I instantly thought of this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjOv0rJYyF8
This might be the best call of a game the announcers were not actually covering! It’s the Honduras announcers after their WC qualifying game, monitoring the USA/Costa Rica game. The USA scored in extra time to tie and qualify Honduras for the 2010 World Cup.
Does written commentary count? Grantland Rice of the New York Herald Tribune, October 18, 1924, on the Notre Dame - Army football game:
"Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.
A cyclone can’t be snared. It may be surrounded, but somewhere it breaks through to keep on going. When the cyclone starts from South Bend, where the candlelights still gleam through the Indiana sycamores, those in the way must take to storm cellars at top speed. Yesterday the cyclone struck again as Notre Dame beat the Army, 13 to 7, with a set of backfield stars that ripped and crashed through a strong Army defense with more speed and power than the warring cadets could meet.
Notre Dame won its ninth game in twelve Army starts through the driving power of one of the greatest back-fields that ever churned up the turf of any gridiron in any football age. Brilliant backfields may come and go, but in Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden, covered by a fast and charging line, Notre Dame can take its place in front of the field.
Coach McEwan sent one of his finest teams into action, an aggressive organization that fought to the last play around the first rim of darkness, but when Rockne rushed his Four Horsemen to the track they rode down everything in sight. It was in vain that 1,400 gray-clad cadets pleaded for the Army line to hold. The Army line was giving all it had, but when a tank tears in with the speed of a motorcycle, what chance has flesh and blood to hold? The Army had its share of stars in action, such stars as Garbisch, Farwick, Wilson, Wood, Ellinger and many others, but they were up against four whirlwind backs who picked up at top speed from the first step as they swept through scant openings to slip on by the secondary defense. The Army had great backs in Wilson and Wood, but the Army had no such quartet, who seemed to carry the mixed blood of the tiger and the antelope.
Rockne’s light and tottering line was just about as tottering as the Rock of Gibraltar. It was something more than a match for the Army’s great set of forwards… We doubt that any team in the country could have beaten Rockne’s array… It was a great football team brilliantly directed… The Army has no cause for gloom over its showing. It played first-class football against more speed than it could match.
Those who have tackled a cyclone can understand."
“McFilthy and McNasty”. We need you back, Johnny Most. 
We know about this one even over on this side. Frank McGhee of the London Daily Mirror, the day before the 1966 England-West Germany World Cup final:
“If, on the morrow, the Germans beat us at our national game, we’d do well to remember that, twice this century, we have beaten them at theirs.”
Oh hell yeah.
In a league of its own, this one.
Was going to post this myself. I still get goosebumps watching that clip.
I was trying to think of any such iconic moments in broadcasting recently - and I’ll be damned if I can think of any. Am I just forgetting them? Or is having so much access now to sports - 24hr ESPN coverage, internet forums, constant and instant replays - diluting the impact?
Foster Hewitt will be forever immortalized as the voice of hockey, famous for coining the line, “He shoots, he scores!”
As well as the line that CBC still begins every hockey broadcast with, “Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland.”
They sound so plain and commonplace, yet they’re plain and commonplace because of him!
Is that supposed to be a dig of some sort against Newfoundlanders - that they’re not really Canadian and can therefore not be assumed to be hockey fans?
Less felicitous, by the same announcer: “Look at that little monkey run!”
The BBC should do a service to the world, and release a DVD of motor races commentated on by Murray Walker - or at least find some of his gems and put them online.
The one I always thik of was his commentary on a Saturday afternoon rallycross event. Rallycross was a strange hybrid; a motor race that took place on stretches of tarmac interspersed with cross-country running.
In one of these, Murray was gabbling on to fill what had become a bit of a procession, and had chosen to discourse on the advantages of being in the lead; to whit that no mud was being thrown up by the wheels of the cars in front, and therefore the driver could see where they were going.
Just as he finished imparting this gem of wisdom, the driver of the leading car managed to miss the track and put the right-hand wheels up on the side of an artificial hill he was supposed to have driven round.
And when I tried to find it on youtube, I found out that I, along with apparently millions of others, have been wrong for 30 years. The actual quote that hastened Cosell’s departure from MNF is “That little monkey gets loose, doesn’t he?”
Er… you seriously think a mainstream sports broadcast would commence with an insult?
The quote was recorded before 1949, when Newfoundland was a separate dominion and not part of Canada.
What, “this is for all the Tostitos” wasn’t stirring enough?
No, I didn’t make that up.
The part of that one I liked is that whatever fan made it doesn’t know how to spell solidified.
Ahhh, Raider fans. Always good for a laugh.
Liverpool v. Olympiakos, Champions League 2005. Liverpool HAD to win, and win by two goals in order to move on. Steven Gerrard’s late goal did it for them. They would go on to another historic moment- winning the CL on penalties, after being down 3-0 at halftime against AC Milan in Istanbul. The commentator is Andy Gray.
“Ohhhh, you beauty!! What a hit, son! What a hit!!”
Joe Carter’s walk off home run that won the Toronto Blue Jays their second World Series title. The commentator is the great Tom Cheek.
And this may be for Celtic fans only, but needs to be seen by everyone: Celtic vs. Manchester United in the Champions League. Nakamura scores on a free kick for Celtic. Peter Martin is the commentator. (Make sure your volume isn’t too loud.)
Archimedes out to Socrates, Socrates back to Archimedes, Archimedes out to Heraclitus, he beats Hegel, Heraclitus a little flick, here he comes on the far post, Socrates is there, Socrates heads it in! Socrates has scored! The Greeks are going mad, the Greeks are going mad. Socrates scores, got a beautiful cross from Archimedes. The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside. But Confucius has answered them with the final whistle! It’s all over! Germany, having trounced England’s famous midfield trio of Bentham, Locke and Hobbes in the semi-final, have been beaten by the odd goal, and let’s see it again.
[Replay viewed from behind the goal.]
There it is, Socrates, Socrates heads in and Leibnitz doesn’t have a chance. And just look at those delighted Greeks. [The Greeks jog delightedly, holding a cup aloft.] There they are, “Chopper” Sophocles, Empedocles of Acragus, what a game he had. And Epicurus is there, and Socrates the captain who scored what was probably the most important goal of his career.
~ Monty Python’s Philosophers’ Football Match: Germans vs. Greeks
It is … GOOD! IT’S GOOD! IT’S GOOD!"
Two from Gil Santos of WBZ Radio:
“Ken Walter will hold, Lonnie Paxton will snap, from the right hash mark angled to the left for Adam Vinatieri, a 48-yard field goal attempt. Set to go, Snap, ball down, kick is up, kick is on the way and it is…GOOD! IT’S GOOD! IT’S GOOD! ADAM VINATIERI BOOMS A 48-YARD FIELD GOAL AND THE GAME IS OVER! AND THE PATRIOTS ARE SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS! THE PATRIOTS…ARE…SUPER BOWL…CHAMPIONS! THE BEST TEAM IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE!”
That’s topped only by this:
“…angled to the left, 41-yard field goal attempt, snap coming for Adam Vinatieri…snap, ball down, kick up, kick on the way, KICK IS GOOD! THE KICK IS GOOD! 32-29!”
On the ensuing kickoff return with four seconds left: “[Rod] Smart from the 3…at the 5…at the 10…right to the 15…to the 20…he is hit…HE IS DOWN! IT IS OVERRR! WE’RE SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS…AGAIN!”
Canadian-centric, but I think the call must have been replayed in other countries as well.
Sidney Crosby, the Golden Goal! And Canada has once in a lifetime Olympic Gold! - Chris Cuthbert, TSN.
“Dale Jarrett is gonna win the Daytona 500!”
When the Cardinals won the NL championshiip in 1964, Caray screamed “The Cardinals win the penant!” FOUR times. Was Caray 25% more excited than Hodges?