Oh Baby! An Interview With Bob Cole

"Somebody asked me that one time: ‘You ever think about retiring?’ And I said, ‘Now, why would you ask me that? I’m in a job that I have always wanted to do."

The National Post has an excellent 20 Questions session with Hockey Night in Canada legend Bob Cole. They talk about his childhood, his career, and his seeking advice from none other than Foster Hewitt:

4. When you walked into Foster Hewitt’s office, as an 18-year-old with a demo tape, what kind of advice did he give you? BC: “My two buddies were out in the car waiting for me to drop this tape off and come back down. [laughs] I went in. He was a great, great man. He sat down in his huge office with an oak desk. I said, ‘I want to leave this with you, if you don’t mind, and you can listen to it and maybe write me and give me a few comments that might help me.’ He said, ‘Well, why don’t we listen to it right now?’ We got up and we went into the recording room. He had one of his technicians throw it on a tape recorder. He listened to it for two or three minutes … I couldn’t believe it. We talked for about an hour and a half about hockey broadcasting. He told me so many things. They all stayed with me.”

5. He told you to pick four different levels for your voice when you call a game, right? BC: “Yeah. I don’t know where you’re getting all this, but that’s what he did. He said, ‘What you should do is try to make a game flow with the excitement of the game.’ He said he liked the voice and he liked the sound. Now, he said, ‘You need to select maybe four levels for yourself, and save that top one for the big moment. It might be a save, it might be a goal. It might be whatever. But save that one. Don’t ever use that one anywhere.’

Here's the full interview.