Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (16 page)

"Thirteen-ten, Vikings," Brickhouse recalled. "Me and my big mouth.
Sort of like saying, ` '69 is the Cubbies' year.' "

On April 8, 1969, Willie Smith's Opening Day eleventh-inning euphoriabegan-working-overtime pinch-homer beat Philadelphia. Billy Williams's 895
straight games played set an N.L. record.The bigs' best infield tied Banks (106
RBI), Ron Santo (123), Glenn Beckert (.291), and Don Kessinger (.273). Ken
Holtzman no-hit Atlanta August 19. Plenty of nothin' : no hits or Ks.

Rarely had the Confines seemed friendlier. Santo began clicking heels
upon each victory. Towel-waving reliever Dick Selma conducted the Bleacher
Bums. The Cubs held a 9 1 /2 game mid-August lead. Who guessed that the
benign-as-Benji Mets would go 38-11 while Chicago set in shock?

The Cubs finished eight games behind. Depressed, Jack did not despair.
Banks faced Pat Jarvis May 12, 1970. "He swings and a drive-a liner, left
field! It is there it is! Mr. Banks has just hit his five hundredth career
homer! He is getting a standing ovation! . . . Doffs his cap as he steps on
home plate! . . . Waves to the fans as he jogs into that dugout! They are
standing here at Wrigley Field and giving Ernie an ovation!"

Mr. Cub retired a year later. Brickhouse narrated a best-selling album,
"Great Moments in Cubs Baseball." In 1981, the Tribune Company bought
the club subsidiary WGN had treated as mom 'n' pop. "Baseball now got corporate," Jack said, "not personal, like, say, vaudeville."

Hey-Hey! died August 6, 1998, at 82, of a stroke after brain surgery,
having penned a tombstone: "Here lies the guy who could do the best softshoe anywhere for `Tea for Two.' "

In Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson wrote "how at the same instant, and if
the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come
into the eyes." Brickhouse did his final game September 27, 1981. Afterward, a
large crowd huddled on a concourse under the front-office level. "That got to
me," Jack mused. "I was holding out pretty good till then." Asked to describe
himself, he said, "He can ad-lib; a reporter at heart; he can read copy, do a com-
mercial.You can put him on a parade, a disaster"--again, those Cubs.

A team program read: "If you're from the Midwest, given the words
`Hey-Hey,' who comes to mind? Unless you have spent the last thirty-plus
years in an Arctic snow drift, the answer is elementary." In 1983, Jack got an
advanced degree. "The trains, the planes, the cabs, the buses," he said at
Cooperstown, "they have carried me millions of miles through the years to
get me where I most wanted to be-the ballpark."

Hey, look me over. Hey-Hey! likely is.

JACK BRICKIIOUSE

We come to praise a famous man-but how?

"He could have been mayor of Detroit, if not governor," Joe Falls wrote
of the 1960--91 and 199 3-2002 Tiger. Alas, politics can hail swarmy men.

"The most modest man I've met," said Brickhouse. Still, Churchill noted,
modest men often have much to be modest about.

W. Earnest Harwell didn't: firstVoice to be dealt for a player; air coast-to-
coastTV; he baptized in the Jordan River.

Pitchers throw low and outside. Ernie pitched low maintenance, sitting
at the organ to compose a song. "Eisenhower has, and retains, a magic that is
peculiarly his," wrote Theodore H. White. "He makes people happy." Ditto
the magnolia baritone.

"The hatter," he said, "stood there like the house by the side of the road."
Harwell's harbored essayist, lyricist, magazine writer, author, family man,
and a founder of the Baseball Chapel Program.

How to praise baseball's 1948-2002 lay preacher? Call him beloved.

In a pinch, we fall back on memory. Born: January 25, 1918, Washington,
Georgia. First job: Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell's paperboy.
Early Everest: at eight, staged a Max Schmeling-Young Stribling boxing puppet
show. "I did play-by-play, like Graham McNamee did in real fights," said Ernie,
"and since Stribling was a Georgian I'd have him knock Schmeling out."

Each day the towhead stuttered baseball at Doc Green's drugstore. Special speech-"expression"lessons helped. In 1923, the Southern Association Crackers built Ponce de Leon Park. Hooked, Harwell sold popcorn and
became visiting batboy, never paying for another game. "Anything to get in
free and to follow my Crackers," invisible in The Sporting News.

At 16, Ernie sold editor Edgar G. Brands on becoming Atlanta correspondent. First piece: "Saddened Crackers Tumble."At 18, Harwell won Scholastic
Magazine's "best [U.S.] high-school column" award. Emory University bred a
post (newspaper editor), wife (Lulu Tankersley, high school beauty queen),
and post-degree gig (WSB Radio sports director).

In World War II, Ernie interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt, covered the
Japanese surrender of Wake Island, and wrote for the Marines magazine
Leatherneck. Postwar, he did the Crackers and visited GI hospitals. The Harwells celebrated a pennant with three-year-old son Bill. "The Lord's going to
bring us a baby," Lulu told him. That week outfielder Lloyd Gearhart rang
their doorbell. "Mama," cried Bill, answering, "the Lord is here and he
doesn't have our baby."

By 1947, General Mills babied 115 teams, more than General Foods,
Kellogg's, or Atlantic Refining. "A Wheaties scout'd hit the road," said Ernie.
"With luck, it'd promote you." One night he hit Atlanta. Harwell re-created
each play, ad, and break of a 21 -inning game. After midnight, he fell into the
lobby. Surely, the man had hung on every word. "Then I saw him. For hours
he'd been asleep."

W. Earnest narrated for his dad, an invalid. "Every time a ball's pitched,
your mouth and brain have to describe it without frills." Crackers skipper
Kiki Cuyler put a radio in the dugout. "Ernie was that good," said owner Earl
Mann. In 1948, Branch Rickey asked to release him when Red Barber's ulcer
hemorrhaged. "I won't stand in his way," Mann said. "But first I want Cliff
Dapper," Brooklyn's Triple-A catcher.

At 30, Harwell swelled NewYork's colony of Barber, from Mississippi's clay
and talcum; Russ Hodges, rural Kentucky; and Mel Allen, near Birmingham. "I'm asked why so many guys were Southern. I say we were too lazy to work!
Actually, it's where we grew up."

The South fused oral density and a lulling, siren past. "On the porch you'd
hear about the local banker and beauty parlor operator and who married
whom."Their rhythm became radio baseball's, mythy and sweetly rural.

The listener could picture, among other things, bags, positions, batter,
and pitcher. A Dodger might hit to left-center field. "Mentally, you saw it all
at once-base runners, fielder chasing, shortstop with the relay, catcher
bracing." Even a vanilla Voice made TV football bearable: "It's better packaged
for the screen." Radio baseball was better packaged for the mind.

Radio was a sonata, falling on the ear. TV was still life, deadened by statistic. Barber played the Met: "first to study players, take you behind the
scene." In 1950, Harwell left him for Hodges, pounding piano at a roadhouse.
"Wouldn't talk as much, no gimmicks, but authenticity."

Red was better; Russ, better to work with. Once Barber called the first
quarter of a football game. "Now for the second quarter," he said, "here is
Russ Hughes."

"Thank you, Red Baker," said Hodges. Like Queen Victoria, Barber was
not amused.

Baseball as story-telling: three from the 1950s.

• Coogan's remote booth lacked a toilet. Urinating in paper cups,
Russ and Ernie placed them in a corner. One visitor accidentally
kicked a cup, leaking liquid into lower boxes. "Hev!" usher
Barney O'Toole said. "We're getting complaints. People said to
quit spilling beer."The beer, Harwell winked, was used. "We'll
be careful, but don't tell the folks what hit 'em."

• "I was a mild and lazy guy long before Steve Martin became a
wild and crazy guy." Leo Durocher mistook Ernie for a patsy,
slapped his newspaper, and began wrestling. "If you took the bullying, you became his stooge. Leo fought so often he didn't
recall it." Harwell did-the sole brawl of his career.

• In 1954, the transplanted Orioles hired him. The new kid on the
block finished 54-100. "With a bad club, you need the unusual,"
Ernie said, finding it in 1957. Behind, 4--3, Dick Williams hit at
10: 19 P.M. Local law forced a 10:20 curfew. "All [Chicago's Paul] LaPalme has to do is eat the ball, game ends." He threw a gametying homer.

The O's won the replay. Harwell won Baltimore. News American columnist
John Steadman wrote: "He could talk, and write," gracing Colliers, Look, and
The Saturday Evening Post. In 1955, Ernie composed a poem. Ultimately, "A
Game for All America" was translated into six languages, became its greatest
essay, and has aged even less than him.

"It's America, this baseball. A re-issued newsreel of boyhood dreams.
Dreams lost somewhere between boy and man," he wrote. "In baseball,
democracy shines its clearest. Here the only race that matters is the race to
the bag." Baseball was "a ballet without music. Drama without words. A carnival without kewpie dolls." It was "Chagrin in being picked off base... .
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 were baseball. "Names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home
Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Daffy." It told "the story of David and
Goliath, of Samson, Cinderella, Paul Bunyan, Homer's Iliad, and the Count
of Monte Cristo." Baseball was "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.

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

In 1960, the literalist replaced Van Patrick onTV/radio. "Van was so popular. I
went with a chilly feeling." Warming: a hearth with almost every seat on the
field. "Tiger Stadium was like Ebbets, only bigger, but fans were like the
Giants'-a history lacking in Brooklyn.This was really the best park of all."

The '60 Tigers were 71-83. Next year, their menagerie moved uptown.
Norm Cash hit .361. Rocky Colavito had 4S homers. Frank Lary went 2 3-9.
Detroit crashed New York 1 112 games behind for a September 1-3 series.
"The first night, the Lions had a preseason game. Baseball interest was so high
they postponed it so people could watch TV."

Detroit lost thrice. For a long time afterward, Harwell eclipsed his club.
He wrote books, shot a hole-in-one, invented a bottle-can opener, spoke at a
Billy Graham crusade, had a race horse named after him, and sang a duet with
Pearl Bailey. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jack Nicholson, a schizophrenic, strains to hear NBC Radio's 1963 World Series. "Yep, me," said Ernie. "Wish I
got a residual [from that and five other films]."The mild and lazy guy ditched
football and Tigers video. "The season overlap killed football, and George Kell
beganTV."

In 1967, rioting in Detroit killed 38. Certain constants soothed. A park
was "the ballyard." The Red Sox were the "Bostons." An outfielder "tried to
climb the wall and buy a ticket." Motown lost a last-day flag. Its owner then
penned a note: "John Fetzer has just died. This is his ghost speaking."

You can't buy class. Like Fetzer, Harwell never had to rent it.

Entering 1968, Detroit was unsure if it would burn or win a first pennant
since 1945. Would smoke again shroud Tiger Stadium? No one knew. "A
strange thing [then] happened," Falls said. "The ball club ... started winning
games.... As the streets began to heat up, people began staying in at night
to listen to Ernie Harwell on radio.... And when the team was at home ...
there was ... a place to go. A place where a guy could let off steam." Outside Michigan, The Year of the Pitcher blew the whistle on interest. "No one
could hit the ball," said Ernie. "There wasn't much fun." Antipodean, Detroit
broke its all-time gate-2,031,847.

"People ask my favorite image of all the years I did ball," Harwell often
said: Al Kaline, in the right-field corner, throwing to second base. No. 6 wed
3,007 hits, 10 Gold Gloves, and 18 All-Star teams. In 1968, he buoyed Willie
Horton (36 dingers), Mickey Lolich (17-9), and MVP/Cy Young Denny
McLain (31-6) "the biggest player we ever had in his impact on the public."

September 14: ninth inning vs. Oakland. Horton hit "a drive to left
that'll be the hall game!" Ernie said. "Here comes Stanley in to score ... and
the Tigers win, 5 to 4! Denny McLain is one of the first out of the dugout ...
as the Tigers come from behind and McLain has his 30th victory of the 1968
season!" Next week "[another] big crowd [was] ready to break loose." Don
Wert "swings -a line shot, base hit, right field, the Tigers win it! [flag, 2 -1,
vs. New York] ... Kaline has scored. The fans are streaming on the field....
Let's listen to the bedlam here at Tiger Stadium!"