‘Pucks careen and carom. They squirt, squib, squirrel and skitter.’ →

Richard Sandomir, writing for The New York Times:

He has done a few thousand games, starting with the minor league Port Huron Flags in Michigan in the 1970s. If he fears anything, it is the damage a cold can do to his voice, not the effects of frantic action. And he can deliver minutes of unbroken narrative, his tenor rising steeply at the hint of a goal.

They are Emrick’s arias: dramatic tales of passes, shots, checks, crashes into boards, saves, interceptions, goals and line changes accentuated by the sound — “OhhhhHHHHHHH!” — of his internal thermostat rapidly heating up, as if close to exploding. He hits his highest note with variations on a single word: “SCORES!”

Emrick’s one word for a goal — “that’s the attention-getter in case someone’s not watching,” he said by telephone the other day — contrasts with his all-star team of extremely active verbs.

Doc Emrick is the best there is. Writers—read this article.