TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- Sitting at his desk prepping for a game earlier this week, Eli Gold's phone rang.
The voice on the other end had stunning news. The broadcaster from Brooklyn, New York would be immortalized in his adopted home state.
The longtime radio voice of the Crimson Tide football will be inducted to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. He'll be one of eight members of the 2014 freshman class that also includes Ruthie Bolton, Red Cochran (posthumously), Bill Cody, Travis Grant, Walter Jones, David Magadan, and Major Ogilvie.
"It's a shock," Gold said. "I just never put myself into that type of accomplishment. I've been lucky and I've had a wonderful career that continues on, I just never looked at myself as a hall of fame kind of guy."
This is Gold's first election to any hall of fame though he was awarded Alabama sportscaster of the year on four separate occasions. The induction ceremony will be held at the Sheraton Birmingham hotel on May 17. The new class will push total membership to 321.
Gold has been calling Alabama football games since 1988 in a career that's included 38 years behind the microphone at NASCAR races. Gold's also called games for UAB, the Birmingham Barons, and for the last nine years, the NFL.
But it's his tenure with the Crimson Tide that'll be his legacy in this state.
"When I first came to Alabama, I was kind of like the fish out of water," Gold said. "I was a New Yorker who had done nothing but professional sports coming onto somebody else's turf, if you will, and getting involved in the collegiate world. In those days, I was just trying to survive and not lose a job."
He did much more than that.
Gold's called four Alabama national championship runs -- doing so without the theatrics or cheerleading. His live accounts of legendry moments are replayed countless times with his signature "touchdown Alabama!" leading the way.
Over the years Gold's received offers to work elsewhere, but there's always one provision he insists be added.
"If the people won't let me continue doing the 'Bama games, that's an immediate deal breaker," he said. "This has long since become home for us."
When going through the list of great names he'll be joining in the hall of fame, a broadcaster's was first. Mel Allen, the West Blocton native and University of Alabama alumnus rose to fame as the voice of the New York Yankees.
Gold was born in Brooklyn, but the Dodgers had already moved west. So the Yankees were the only team in town and Gold gravitated to the franchise.
He remembers defying his parents' orders to cut off the transistor radio broadcast of the game and go to bed.
"And I'd turn it off for a moment, then I'd get under the blankets, pull the blankets over my head and turn the radio back on," Gold said. "And I'd be mesmerized by the call that Mel Allen gave to Yankee baseball."
Later in life, Gold told Allen those stories when they became broadcasting peers. Allen died in 1996, but Gold will join him in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
And he still can't believe it.
"For a guy who gets paid to talk," Gold said, "I found myself searching for the right words."