can come into the booth and just sit down and talk about the game they played for years."
Fox concurs, "You could do it for one game and not have a problem, but deeper in the season you get, 40 games, 80 games, it's impossible without preparation.”
What turned the tide for Fox was nothing regarding on-air mechanics but rather an intangible.
"I saw the pride Bob took in his work and that was something that I did not transfer from on the ice to the broadcast booth," he said. "When I saw the dedication that he put into his craft, it motivated me to take a more serious approach to what I was doing. I had a lot of things going on at the time including working a full day in the PR department but I realized that if I was going to be a success as a broadcaster, it would have to take a lot more."
Using the same determination he had as a player, Fox stuck with it and has been voted on numerous occasions the best sports color analyst in Southern California.
The designation extends further than the Southland because of Fox's ability to quickly analyze a play and from exceptional use of the latest technology. To steal a phrase from Marv Albert, he is the NHL's "Czar of the Telestrator."
Fox's approach to a telecast is a tactical one, and he compares it to a coaching session.
"It's not unlike (Kings' Coach) Andy Murray having a tape session with the team," he explained. "You'd think that the players would have more knowledge than the coach, but when you talk to coaches they always talk about repetition. You have to repeat your points and I approach it that way, but you have to make it simple.
"You can't forget to include the obvious fundamental, because that usually what makes a play succeed or fail. I specifically stay away from coaching the game (why didn't a certain player make a particular play?) and when I first started analysis, I was told to tape a big WHY on to the screen; it's my job to tell the audience why things happen. Bob tells you what happened and I tell you why."
Fox shies away from heavy self-criticism and seeks out his peers to get an honest evaluation of his work.
"I'll talk to Nick and Daryl (Nickson and Evans respectively, the radio voices of the Kings) if I don't think I made a good call on something, sometimes I'll even go to the coaches or the players that were on the ice at time."
Watching a Kings' telecast, we're amazed at how flawless the two work together, rarely stepping on each other during a rapidly moving game.
"It's something that you learn in working with someone over time, Jim knows that when he hears a certain inflection in my voice, he knows I'm done and he's picks it up from there," Miller said. "We don't need hand signals, but sometimes coming out of commercial, I'll look at him to see if he wants to pick it up and then he'll point at me if he's got nothing going on. And I usually know where a point is where Jim will want to say something, so I stop talking."
Although Fox claims to have seen the light four years into the process, his partner says he could see positives much earlier.
"It was about 40 games into our first season working together and it was after a game at the Forum," Miller said. "He really struggled early and rightfully so, he had no prior experience. I turned to him and said to him, 'Jim, I think you had fun tonight doing this.' And he said, 'I did'."
And while the occasional snafu occurs, Fox admits there's only one cardinal rule he hates to violate: "Don't get caught talking when the puck goes in the net. It doesn't happen very often to me, maybe once or twice a year. An analyst shouldn't be talking when there's a score."
No pleasing everyone
Although their team epitomizes professionalism, once in a great while they get caught up in the heat of the battle.
During a match against Ottawa early in the season, Fox took Senators' Coach Bryan Murray to task on-air regarding unnecessary rough play in the third period of a game that had already been decided. Murray got wind of the criticism and berated Fox face-to-face in the bowels of the Corel Centre after the game.
Unfortunately for all parties, the Canadian sports network, TSN, had a camera crew nearby and captured Murray's expletive-laden tirade against the announcer with the incident appearing on most North American media outlets.
When asked if he had any regrets about the confrontation, Fox paused for a while before giving his answer.
His regrets were singular in nature and had nothing to do with what was said or how it was said, but rather where it was said.
"The only regret I had was that it was in Ottawa," Fox explained. "It was disturbing to me because I had my greatest success as a player in the juniors there. It's a city where I have a lot of friends and now I had a conflict with their team. I think that if I have a right to be critical of Bryan Murray, he has a right to be critical of me.”
Friends to the End
Out of the broadcasting booth, the two have both a genuine affinity and respect for each other, which is essential for success on camera.
"I guess it's possible for two broadcasters not to get along, but I never understood how you could be successful doing it," Miller concluded. "I'm almost living with the person seven months out of the year and if you had animosity I don't know how you could do a good job. I've always been fortunate to work with great guys and it makes for a much better telecast."
Bob Miller and Jim Fox can be seen covering the Los Angeles Kings on Fox Sports Net locally in Los Angeles and on the NHL's Center Ice package.
