R.I.P. Ernie Harwell
In which Good Ol’ Schmoe remembers a great person, and not just within that man’s profession.
This week, the baseball world lost perhaps the best broadcaster they have ever heard, the Detroit Tiger organization sure did. The world lost a great man. Ernie Harwell past away this week. I won’t give a regular obit. You either don’t need it or you can Google it. The point is for many of us, his death this week allowed us all to reach deep into the rich memories of our childhood or parenthood or both, and smile.
I listened to Ernie call Tiger games from my childhood until deep into parenthood. Ernie’s sweet Georgian voice accompanied me through many summer chores with the radio going to breezy evenings with the transistor radio under my pillow (I thought I was so sneaky but my dad, as it turned out, always knew). I received a copy of Tuned to Baseball, Ernie’s first book, as a gift from my dad, who went out of character and had it inscribed to me from Ernie because my dad realized that this was no simple autograph, it had meaning. It was that book that allowed me to discover the breadth and depth of Ernie Harwell. My college aged self found his frank and tender discussion of his faith even more inspiring than his broadcasting talents. From then on, I noticed how he humbly allowed his beliefs to shine appropriately and admirably in public.
A broadcasting friend of Good Ol’ Schmoe’s, JoeMaj, was fortunate enough to have close encounters with the Wonderful Ernie while he was actively pursuing a career in the same profession. With permission (sort of), I relay his story:
Ernie Harwell was a man amongst men. I am compelled to pay respects to the man tonight. I went to his house and we talked about broadcasting as a career back in 1990. He was a gracious man and made me feel really important that day. A few years later when I was working at a “rinky dink” radio station, I met him again and he remembered my name and asked me to lunch. I went to lunch with him and his agent Gary Spicer at the Hudson’s restaurant in Westland Mall. The entire place was staring at us while we ate lunch. His voice could be heard across the entire restaurant and when a women approach him for an autograph, while he signed he said to her, he said, “I’d like you to meet the young man that is going to replace me one day…this is JoeMaj (ed-he said his real name)”. That was one of the best moments of my life. In the words of Bruce Springsteen from Prove It All Night, “If dreams came true wouldn’t that be nice”.
So today, I nod upward to you, Ernie. God Bless. As I am sure many have done this week, I will end by referencing the passage that Ernie himself referenced each and every spring training at the first broadcast, a reading from Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (KJV):
“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.”
Namaste,
~Schmoe
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