Once a hero, always a hero

When I was a little boy, I wanted to be Ernie Harwell. I thought he had the greatest job in the world. For four decades, he was the radio (and occasionally) TV voice of the Detroit Tigers. Many of those teams weren't very good. But it didn't matter. He got to be there every night, telling us about the "man from Ishpeming" who was taking home a foul ball tonight. When Ernie told you "he stood there like the house by the side of the road", you knew the batter had just taken strike three.

He had a wonderful southern twang to his voice. It was warm and personal. I once heard an interview in which he described his technique. "My father was an invalid who loved to listen to baseball games," he said. "When I started out, I pretended I was talking to him and telling him the story of the game."

Catching him do spring training games was always a treat. His sunny voice told you the cold winter was basically over. (He used to start the first spring training game with The Song of Solomon that refers to just that thing.)

One Sunday afternoon, we were coming back from a trip to Mackinac Island. It's a long drive and my mother, wishing to get some harmony in the car, flipped on the radio to the baseball game. With pit stops to let young boys go out and do what young boys need to do, it was about a seven-hour jaunt. As it turned out, we had Harwell (and, I think, George Kell) for company all the way.

The game lasted seven hours (22 innings) and ended as we were going up Patton Avenue to our house.

Harwell is 91 years old now. He retired from the booth in 2002 but has been back for occasional work here and there. I happened to catch him do an inning when the Tigers were in the World Series a few years ago. He sounded almost the same as he did 40 years ago.

Remarkable.

Recently, it was revealed he has terminal cancer. What would most of us if given such a jolt? Let's hope we don't find out.

Harwell didn't seem too fazed by the whole thing, He seems to be facing the inevitable conclusion the way he told us about the Tigers - with a little humor and a lot of practicality, referring to his cancer as "a new adventure." Oddly, this was basically the way he described things when the late Bo Schembechler, who had been hired as the president of the Tigers, ran him out of the broadcast booth in the early 90s. (That unwise decision was quickly reversed. He was back a year later.)

In the Bible, we are told that all life is basically circular - from ashes to ashes. Harwell, a devoutly religious guy, seems to have taken this adage to heart. What else could he do?

So it is that, at age 56, I find myself (for a radically different reason) wanting to be Ernie Harwell.

Again.