12/22/24
August 27, 2002
Wednesday night's game between the Tigers and Indians may be the last chance to hear Ernie Harwell, the legendary broadcaster who is retiring at the end of this season after a half-century at the mike. Upon the departure of Harwell, who twice had longer consecutive-game streaks than Cal Ripken Jr., only Vin Scully will be left from the days when most baseball fans watched the game with their ears.
With the shuttering of Tiger Stadium and the retirement of Ernie Harwell, Detroit Tigers baseball will be barely recognizable from years before (except, of course, for the crappy team). I'll never forget nights spent driving up north and listening to Ernie call a whole game, or tuning in on a radio late at night after I was supposed to be sleeping. No matter where you were, if you could hear Ernie, it felt like home. He will be missed.
posted by jmpeterson at 11:35 AM on August 28, 2002
I grew up listening to baseball on the radio when I was supposed to be going to sleep. It was the '70s, and Dick Risenhoover was calling the games of my hometown team, the woeful Texas Rangers. I've been chasing audio of him doing a game for years, to no avail. It's perhaps fitting that Harwell's swan song would be cut short by a baseball strike, because this one feels like the labor stoppage that will fully kill the era he represents -- the period in our history when baseball was the only major sport. Americans younger than I are already ready to move on; if us old fogeys get so pissed off that we turn our attentions to other sports, baseball will be second or third in popularity to the NFL and NBA in a decade.