Farewell Ernie Harwell

I was going to put some notes together on the passing of Detroit Tigers Broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell.  However, before I had a chance, the North Sound division of AndyBoyer.com but together this list which I’ll forward here:

  • Was born two years before the radio was invented.
  • Was a bat boy for the Atlanta Crackers (really) at age five.  He never had to buy a ticket for a baseball game since then.
  • Broadcast games for the Atlanta Crackers but was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948 for catcher Cliff Dapper becasue Branch Rickey liked Ernie and Brooklyn needed a third guy to substitute for Red Barber who was sick with an ulcer.
  • Broadcasters were fired often because as the teams’ radio sponsors — mainly beer companies like Strohs, Gunther, Goebel — won contracts, the new sponsor often thought the broadcaster identified too much with the old sponsor.
  • Vin Scully replaced Ernie Harwell for the Dodgers
  • In Harwell’s first broadcast for the Tigers in 1960, there was not room for him or his color guy in the Cleveland press box so they had to do the broadcast from a table set up in the upper deck.  It was 35 degrees and windy.  The 15 inning game lasted almost five hours.
  • Rick Rizzs did the unthinkable by spending a year as Ernie’s “replacement” in 1992.  Bo Schembechler made this decision and resigned a year later.  Ernie was broadcasting for Detroit again in 1993.
  • In 2002 the Cleveland Indians named their visiting radio booth for Harwell
  • When he retired, he had twice outdone Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak.  He missed two games in his career.  One for his brother’s funeral and the other for his Hall of Fame induction.
  • It’s Harwell’s call of the 1963 World Series you hear in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
  • He and his wife Lulu were married for 68 years

Photo borrowed from http://rodgerdodgerowl.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/ernie-harwell/