Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (17 page)

On October 2, 1963, Harwell called Sandy Koufax's Classic-high 15 Ks.
Five years later to the day he began another Series. "Gibson has tied the
record.... Trying for number 16 right now against Cash.... Swing and a
miss! He did it!" St. Louis took a 3-1 game lead. In Game Five, Ernie suggested blind folk-singer Jose Feliciano for the Anthem. He crashed NBC's
switchboard. "This was Viet Nam-people saw him, thought hippies with the guitar and dark glasses." The Cardinals scored three first-inning runs. Jose
should have sung a coda.

Detroit forced Game Seven. Scoreless inning shadowed inning. Cash and
Horton singled in the seventh. Jim Northrup lined to center. "Here comes
Flood," said Harwell. "He's digging hard. He almost fell down! It's over his
head for a hit!" Tigers: 4-1. Patient: baseball. Placebo: Detroit.

"`Sixty-eight," Ernie said as in a rosary. "People obsessed, wondering when
we'd win again [ 1972 A.L. East]." In the clubhouse, the Baptist shunned profanity. On the air, the teetotaler touted Stroh. On the road, he visited friends.

"You can read books listening to Ernie, or go smelt fishing listening to
him, or pick mushrooms in the woods with him in your ear," William Taaffe
wrote. In 1973, Henry Aaron passed homer 700. Harwell wrote "Move Over
Babe, Here Comes Henry" 55th of his more than 70 songs. "I'm drawn to
words [for Sammy Fain, Johnny Mercer, and B. J. Thomas, among others]. I
get an expression and work on rides from one city to another."

In 1976, a tyro expressed himself as no one had: "for one year," said
Ernie, "even bigger than McLain." On June 28, Mark Fidrych acknowledged
the first network TV sports curtain call. "They're not going to stop clapping
until the Bird comes from the dugout," said ABC's Warner Wolf. "Mark
Fidrych is born tonight on coast-to-coast television." "The Bird," after the
"Sesame Street"TV character, jammed stadia, addressed the ball, and manicured the mound.

Infielders Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell became a more enduring
institution. Another could be heard saying, "That ball nabbed by a guy from
Alma, Michigan." Each day a different town snagged a foul. "Hey, Ernie, let a
guy from Hope [Holland, or Sarnia] grab one!" pled a bystander. As a boy I
recall thinking that he had a lot of friends.

Detroit did in 1984: only the fourth team to lead the league or division
each day. It swept the L.C.S., took a 3-1 game Series edge, and led next day,
5-4. Manager Sparky Anderson tried a ploy. "Five bucks you don't hit one
out," he yelled from the dugout. Steamed, Kirk Gibson signaled, doubling the
bet. "He swings, and there's a long drive to right!" said Harwell. "And it is a
home run for Gibson! ... The Tigers lead it, 8 to 4!"

By now Michigan would no more miss Ernie-"Mr. Kaline"; "lovely
Lulu"; "two for the price of one!"; "a big Tiger hello"; "lonnng gone" of a
dinger; "he played every hop perfectly except the last"-than burn the U.S.
flag. In 1990, ex-football coach Bo Schembechler became Tigers president: too arrogant to grasp his baseball ignorance, and too ignorant to grasp his
arrogance.

On December 19, Harwell said he would not return-"I'm fired"-after 1991. The Free Press screamed: "A Gentleman Wronged." A chant filled
Joe Louis Arena: "We Want Ernie!" T-shirts blared, "Say It Ain't So, Bo!" A
DetroitTV poll showed Harwell 9,352, Schembechler 265. Dishonor among
thieves: Bo and WJR Radio swapped blame. Their Grinch stealing Christmas
was mean, coarse, and dumb.

The '91ers closed at Baltimore. Our hero was feted in the Oval Office
and on Capitol Hill. "Someone said I was lucky. They pointed out usually you
have to die before people say nice things about you."Tony Hanley, 13, wrote
from Belding, Michigan: "If you need anything, a job, or money, or you need
a place to stay, or even a new organ, just call."

Next year Harwell called CBS Radio's "Game of the Week." Finer: ire at
his firing greased the franchise's sale. Mr. Tiger was rehired. Axed, Schembechler finally got the Importance of Being Ernie. "Mel and the Yankees,
Brooklyn and Barber, so many Voices canned," said Bob Costas. "Baseball is
clueless about how the announcer helps their team."

Pro: Detroit's booth rivaled pinball. "On a fall night, few people, outfielders
would hear you," said Harwell. Con: Tiger Stadium aged, closing September
27, 1999, its flag lowered and passed among 65 ex-Tigers in a chronological
line from the flagpole to the plate for transfer to Comerica Park. Ernie said
good-bye over the P.A. microphone, voice breaking, lights dimming.
"Farewell, old friend. We will remember."

His last broadcast year was 2002. Harwell opened the American Stock
Exchange. The Tigers unveiled a statue on Ernie Harwell Day. "The only
other day I remember was when the sheriff of Fulton County in Georgia gave
me a day to get out of town." Croquet was then the hipster sport, then the
NFL, then NBA. Baseball would survive: "an individual sport like Gary
Cooper in High Noon. A distinctly American sport"-and life.

In 1981, he invoked "a tongue-tied kid from Georgia, growing up to be an
announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown."
You thought of Ernie, as in Harwell; Tiger, as in baseball; class, as in friend.

He still made people happy.

ERNIE NARWELL

Walt Whitman wrote, "I hear America singing, the varied caroles I hear." Mel
Allen sang through eleven U.S. presidents, nine commissioners, and four
major wars. In 1939, he became Voice of the Yankees. He was fired in 1964
after 18 flags, 12 world titles, and nearly 4,000 games. Allen left the air,
knew private hell, then forged TV's brilliant "This Week In Baseball." He had
all, lost all, and, incredibly, came back.

At peak, Mel was sport's five-star mouthpiece-to Variety magazine,
"one of the 25 most recognizable voices in the world." It was deep, full, and
Southern, mixing Billy Graham and James Earl Jones. In Omaha, Allen once
hailed a cab. "Sheraton, please," he said, simply. The cabbie's head jerked like
a swivel. "The voice was astonishing," said 1953-56 Yankees colleague Jim
Woods. Ibid, debate about The Voice.

Depending on your view, Mel was a saladin, random chatterer, or surpassing personality of the big city in the flesh. Red Barber thought him prejudiced. The Mets' Lindsey Nelson was antipodal: "The best of all time to
broadcast the game." All conceded Mel's drop-dead lure.

Damn Yankees sang, "You've Gotta Have Heart." Born on Valentine's Day,
Mel fused "Dear Heart," "Heart of Gold," and "Heartbreak Hotel."

"Give me a child until he is seven," vowed Saint Francis of Assisi, "and you
may have him afterward." Melvin Israel was born in 1913 to Julius and Anna,
Russian emigrants who owned a clothing store in Johns, Alabama, 25 miles
from Birmingham. (In 1940, he dropped Israel and adopted his dad's middle
name. "The Yanks' idea," Mel said, wryly. "They told me it was more
generic.")

The child walked at nine months, spoke sentences at one year, read box
scores at five. "I'd go to our outside john," he said, "and devour a Montgomery
Ward catalogue." Allen graduated from grammar school at 11; high school,
15; the University of Alabama, 23. New York had the adult afterward. In
1936, he went there for a week's vacation. The trip lasted 60 years.

On a lark, Mel auditioned as a $45-a-week CBS Radio announcer. He
understudied Bob Trout and Ted Husing, interrupted Kate Smith to report
the Hindenburg crash, and introduced Perry Como on "The Pick and Pat Minstrels Show." Work at warp-speed: Kentucky Derby, International Polo
Games, and Vanderbilt Cup auto race. "The weather is awful and I'm in a
plane when the race is called off." Filling time, he ad-libbed for an hour.

"Allen [went] up there a raw kid from the turntable department," wrote
Ron Powers. "He came hack down a star." Often the ex-Piedmont League bat
boy drove from CBS to the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, watched
players isolated in his attention, and broadcast sotto voce. "I sat and thought,
`I'd give anything to broadcast in a place like this.' " God answered through
soft soap, not hard sell.

In 1939, the Stripes and Jints debuted on radio. Arch McDonald had formerly done the Senators. One day an aide began an Ivory Soap ad by saying
"ovary." He laughed, repeated it, and was fired, replaced by Mel. Soon Arch
beat a path back to Washington. Within a year, so far, so fast, too fast, he often
said, for his own good, Allen had traded baseball's fringe for core the Voice
of the Yankees, at 26.

Mel knew what he had-"more history to call," said Nelson, "than any
sportscaster ever." Its stage was The Stadium's vast power alleys, pee-wee
lines, and triple tiers. The stars were idols: Phil Rizzuto (to Mel, "Scooter")
and Allie Reynolds ("SuperChief") and Lou Gehrig ("Iron Horse," a quiet
man, a hero). Said Bob Costas: "Not just baseball players, but personalities of
the time."

On July 4, 1939, the Bronx housed baseball's Gettysburg Address. Said
Gehrig: "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Next
spring, dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he visited the dugout, shuffled to
the bench, sat down, and patted Allen's knee. "I never got a chance to listen to
your games before because I was playing every day. But I want you to know
they're the only thing that keeps me going."As Gehrig left, Mel sobbed.

At that moment Allen seemed a Yankee to his pinstriped underwear.
Their sunny-dark star wore none. By 1947, racked by cancer, Babe Ruth
could barely talk. The trademark camel-hair coat and matching cap draped a
shell. Mel introduced him on his Day. "Babe, do you want to try and say
something?" he bayed above the crowd.

Ruth croaked, "I must."

Babe returned to the dugout. Mel returned to selling more cigars, cases of
beer, safety razors, and fans on baseball than any broadcaster who ever lived.

Allen's first World Series was 1938. Before the 1942 opener, he thought, "as
I always did, about one solitary fan-Ralph Edwards [from `This IsYour Life']
taught me this who I imagined sitting a few feet away. In my mind, he was
my audience. I was talking to him."