For me they were and are Harry Caray, Vin Scully and Ernie Harwell.
As a kid I lived and mostly died with the exploits of the Cleveland Indians, and often between innings I would spin the radio dial, listening for other games.
Caray was broadcasting the St. Louis Cardinals on KMOX and Harwell was broadcasting the Detroit Tigers on WJR, both high-powered blow-everybody-else-away stations.
Just like Scully with the Los Angeles Dodgers, as soon as you hit KMOX and heard Caray or WJR and heard Harwell, you knew instantly who they were. They had distinctive voices, unique deliveries. And they painted vivid pictures that floated in a young boy’s mind as he lay on a porch swing with a transistor radio pasted against his ear or rode in the back seat of a 1962 Plymouth Valiant and told his father, “Hey, dad. Turn on the Tigers game.”
They were the voices of authority for the Dodgers, Cardinals and Tigers. Most of the time, with the Indians way behind, I stayed with Harwell and his melodious delivery, which was as smooth as the saliva on a Gaylord Perry pitch.
I’d never been to Briggs Stadium (or Tiger Stadium) in those days, but Harwell put me there, sat me in the front row in right field where the upper deck hung over the outfield fence. He made me acquainted with the battleship gray exterior and the dark green interior at the old ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull.
I could just picture No. 6, Al Kaline, striding in the batter’s box and George Kell playing third base and Norm Cash belting base hits. I had never seen any of these ballplayers, but Ernie Harwell brought them to life.
He was like my grandfather, a minister preaching the gospel, only Harwell was preaching the religion of baseball and I devoured it like Revelations, for what Harwell brought was baseball revelations, night after night.
I never met Harwell until I was 31, my first year covering the Cincinnati Reds, who at the time trained at Tampa’s old Al Lopez Field.
That meant some games in Lakeland, where the Tigers trained and where Ernie Harwell roamed. The first time I saw him my tongue lumped in my mouth and I couldn’t swallow.
This was “The Voice.” This was the guy who brought the Detroit Tigers through the cloudy skies and into my home in Akron.
Former Cincinnati Post baseball writer Earl Lawson, my mentor, said hello to Harwell and introduced us. It was as if he knew me all my life and asked me question after question about myself.
And then he startled me by saying he had read my stuff and was impressed, something that humbled me immensely. He probably was being the extremely nice guy that he was, and hadn’t ever read a word that I had written, but he said he had, and that’s all I needed.
That night I called my dad and said, “Dad, I met Ernie Harwell today. He said he has read my stuff and likes it. Can you believe it?”
My dad said, “Did you tell him how you listened to him in the backyard grass late at night?”
“No, Dad, I didn’t,” I said. “I was too starry-eyed to say a word. I mean, that was Ernie Harwell.”
How many times did I hear him describe a home run by saying, “That one is long gone?”
Harwell died last week at age 92, but he’ll never be long gone in my mind.
All I had to do was flip the radio dial and there he was during my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, painting me a verbal picture that help coax me into a life of my own inside the wonderful world of baseball.
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