Sad News: The Voice of Detroit Tiger Baseball is Dead – Ernie Harwell has died

To me, and everyone who grew up in Detroit in the 1980’s; this is the ultimate heart-ache.

Video:

This Story from the Detroit Free Press:

The Voice of Detroit Baseball - Ernie Harwell

He died in his apartment at Fox Run Village, a retirement center in Novi, with Lulu, his wife of 68 years, at his side. His death came eight months to the day after he revealed to his fans, in an interview with the Free Press, that he had a cancerous tumor in the area of his bile duct and that in late July he had been given only a few months to live.

“I’m ready to face what comes,” he said at the time. “Whether it’s a long time or a short time is all right with me because it’s up to my Lord and savior.”

In the ensuing months, in an emotional farewell ceremony at Comerica Park, in his columns for the Free Press and in interviews with national media, Harwell referred to death as his next great adventure, a gift handed down by God.

“I’ve had so many great ones,” he said. “It’s been a terrific life.”

Harwell had one of the longest runs by a broadcaster with one major league club, calling Tigers games for 42 seasons. For the first 32 of those seasons, he made and cemented his legacy by doing play-by-play on the radio. His Southern voice — rich and authoritative but not overbearing — became as distinctive to Michigan listeners as baseball itself.

Unlike some announcers in recent decades, Harwell didn’t litter his broadcasts with shouting, excessive talking or all-knowing pronouncements about players and managers. Listening to him was as pleasant as being at Tiger Stadium in the summertime. As he fell silent between pitches, listeners got to hear the sounds of the ballpark — the crowd’s buzz, the vendor’s cry — and absorb the rhythm of the game. Harwell thus became an ideal companion for a listener anywhere: the couch, the yard, the car or the boat.

“He’s a master craftsman,” former Tigers broadcaster Josh Lewin, now with the Texas Rangers, said in 2002. “He’s always kept it simple, which I think is part of his charm and staying power.”

In 2005, author and historian Curt Smith ranked Harwell as the third-greatest baseball announcer ever, only placing him behind Dodgers legend Vin Scully and Yankees stalwart Mel Allen. Just behind Harwell were St. Louis’ Jack Buck and New York’s Red Barber. Smith, a student of baseball broadcasting, had 10 criteria for his rankings, ranging from longevity and acclaim to voice and personality.

Beyond his consummate broadcasting skills, Harwell’s cheerfulness and friendliness made him a local treasure.

“He always had that warmth, that inviting lilt to his voice that always made you feel welcome,” Lewin said. “No one can do that like Ernie can.”

At home games, Harwell would report that a foul ball had been caught by “a man from Ypsilanti” or “a lady from Muskegon.” Of course he couldn’t know where the fan lived, but pretending that he did added a distinct local feel to his broadcasts.

On the day of his career-ending broadcast in 2002, he said, “I look on life as a joyous adventure.” He had lived by that ideal. He constantly conducted himself with joy, on and off the air. “Howdy, howdy,” he would greet friends and strangers, smiling and extending his hand.

Harwell was in his 80s when he returned to the radio in 1999 for four final years of broadcasting every Tigers game, home and away. He didn’t sound tired, old-fashioned or nostalgic, even as the Tigers in those years stacked one losing season on top of another. During Harwell’s final season, Boston Red Sox announcer Joe Castiglione said, “Ernie is the most contemporary octogenarian I know.”

The Detroit News remembers too:

Ernie has died.

After a battle against bile duct cancer, one he knew he would lose, Ernie Harwell died Tuesday. He was 92.

With his death, Michigan — and baseball — loses one of its most beloved figures.

For 55 years, Harwell was a major league broadcaster, 42 with the Tigers. He broadcast his last game Sept. 22, 2002.

Instead of moving away from the Detroit area, he spent his final years in Novi, still being part of our lives as an author and corporate spokesman.

William Earnest Harwell was born Jan. 25, 1918 in Washington, Ga.

As a boy, his family moved to Atlanta, where he grew up loving newspapers and baseball, which is how and why he became a paperboy and a batboy for his hometown minor league club, the Atlanta Crackers.

“I remember there was a drug store in Washington where they’d put me up on the counter and let me imitate the baseball announcers of the day, re-creating ball games,” Harwell said two years ago when he turned 90.

“I was tongue-tied at that time, though. I had a speech impediment. Words like sister came out thith-ter. But I was interested in baseball broadcasts even then, so I’d try to imitate the announcers. It wasn’t a very good imitation, but I tried.”

This is hardest things that I have ever tried to write in my life.  How does one explain someone like Ernie Harwell?  I will try my best.  However, I can tell you this; there is going to be a big hole in Detroit baseball for a very long time.

Ernie Harwell was a man from Georgia.  Detroit; from early 1950s until the late 1970s, experienced something called the “Appalachian Migration”, this is where people from the south, like say places like Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and other such places in the south, would come to Detroit to find work.  Listening to Ernie Harwell was like listening to home for these people.  People like my Father, who migrated from Middlesburo, Kentucky in 1967. People like me, who was his son.

There was George Kell on TV and there was Ernie Harwell on the radio.  That was Detroit Baseball.  Ernie was home on the radio for many people.

I have many fond memories of walking with my Dad through Patton Park in Detroit over to the softball diamond, to watch the games over there; all the while carrying his little black portable radio, with Ernie Harwell on the radio.

Old Memories — Old Detroit — My Childhood.

The Diamond is still there, my Dad is now 64, and Ernie is gone.

The just do not build them like that anymore.

It is truly a dark day in Detroit baseball.

Rest in Peace Ernie.

“I wanted to be a newspaper writer, but when I got out of college in 1940, none of the papers in Atlanta had an opening. So I auditioned with a radio station, got lucky, won the audition, and that’s how I got into radio.

“I didn’t know anything about radio, though. I just took a shot at it.”

That he did, and did it damned well he did.

He will be truly missed, at least by this Blogger. 🙁

Update: Statement from Senator Carl Levin:

Video:

Transcript:

WASHINGTON – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., delivered the following statement on the Senate floor today:

“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.”

Mr. President, spring after spring, for four decades, a man named Ernie Harwell would recite those words. He would recite them at the beginning of the first baseball broadcast of spring training. And those are the words that would tell the people of Michigan that the long, cold winter was over.

Ernie was the radio voice of the Detroit Tigers for 42 years, and in that time, there may have been no Michiganian more universally beloved. Our state mourns today at his passing, yesterday evening, after a battle with cancer. He fought that battle with the grace, the good humor, and the wisdom that Michigan had come to expect, and even depend on, from a man we came to know and love.

This gentlemanly Georgian adopted our team, and our state, as his own. And his career would have been worthy had he done nothing more than bring us the sound of summer over the radio, recounting the Tigers’ ups and downs with professionalism and wit, as he did.

But without making a show of it, Ernie Harwell taught us. In his work and his life, he taught us the value of kindness and respect. He taught us that, in a city and a world too often divided, we could be united in joy at a great Al Kaline catch, or a Lou Whitaker home run, or a Mark Fidrych strikeout. He taught us not to let life pass us by “like the house by the side of the road.”

In 1981, when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ernie told the assembled fans what baseball meant to him. “In baseball democracy shines its clearest,” he said. “The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another.” That was a lesson he taught us so well.

Mr. President, I will miss Ernie Harwell. All of Michigan will miss the sound of his voice telling us that the winter is past, that the Tigers had won a big game, or that they’d get another chance to win one tomorrow. We will miss his Georgia drawl, his humor, his humility, his quiet faith in God and in the goodness of the people he encountered. But we will carry in our hearts always our love for him, our appreciation for his work, and the lessons he gave us and left us and that we will pass on to our children and grandchildren.