Gonna ditch the twitter thing again today...it would just be a little injustice to the greats that I'm gonna talk about...
I mentioned in an earlier entry about the great play-by-play guys that made me wanna be a broadcaster, but in talking about the passing of the great Ernie Harwell like we did briefly this morning on Sportscall, I thought about the broadcasters that made me such a fan of the game when I was growing up.
A quick thought on Ernie Harwell: Growing up in Ottawa, I didn't have access to being able to listen to Harwell on Tiger broadcasts, but during the 2006 World Series, FOX aired a quick 2-minute piece talking about the city of Detroit with the voice of Ernie Harwell in the background. It was short, but it hits home and makes you want to be a fan of the Detroit Tigers. Such a powerful piece and I'll share that with you...
If this doesn't make you think about being a Tigers fan for just one second, you truly have no soul...
In hearing some of the e-mails on our show and the big amount being received on the Jim Rome show right now, Harwell certainly impacted the lives of a lot of people...and it got me to thinking about who impacted my life in that way...
The baseball broadcasters that gave me such a love for the game and really got me to where I am today include (in no particular order):
1) Jon Miller - Long time play-by-play man for Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN alongside Joe Morgan
2) Harry Caray - Legendary voice of the Cubs...the butt of many a joke because of how things were towards the end of his career, but was just so beloved
3) Skip Caray - Former play-by-play man for the Atlanta Braves who passed away just a couple of years ago...had the southern drawl that you could listen to all day as he spoke of the Braves' greats like Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Justice, Pendleton, etc.
4) Dave Van Horne - His enthusiasm for the Montreal Expos was something that you could attach yourself to...in a time when the Expos were battling the Blue Jays for air time, I would always take advantage of the few times that TSN exposed the Expos to a national audience and Dave Van Horne was right there to call it
5) Vin Scully - Not too many guys can carry a baseball game on their own, but Scully is one of the few that not only can, but can make it look easy...
There's something about all of these guys that made them so great...I would sit at home as a kid and soak in everything they were doing...whether it was them talking about stats or telling a story. I would make notes about the pacing on which they spoke, the length it took, and so on...
I would look at all those notes and try to emulate what they were doing...I was just such a big fan...
There's gonna come a time that all of these greats will eventually pass the torch and move on, but I'll never forget how much they influenced my life and my lazy Saturday and Sunday afternoons... :-)