LOS ANGELES_That smile was Bob Miller's first mistake.
Still a young man, still fairly new to the job of announcing hockey games for the Los Angeles Kings, he should have been more careful around team owner Jack Kent Cooke.
Cooke was notorious for badgering employees, threatening to fire anyone who let the phone on their desk ring more than three times before answering.
On this particular morning, he had summoned Miller and broadcast partner Dan Avey to discuss advertising. He wanted to triple the number of promo spots during games.
When Miller responded there wasn't enough time, Cooke proposed blending commercials into the play-by-play, using the Kings' biggest star and a popular automaker as an example.
"You will say, 'There is Marcel Dionne scooting down the ice like a Datsun,'" he suggested. "What do you think of that?"
Miller couldn't help smiling as he gently rebuffed the idea, which started Cooke hollering so loudly that secretaries heard it down the hall.
"Do you know how many people want your job?" the owner screamed, holding his fingers together. "They are this close to getting it."
No one knew, at the time, that Miller would become part of a golden era in Southern California sports broadcasting. Four decades as the voice of hockey, a plaque in the Hall of Fame, a star on Hollywood Boulevard _ all of it might never have been.
This week, as the 78-year-old Miller prepares for his final broadcast, he recalls slipping out of Cooke's office that day and telling Avey: "We have to come up with something."
