Providing a Soundtrack for Baseball Fans

A cellphone message that said his father had called was a bit unsettling to the broadcaster Len Kasper nearly two weeks ago as he worked the early innings of the Cubs-Pirates game from Pittsburgh.

“He watches the games, so he knew we were on the air,” Kasper said, “and he wouldn’t call me unless it was really important.”

A text message from a colleague subsequently confirmed the nature of Joe Kasper’s call. The one-word message — “Ernie” — hit him “like a shot to the gut,” Kasper said.

Ernie Harwell had died at 92. All of baseball, it seemed, was in mourning. Certainly all of Michigan was for the Southern gentleman whose soothing voice and eloquent accounts of Detroit Tigers games formed an easy-listening soundtrack to 42 summers.

“It’s hard to imagine the world without Ernie Harwell,” Kasper said. “I don’t think there was a bigger sports icon in Detroit.”

Chicago can identify. Harry Caray is still a formidable presence here, still celebrated 12 years after his death. And though he worked both sides of town, Harry will always belong to St. Louis to some of us. Jack Brickhouse was our Voice of Summer.

“Jack Brickhouse was baseball and a whole lot more to an entire generation of Chicagoans,” said Bruce DuMont, founder of the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

The best baseball announcers understand they are a daily houseguest or a frequent car companion for six months of every year, invited in because we enjoy their company. An Ernie Harwell, a Vin Scully or a Jack Brickhouse endures and wears well by virtue of his personality as much as his baseball acumen.

Scully, with an amazing 60 years in the Dodgers’ booth, may be the last of the breed, still a welcome break from the talk-show know-it-alls and wise-guy SportsCenter types who clutter the airwaves trying to out-snark one another.

Len Kasper grew up in Shepherd, Mich., in the central part of the state about 110 miles from Detroit. Like thousands of other Michigan kids, he traces his baseball education to Harwell.

“The ’68 Tigers were my father’s team — Al Kaline, Jim Northrup, Mickey Lolich,” he said. “The ’84 Tigers were my team — Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Kirk Gibson. The common bond was Ernie Harwell.”

Now 39 and in his ninth year as a major league broadcaster, Kasper was a college student at Marquette in the early ’90s when he met Harwell for the first time. What struck him was how genuinely nice the man was.

“He never forgot a name or where you were from,” Kasper said. “He sent me a handwritten note when I got the Florida job. He called me at home when the Cubs hired me. I had no idea how he got my number. It was the greatest day of my life, and a call from Ernie Harwell put it over the top.”

“He was a huge influence, and it would have been very easy to mimic him,” he continued. “But there’s only one Ernie Harwell. I do try to be like him in the way I treat people.”

Harwell’s easy demeanor was no act. Upon meeting him, you felt you had a friend for life. The briefest mention of him in an article was likely to produce a gracious, handwritten acknowledgment.

Pat Hughes, in his 15th season as the Cubs’ polished radio voice, has a little Harwell in him, though he says the Bay Area triple threat, Bill King, was his role model.

“As I get older, I try not to take it too seriously,” Hughes said “Your favorite team is close to your heart, obviously, and those of us in the game tend to live or die with how the team is doing.

“But most people, I think, are just looking for a healthy form of escapism from their daily lives. They want a little time away from their worries and concerns. Listening to a ballgame is the fun part of life, or at least it should be.”

Hughes blends descriptive play-by-play with deep knowledge of baseball history and an entertaining knack for story-telling. His quick-witted byplay with the occasionally addled analyst Ron Santo is part of the show as he extends a Chicago tradition of quality baseball voices.

He’s also a good guy. “Some of the nicest letters I get are from visually impaired people who say I’m their only link to the team,” Hughes said. “That means a lot to me.”

Neither the Wrigley family nor the Tribune Company got a handle on baseball during their combined 88 years of Cubs ownership, but they knew marketing. The Cubs’ ubiquitous presence on television, even when they were awful, is one reason there are so many Cubs fans today.

School children who dashed home to catch the last few innings of a game on TV are among today’s ticket buyers. Brickhouse, the ever-cheery optimist, and Caray, the passionate voice of the fan, were in their own ways ideal salesmen. Their popularity was reflected in the hero’s send-off both men received when they died within seven months of each other in 1998.

A few weeks ago, they rededicated the Brickhouse statue that sits on North Michigan Avenue near the Chicago River bridge; years of exposure to heavy weather and the heavy traffic rumbling by had necessitated some repairs. Bruce DuMont, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts and several other dignitaries paid tribute to Chicago’s version of Ernie Harwell, a nice man and a pro’s pro who made a great game even better.