Ernie Harwell
Ernie Harwell
William Earnest "Ernie" Harwellwas an American sportscaster, known for his long career calling play-by-play of Major League Baseball games. For 55 seasons, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers, Harwell called the action on radio and/or television. In January 2009, the American Sportscasters Association ranked Harwell 16th on its list of Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSportscaster
Date of Birth25 January 1918
CityWashington, GA
CountryUnited States of America
If I walked back into the booth in the year 2025, I don't think it would have changed much. I think baseball would be played and managed pretty much the same as it is today. It's a great survivor.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, 'I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.'
Also I'm a part of the people that I've worked with in baseball that have been so great to me, Mr. Earl Mann of Atlanta, who gave me my first baseball broadcasting job.
Baseball is a tongue-tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
Wheaties was the big sponsor in those days (1940s). They sponsored almost all the baseball games in the majors and the minors. That was a lot of Wheaties. I think there were twenty-four boxes in a case and some of these guys were hitting twenty-five and thirty home runs a season. We had a dog in those days named Blue Grass and the players used to give us their Wheaties for him. Blue Grass loved Wheaties and so did I.
Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.
Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Season to season.
A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball.
Baseball is a rookie, his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.
Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That's baseball.
Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words.
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.