In the fall of 1981, a white stretch limo carrying sportscasters Al Michaels and Howard Cosell was driving through a “gritty, inner-city” neighborhood in Kansas City when, from their window, they saw two teenage boys slugging it out, with a cheering crowded “egging them on.”

Cosell, braced by vodka, could not abide the violence. He left the limo and walked toward the boys, resisting Michaels’ attempt to hold him back.

At the sight of the broadcasting legend, who was chomping on his trademark cigar and wearing his bright yellow ABC blazer, the fight stopped and everyone stared in disbelief.

Then, as Michaels tells us in his new memoir, “You Can’t Make This Up,” Cosell addressed the crowd with his signature off-rhythm patter, as if opining about amateur boxers not quite set for the big time.

“Now LISTEN,” said Cosell. “It’s quite apparent to this TRAINED observer that the young southpaw does NOT have a jab REQUISITE for the continuation of this fray. Furthermore, his opponent is a man of INFERIOR and DIMINISHING skills. This confrontation is halted POSTHASTE!”

Within seconds, the shocked kids — their beef now forgotten — had found a pen, and Cosell was signing autographs.

While this incident could be seen as demonstrating a benevolent side to the sports legend, it also shows his arrogance.

Michaels writes that the hard-drinking Cosell, his frequent broadcasting partner from 1977 to 1985, could be off-putting, far less knowledgeable about sports than he seemed and downright insulting to his colleagues.

From the outset, Cosell made clear to Michaels his disdain for his ABC co-workers.

“He would always mock [Olympics mainstay] Jim McKay,” writes Michaels, noting that Cosell called him “the diminutive one” behind his back.

Cosell also “basically loathed his longtime ‘Monday Night Football’ partner Frank Gifford,” referring to him as “the human mannequin.”

But it wasn’t just colleagues caught in Cosell’s nasty web. In the fall of 1982, Cosell and Michaels called a playoff game with Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda in the booth.

The children of Cardinals third baseman Ken Boyer, who had just died of cancer, were throwing out the first pitch. On the air, Cosell launched into an eloquent and heartfelt tribute to Boyer that left Lasorda in tears.

During the commercial break, Lasorda revealed to Cosell that he had roomed with Boyer in the minor leagues, and that Boyer had been one of his best friends.

Cosell responded by turning to Lasorda — the manager’s eyes still moist — and saying, “Hey, Tommy, just understand one thing. Kenny Boyer was a pr—!”

Cosell was reaching “a new level of surliness,” and after a horrible broadcast during the 1984 baseball playoffs where he was noticeably drunk, he harangued Michaels about his baseball knowledge, then told him, “you need to learn how to take a stand.”

Cosell could be off-putting, far less knowledgeable about sports than he seemed and downright insulting to his colleagues. - Al Michaels writes in his memoir

Michaels followed his advice immediately, excoriating Cosell for “drinking all night” and ruining the telecast.

“I’ll take a stand right now, Howard,” Michaels said. “The next time you’re in this shape when we’re doing a game, either you’re not going to be there or I’m not going to be there. Is that a good enough stand for you?”

But in a life surrounded by superstar athletes, Michaels was used to difficult personalities. One that he actually had fond memories of — until a certain point — was his former good friend O.J. Simpson.

After years of close friendship with the football legend, Michaels was stunned when Simpson was suspected in the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.

Asked by ABC News to help cover the story, Michaels found himself in an awkward situation.

“I was brought in to try to help separate fact from fiction,” he writes. “I told the president of ABC News that I would help, but I was in a dicey position. I would clearly become privy to certain information but that I’d have to protect my sources.”

As the eyes of the world were on Simpson’s home the day after the murders, with hundreds of reporters waiting for him to emerge from seclusion, Michaels called “Nightline” host Ted Koppel.

“Ted, I have to tell you something. O.J. Simpson is not in his house. I know where he is. I can’t tell you where he is. But don’t report that O.J. Simpson is in the house.”

Koppel replied that it would have been impossible for Simpson to leave his home with no one seeing. But Michaels, who had socialized in that house, knew better, and told Koppel about a gate in the back that connected to the neighbor’s property, allowing for an unseen escape.

Michaels knew that Simpson had left because he was in secret communication with Bob Kardashian, father of the famed Kardashian clan, and Simpson’s lawyer and good friend.

While the world awaited any sign of the suspected murderer, Simpson was cooling his heels with Bob, his wife Kris and their kids at the Kardashian home.

Throughout, Michaels was also talking on the phone with Simpson several times a day. It was from these conversations, Michaels writes, that he first realized his good friend might have been guilty.

“He kept saying the same thing to me,” writes Michaels. “‘How can anybody think I did this?’ Not, ‘I didn’t do it.’ In retrospect, that should have been a clear signal to me that something wasn’t right.”

Michaels later visited Simpson in jail several times and says that Simpson still never claimed he didn’t do it. While Michaels never comes out and writes the words, “I believe O.J. killed those people,” the implication seems clear.

“Obviously, the vast majority of people in this country feel that he did it,” he writes, just after informing us, “I haven’t spoken with O.J. in years, and have no plans to.”

But along with the troubles, Michaels shares his triumphs in the book, the most prominent being his calling of the famed “Miracle on Ice” game, where the 1980 US Olympic hockey team defeated the heavily favored Soviets 4-3.

Michaels, who only got the low-level assignment because none of the other broadcasters had ever called hockey, helped usher the game into legend when he screamed, just after the victory, “Do you believe in miracles!”

Michaels says the phrase was spontaneous, but had effects he could never have imagined.

“A word pops into my head — miraculous. A split second later, it gets morphed into a question and answer: Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” he writes.

“I’ve been asked thousands of times when I came up with the line. Reflecting back, that line came from my heart. It was written once that this was the nine-year-old boy emerging from somewhere within me. I’ll buy that.”