While growing up in Detroit summer time meant listening to Tiger baseball. Whether at home, in the car or on Lake St. Clair. I can remember being on the boat with a transistor radio listening to Ernie Harwell call Tiger games. I wasn’t the only person in Michigan with this memory and thanks to the powerful AM station that Ernie was on for a number of years many people around the country was able to listen to him.
Ernie Harwell has quite the life and career. He was traded as a broadcaster to the Brooklyn Dodgers for a catcher. The only broadcaster ever traded for a player. When he was fired in the early 90s in Detroit. Fans protested Tiger games and when the Tigers were sold the following year, Ernie was brought back.
People loved him as a person and the way he called baseball games. He had many trademark calls as well. For home runs he would say “Long Gone” and for double plays “two for the price of one” just to name a few. He also had the ability to “know” where every fan was from that caught a foul ball.
Before the Tigers he had the distinction of being the first Baltimore Oriole announcer as well. He left for Detroit in 1960. He finally retired in 2002.
I was lucky enough to have met Ernie Harwell twice. Once as a 8 year old when he was doing a book signing and the second time was in 2005 when I attended the All-Star Game in Detroit. For a few minutes I got to talk to Ernie about the game and asked for advice on a baseball broadcasting career. He was a very nice person to talk with my only regret was not getting a picture with him. If I can track down the audio of the interview I’ll post it.
Ernie Harwell passed away at the age of 92 yesterday about 8 months after announcing that he had cancer. He said his goodbyes in Detroit in September last year at a Tiger game and strong as ever even though he knew what road he was about to head down. The way baseball games are on TV so much now a days I hope you can take the time and listen to the games on the radio every once in a while. Let those guys paint the picture that you can see too easily on the big screen.
He used to open up the first exhibition game of the season with this poem:
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land
Thank you Ernie for being you and letting us bring into our homes or boats or cars for many years.
What is summer, with it’s voice now gone?
