>> The spine-chilling sound of baseball history being made.

It's moments like these that fuel the passion of John Miley of Evansville, Indiana, owner of the world's most complete collection of baseball audio.

>> My collection started probably back in the 1940s when I bought a -- my parents bought me a wire recorder.

At that time, they didn't have tape recorders.

>> Whatever I would record, I'd just take this microphone, I would start the recorder, whatever -- however you start the recorder.

I don't remember that.

But when you start the recorder, then you just take this microphone and you put it next to the radio.

And I remember taping the -- the thing that really got me started was the California-Northwestern Rose Bowl in I believe 1949.

>> He's going wide.

He's untouched.

Off left tackle and Jensen, and he's into the pair.

He's down to the 40.

He's down to the 30, to the 10 and he's over for the touchdown!

[ Cheers ] >> I had no idea what I was doing, really.

What I was trying to do was I knew that when I retired I would want something to do, and what better than listen to old sporting events.

Well, I have, I believe -- I don't know this for a fact, but I believe I have the best and most comprehensive sports audio and video collection that has ever been had.

>> Two strikes and a ball.

Mitchell waiting.

Standing straight.

Feet close together.

Larsen is ready.

Gets the sign.

Two strikes, ball.

Here comes the pitch.

Strike three!

A no-hitter, a perfect game for Don Larsen.

Yogi Berra runs out there.

He leaps on Larsen, and he's swarmed by his teammates.

Listen to this crowd roar!

[ Cheers ] >> In the mid-'70s, I was at KMOX Radio in St. Louis and I just decided on my own, let's do a weekend retrospective about the three World Series that the Cardinals were in in the 1960s, all the games called by Harry Caray and Jack Buck on KMOX.

>> I came across KMOX and they're playing old Stan Musial highlights.

My favorite player of all time, Stan Musial.

So -- and I've got everything that Musial ever did, right?

No!

He had some stuff that I didn't have.

So I'll be doggone, if after the program was over around 10:30 in the morning, I picked up the phone.

>> And he just called out of the blue.

Got connected to the sports office at KMOX.

We had a conversation.

He invited me to come to his home.

And I drove to meet him in Evansville.

>> He picked out several things that he wanted to hear.

>> And I was stunned by what he had even then in 1976 and how precisely he had it cataloged.

Now, some of it was among the greatest moments in sports history.

You know, Louis knocks out Schmeling or Jessie Owens at the '36 Olympics or some sort of scratchy broadcast of a 1933 World Series.

>> One year, CBS called me.

They wanted to play highlights of old World Series games.

They were doing the World Series on -- on radio and they wanted to play highlights of old World Series.

They gave me a list of 48 World Series highlights that they wanted from the past.

I had all 48 of them.

>> Two away.

Cochrane on second base.

Goslin batting.

It's the last half of the ninth inning.

The ballgame tied up 3-3.

French steps in on the mound.

He's getting the signal.

Here's the pitch, and a drive going out to right field for a hit!

And here comes the throw to the plate.

Here comes the run in and the ballgame is over!

And the Detroit Tigers are the new champions of the world!

>> When I got to NBC and later to HBO, any time we were doing historical stuff, one of my suggestions was, let me check with John Miley.

And very often, he had not only what we were looking for but more than we had asked for related to that topic or that game or that broadcaster.

>> Everyone comes to me.

The major networks, the players, the relatives of the players, fans of -- of the sport in particular, people who know about my collection, and -- and think -- wonder what in the world does he have?

>> We did a tape for Oakland, as we did for Marty and Joe and Harry Caray.

We did a tape for Oakland's 25th anniversary, and they gave -- they gave the tape away to the first 10,000 that came into the ballpark.

I got all the cassettes and reel-to-reels in here, including large reel-to-reels that I used to make my Notre Dame tape, which was sold up at the Notre Dame Bookstore.

>> No one -- and I mean the archives of the networks, I mean the Smithsonian if they've archived any of this stuff, I mean the respective Halls of Fame in Cooperstown, Springfield and Canton, no one and no entity has as much stuff, and as precisely cataloged as John Miley does.

>> There's whole television series that never got recorded and saved because they were just considered disposable.

>> Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath and the Jets upset the Colts, to my knowledge, no one had the full game.

Things just disappeared.

Don Larsen's perfect game just disappeared.

>> Television stations would tape over them.

So the only way that you would have access to a lot of these recordings is if somebody took the time to record them on their own and then maintained them.