The relationship between Yankees play-by-play voice Michael Kay and ESPN/ABC lead NBA broadcaster Mike Breen dates back to 1979 when Kay was an outgoing sophomore at Fordham and Breen was a reserved freshman trying to find his way amid the private Jesuit university in the Bronx. The two sports broadcasters have remained close friends over the years, and Kay, who grew up a diehard Yankees fan in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, is one of the few people on the planet who can relate to calling a world championship for his childhood team.
“We’d sit in the campus center and have lunch together,” Kay told SBJ’s Richard Deitsch over the weekend in Toronto, where he called the Yankees-Blue Jays series for the YES Network. “He was a freshman and I was a sophomore, but we were the same age. He would say all I ever want to be is the Knick announcer, and I’d say all I want to be is the Yankee announcer. I mean, these two doofuses and clowns, who ever thought that it could ever happen? Now he’s got me one better. He’s the voice of the NBA. I’m really proud of him. He really is the same guy today.”
This was Breen’s 21st consecutive NBA Finals — a record for a national NBA play-by-play voice — but it will unquestionably be his most memorable one. Breen has been a Knicks fan since he was a 7-year-old growing up in Yonkers.
“It means the world to him,” Kay said. “There is still the Walt Frazier poster that he put up in his Mom’s house. This is a guy who grew up as a dyed-in-the-wool Knicks fan. I’ve not seen him adversely affected by being famous and having money. Very much the same guy.”
Kay took his 10-year-old son Charlie to Madison Square Garden for New York’s miraculous Game 4 comeback, which he called one of the greatest sporting events he’s ever seen. “It was unbelievable,” Kay said. “Charlie sat on my lap the entire game. He’ll never forget that. I told him when we were driving home that when you’re 50 years old and dad’s not around, remember, I was with you for that game.”
