The best damned announcer ever
NPR’s Morning Edition aired a wonderful piece about Ernie Harwell, the long-time play-by-play man for the Detroit Tigers. You can tell that Don Gonyea, the reporter on the piece, is a born Detroiter and life-long Tigers fan. Ernie was the voice of the Tigers when I was a kid growing up, and as Don points out at the beginning of the piece, just hearing his voice transports any Tigers fan to another time and place. For me, it’s back to the back rows of my third grade class at Roeper Country Day School in Bloomfield Hills, where I would sneak my 6 transistor Motorola AM radio in to class and stick an earplug in my ear and listen to Ernie and Paul Carey do the games from the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. The Tigers don’t play at Tiger Stadium any more, but as long as Ernie was in the booth, everything was still right with the world. The man has a voice that could melt butter, and calls a game like a poet. I like the bit at the end of the report about the fans in Baltimore with the sign that said "Don’t Strike! It’s Ernie Harwell’s Last Season!" I couldn’t have said it better myself.
The NPR page has a lot of great stuff about Ernie. I can see I’m going to have to get a copy of his new autobiography. I’ve already devoured the previous two.
Posted at 9:36 PM