At the beginning of the end of Mario and Rod, there was an early afternoon interview on the schedule. There was a comfortable chair in the visiting television booth at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.

There was a pregame argument, a postgame argument that, depending on who you talk to, may or may not have ended in a choke hold, and a long-standing tension that finally boiled past the point of no return in the hallway nearby.

A little more than a month later, the end is here: The Detroit Tigers’ TV broadcasting team of Mario Impemba and Rod Allen is no more. Impemba and Allen — who worked together for nearly 17 full seasons — will not return to the Fox Sports Detroit airwaves in 2019, according to multiple persons with knowledge of the situation.

The unhappy ending was a foregone conclusion since that dramatic day on Sept. 4, which climaxed in a physical altercation following the Tigers’ 8-3 win over the White Sox. Two days later, FSD announced neither would be scheduled on telecasts for the remainder of the season.

There are two sides to every story, and the embarrassing final chapter to Impemba and Allen’s tenure is no different. After speaking with more than a half-dozen persons with knowledge of the situation — many of whom requested anonymity because they were unauthorized to speak publicly on the matter — the Free Press has gathered a collaborative timeline of events leading up to the incident. Some viewpoints on the motivations of those involved are contrasting; that a comfortable computer chair is seen as a central figure in the story is semantics.

Though non-friendly, the relationship between Impemba and Allen produced years of quality broadcasts on FSD and earned themselves — together — a spot in Tigers’ lore. That they kept their relationship intact for so long is a credit to each man’s professionalism and tolerance, two traits that were ultimately ignored in the heat of the moment on the night when years of frustration and disrespect went face-to-face, just outside the booth.

Pregame

Earlier in the day on Sept. 4, Allen was scheduled for a pregame interview with outfielder Jim Adduci. Because he had been medically advised to limit his time at the ballpark as much as possible — he deals with lower back pain — he asked a FSD producer if he could re-schedule the interview for the weekend, when he was scheduled to work analyst duties at Comerica Park.

The producer obliged Allen’s request; it is unclear whether that was communicated to Impemba, who was seated inside the booth doing his pregame preparation when Allen arrived.

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What began with a seemingly innocuous request — if Allen could have that chair, the comfortable one — ended in an argument. Impemba did, indeed, give up the chair. Who initiated the argument is not known, but Impemba’s silence indicated a certain annoyance: He deals with a bad hip and Allen sat in the chair the previous night.

The conversation — said to be heated and profane — turned to Allen not showing up early for the Adduci interview.

Immediately afterward, Allen walked over to the home radio booth to speak with White Sox radio analyst Darrin Jackson, a longtime acquaintance dating back to their minor league baseball days in the early 1980s.

Jackson, like many, was well-aware of the Impemba-Allen dynamic. They aren’t friends. In 16 seasons together, one person said, the two might have shared two dinners, at most.

“It’s not an easy working environment when your broadcast partner and you aren’t friendly,” Jackson said. “And I thought, over all these years, it’s been amazing how professional they’ve both been about the broadcast, because you know, the evidence was there from everybody that the two really weren’t friends.

“If it’s going to be set off by a simple thing like a chair prior to a game that leads to something, there’s a lot more percolating under the surface that anybody would have ever known.”

There was. To this, FSD deserves a lion’s share of the blame, for allowing such a tenuous work environment to continue, at the risk of an incident which would embarrass themselves, the Tigers, and ultimately, their broadcasters.

Postgame

What followed after the uncomfortable broadcast was foreshadowed roughly a decade ago, when Allen ignited an argument inside the broadcast booth during a game, the point in which their relationship was considered severely fractured.

“Nothing was done about it the first time,” one FSD employee said. “Nothing was done about it this time.”

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In the minutes after the game on Sept. 4, Jackson — making his customary quick departure at home — walked by the FSD booth. Allen was coming up the stairs.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked. “How did everything go, alright?”

“Man, it wasn’t a great game,” Allen said to Jackson. “I gotta talk to Mario, man. I just gotta talk to him. Because this game, it doesn’t have to be like this. It’s gotta be a better game.”

Jackson asked if he was alright. Allen said he was.

“I looked at him and I go, ‘OK,’ and I stood there, looked him right in the eye and said, ‘Alright,’” Jackson said. “I’ve talked to him enough over the years to know he’s been very, very conservative in dealing with this situation.

“From there, I looked over there, thinking nothing of the fact that those two wouldn’t be able to sit there and have a talk about what happened. Only to find out later. … Are you kidding me?”

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A couple of conclusions could be formed in researching their relationship. First, it was laced with a lack of respect, most notably with Impemba’s discontent for Allen’s inconsistent work ethic. A similar view was passed along unsolicited to the Free Press by a FSD camera man who believes Allen is good at his job but also that his lack of preparation had begun affecting the quality of broadcasts. Another is that Allen was always open to mending the fence; executives who had failed to eliminate this problem in multiple face-to-face meetings over the years felt that Impemba was just not willing to let Allen in.

Perhaps that was the reason Allen was standing in the hallway, waiting for Impemba to leave the booth. But instead of simmering the situation, whatever was said between the two at that moment only amplified things.

The argument centered on Allen’s frustration with Impemba questioning his professionalism. It continued with Impemba’s finger in Allen’s face and ended after Allen put his arms above Impemba’s shoulder, below his chin, pushing him up against the wall before the two were separated by a freelance TV producer who had heard the commotion.

It was not a chokehold, Allen’s agent, Tom Shaer said last month, a claim confirmed by two other persons with knowledge of the situation. Whether it was or not is also semantics; there were no police reports filed.

The blame for the situation, while mostly focused on Allen’s fingerprints and the sensationalism of a broadcast booth brawl that wasn’t, rests with these final truths in the story of a bad relationship within a good broadcast team:

Allen couldn’t take it anymore, didn’t control his emotions and Impemba pushed the last button that detonated their successful run in Detroit.

Contact Anthony Fenech: afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech.