Live from the broadcast booth, Paul Page captured the excitement of twenty-seven Indy 500 races, first as the “Voice of the Indy 500” for the radio broadcast and then as chief announcer for the ABC telecast. From his first race as a pit reporter to his semiretirement in 2016, generations of fans have witnessed the Greatest Spectacle in Racing as told by Paul Page.

Below is an excerpt from his memoir Hello, I’m Paul Page, showing it's not all business in the broadcast booth.

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Life with Bobby Unser is an adventure. Everyone calls him “Uncle Bobby,” and he calls me, and anyone in charge, “Father.” During our broadcast, he always had to have the last word, usually a loud, “Sam, you’re dead wrong.” To get him to shut up, the crew told Bobby I had a switch that cut off his mic every time he finished a comment. It worked. I didn’t let Bobby know the off switch was all bull until he left the network. He’s still hot about it.

You had to keep a wary eye on Bobby for shenanigans. Once when I didn’t have an earpiece, Bobby gestured at me to do a mic test, so I did. He told me to do it again, and I did another. Then he said, “Your mic’s not coming through, they want you to sing.” He could barely keep a straight face, and I didn’t take the bait. 

Much to my surprise, the Pike’s Peak hill climb champ is deathly afraid of heights. Unfortunately for Bobby, to get a good view of the tracks for our introductions, we filmed from the top of the grandstands. In a race at Milwaukee, I took advantage of his fear of heights to break him of his cue card habit—his delivery became very stilted when he read his lines. From the roof of the grandstands, I told a crew member to let go of the cue card as he was mid-sentence. The wind took it right off the roof and over the side, leaving a speechless Bobby with a slight case of vertigo. I let him think we were live (we weren’t).

Perhaps the only time I ever got even with Bobby for his never-ending antics was at Long Beach. Our “broadcast booth” was a scissor lift. I took him all the way up, pausing at about every ten feet so he could really feel the height. When we topped out at seventy feet, the fearless race car driver was uncontrollably shaking. And I didn’t feel one bit sorry.