Meeting Ernie Harwell
On baseball and solid stories, well-told.
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
My grandfather, B, took my family and me to my first baseball game. It was June, 1981 at Tiger Stadium. A foul ball came right at us, and even though I had my glove, I missed catching it and it wedged itself between the seat and the leg of the man behind me. He didn’t even try to catch it, but the ball was his. I was so sad, and B was probably disappointed in me.
I’m sure Ernie Harwell had something to say about it on the radio. He was the long, long, longtime radio broadcaster for the Tigers.
I met Ernie Harwell at Comerica Park with a friend and fellow Tigers fan. He was signing books, including my copy. It was quite a day.
I’d listened to him my entire life, calling Tigers’ games on AM 760, WJR. His voice was the perfect southern drawl. He knew everything about the game, and had witnessed much of it personally over the course of his decades-long career. I have some recordings and sometimes in summer I’ll put on an old game because no one ever called them the way he did. I was ruined. It was his voice I listened to, on an AM-only radio I carried in my bike basket as I rode around the neighborhood. I remember stopping in the drive way as he called the final out of Jack Morris’ no-hitter early in the amazing, magical 1984 season. Later, I would sneak an earbud up my sleeve so I could listen to him during Doc’s Latin class as he opened Spring Training each year with a verse from the Bible’s Song of Solomon about the voice of the turtle. I would, still later, read that Psalm at my sister’s wedding, and she at mine.
I remember watching him in the booth at old Tiger Stadium. I was at Comerica Park in 2002 when they honored him after his retirement, and gave out his bobbleheads. He’s the only broadcaster ever traded for a player, Cliff Dapper, and they even had Dapper at the park that day! It was the first time they had ever met.
Ernie certainly had a role in my love for baseball. He took a game I was already falling in love with and wrapped it with a thing I loved even more: stories, well-told.
Ernie showed how stories, spun delicately with just the right amount of detail, make everything better. They pass the time. They fill the gaps and the silence — stretching to fill the space, or staying contained within needed border. His stories were always the right size to squeeze between pitches or cover the length of a drawn-out inning. They need never get old and in a way, neither did he. His incredible career also showed that it’s possible to do the same thing, more or less, every day of your working life — if you love it. It’s possible to do what you love, and be loved. It’s important to know your history and the players behind it and weave it into the things you’re passionate about today.
Ernie even had something to say about heroes from the perspective of someone who had called them all. “Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.”
Like every hero, eventually, he is now remembered by his stories, those he told and those he starred in.
OK, one last story about Ernie and about me: When he died, my friend Sean was working for the Congressman who represented the district that included Wrigley Field and he made me an incredible offer: “Do you want to write a eulogy for Ernie Harwell for Quigley to give.” Um, yes. Yes, I would.
Here it is, direct from the Congressional Record. You can google it!
HON. MIKE QUIGLEY of Illinois in the house of representatives Monday, May 24, 2010
Mr. QUIGLEY. Madam Speaker, in Ernie Harwell's famous definition of baseball, he wrote that it was "just a game, as simple as a ball and bat; yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes." There was nothing complex, however, about what one of baseball's most iconic broadcasters meant to us all. Ernie lent his voice to one of America's deepest loves for more than 50 years, most of them calling games for his beloved Detroit Tigers. He passed away a few short weeks ago at the age of 92.
Ernie brought Tiger Stadium into Michigan living rooms from Hamtramck to Bloomfield, and made the old ballpark at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull feel like a neighborhood sandlot. He'd call out the hometowns of fans who caught foul balls as if he knew all 35,000 of them by name. The beauty of his commentary was in its understated grace--simple, earnest, and full of insight. Ernie was the rare broadcaster who made you feel like you were in the stadium. He'd tell you the score at least once a minute, but never fell victim to the need to hear himself speak. A silence filled with the hum of the crowd and the call of a vendor was almost as important to his broadcast style as the vignettes from every era of the game that peppered his play-by-play.
For Ernie's faithful listeners spring was a time of hope and rebirth, as he welcomed four decades of spring training seasons with a familiar Psalm: "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." It is the kind of hope we can all relate to, especially fans of a certain team in my district who believe that every year might just be "next year."
When Ernie retired from broadcasting in a moving on-field ceremony in 2002, he told us "rather than say good-bye, please allow me to say thank you." Today, it's our turn. Thank you, Ernie, for all the memories. You will be missed.