Ernie Harwell

its truly sad, another great voice of the game is gone.........

His like wont be seen/heard again....

RIP Ernie. Thanks for all you gave to us.

RIP Ernie.

What a great guy and a class act all the way.

I left Kansas City in 2003. By late September 2002, the Royals and Tigers could only contest the cellar. (Those were the Neifi Perez years.)

My last KC game, as a spectator was midweek on the 26th, and that season's Tiger finale. You could sit anywhere you wanted. I sat alone in the first row behind the scouts. I was probably the closest person, in public seating, to the Tiger's radio booth and Ernie Harwell.

A tribute video to Ernie drew a short standing ovation from the sparse crowd. As the applause ended, after the local promotions resumed and with the fan's attention elsewhere, I continued to look up at Ernie who'd leaned out of the booth and removed his hat to acknowledge the crowd.

I caught him in clear mid-linger...Even at that distance, you could see a man shaking off an emotional wave.

Then for what seemed like 10 seconds, our eyes locked as I lifted my Royals cap to him. He responded with a salute and pointed...directly at me. We both smiled, put our hats on in unison and waved...just before play resumed.
(sigh)

Having lived in West Michigan for 10 years, including college, I was one of those who had taken Ernie everywhere, especially to the beach (via WKZO) that crazy summer of 1968.

For me, what lingers are Harwell's play-by-play images of Al Kaline, Willie Horton and Bill Freehan with Denny McLain winning 31, or Grand Rapid's Mickey Stanley leaving center field to play shortstop in the World Series dominated by not-yet-paunchy Mickey Lolich. Its all still there every time I feel the sand between my toes.

Cool story Haverdad! I became a big fan of the Tigers a few years ago. In learning about Tiger history, I have heard and read stories about Harwell who was a beloved baseball figure by all accounts. Prayers for his family.

A friend emailed this poem which Ernie wrote around 1959:

"
The Game For America

Baseball is President Eisenhower tossing out the first ball of the season; and a pudgy schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
It's the big league pitcher who sings in nightclubs. And the Hollywood singer who pitches to the Giants in spring training.

A tall, thin man waving a scorecard from his dugout - that's baseball. So is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running out one of his 714 home runs
with mincing steps.

It's America, this baseball. A reissued newsreel of boyhood dreams. Dreams lost somewhere between boy and man. It's the Bronx cheers and the
Baltimore farewell. The left field screen in Boston, the right field dump at Nashville's Sulphur Dell, the open stands in San Francisco, the dusty,
wind-swept diamond at Alberquerque. And a rock home plate and a chicken wire backstop-anywhere.

There's a man in Mobile who remembers a triple he saw Honus Wagner hit in Pittsburg forty-six years ago. That's baseball. So is the scout reporting that
a sixteen year-old sandlot pitcher in Cheyenne is the "new Walter Johnson."

It's a wizened little man shouting insults from the safety of his bleacher seat. And a big, smiling first baseman playfully tousling the hair of a youngster outside
the players' gate. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex agaisnt reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is
seen and cheered-or booed. And then becomes a statistic.

In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. Here the only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color is something to distinguish one
team's uniform from another. Baseball is Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, asking his Brooklyn hosts to explain Dodger signals. It's player Moe Berg
speaking seven languages and working crossword puzzles in Sanskrit. It's a scramble in the box seats for a foul and a $125 suit ruined. A man barking into a hot
microphone about a cool beer, that's baseball. So is the sportswriter telling a .383 hitter how to stride, and a 20-victory pitcher trying to write his impressions of the
World Series.

Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words. A carnival without kewpie dolls. A housewife in California wouldn't tell you the color of her husband's eyes,
but she knows that Yogi Berra is hitting .337, has brown eyes, and used to love to eat bananas and mustard. That's baseball. So is the bright sanctity of Cooperstown's
Hall of Fame. And the former big leaguer, who is playing out the string in a Class B loop.

Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Game to game. Series to series. Season to season. It's rain, rain, rain spattering on a puddled tarpaulin as
thousands sit in damp disappointment. And the click of typewriters and telagraph keys in the press box-like so many awakened crickets. Baeball is a cocky batboy.
The old timer whose batting average increases every time he tells it. A lady celebrating a home run rally by mauling her husband with a rolled up scorecard.

Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby, the flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an overaged pixie named Rabbit Maranville, and Jackie Robinson testifying before
a congressional hearing. Baseball? It's just a game-as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business and
sometimes even religion.

Baseball is Tradition in flannel knickerbockers. And Chagrin in being picked off first base. It is Dignity in the blue serge of an umpire running the game by rule of thumb.
It is Humor, holding its sides when an errant puppy eludes two groundskeepers and the fastest outfielder. And Pathos, dragging itself off the field after being knocked
from the box.

Nicknames are baseball. Names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Daffy. Baseball is a sweaty, steaming dressing room where hopes
and feelings are as naked as the men themselves. It's a dugout with spike-scarred flooring. And shadows across an empty ballpark. It's the endless of names in box scores, abbreviated almost beyond recognition.

The holdout is baseball. He wants 55 grand or he won't turn a muscle. But it's also the youngster who hitchhikes from South Dakota to Florida just for a tryout.
Arguments, Casey at the Bat, old cigarette cards, photographs, Take Me Out to the Ball Game-all of them are baseball. Baseball is a rookie-his experience no bigger than
the lump in his throat-trying to begin fulfillment of a dream. It's a veteran too-a tired old man of thirty-five, hoping his aching muscles can drag him through another sweltering
August and September.

For nine innings, baseball is the story of David and Goliath, of Samson, Cinderella, Paul Bunyan, Homer's Iliad and the Count of Monte Cristo. Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch. And then going home to Harlem to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals-that's baseball. So is the voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying,
"I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

Baseball is cigar smoke, roasted peanuts, the Sporting News, winter trades, "Down in front", and the seventh-inning stretch. Sore arms, broken bats, a no-hitter, and the
strains of "The Star Spangled Banner." Baseball is a highly paid Brooklyn catcher telling the nation's business leaders: "You have to be a man to be a big leaguer,
but you have to have a lot of little boy in you too."

This is a game for America, this baseball ! A game for boys and men."

Baseball and those of us who love the game will dearly miss Ernie Harwell and his love of the game and ability to share it in such a beautiful way.