Ernie

Thank you Paul and good evening everyone. Here's the first pitch of the ball game and it's a strike, and we're under way at the corner of Michigan and Turnbull.

That's an approximate recreation of how Ernie Hartwell typically began a radio broadcast of Detroit Tigers baseball. His on air partner, Paul Carey (who had a good baritone voice) would open the game and hand the reigns over to Ernie, who would take it from there. Facebook reminded me yesterday that my son and I had went, along with thousands of others, to pay our respects to the late broadcaster as he lay in state at Comerica Park after his passing in May 2010.

Eleven years after his death and nineteen since he called his last game, Ernie is still remembered fondly by the Tiger faithful. Perhaps I'm simply caught up in the sentimentality of the moment, but I don't know that anyone can ever match his vocal association with the Motor City Nine.

Having a sportscaster who almost is your team seems rare these days. It wasn't only a Detroit thing: there was Vin Scully with the Dodgers, Harry Caray with the Cubs and so forth across the land. Here in Motown we even had Bruce Martyn and his distinctive voice calling Red Wings hockey over the radio as well. Such associations, such distinctive voices, don't seem to be the case anymore.

I'm not going to make the mistake of the reactionary sentimentalists and try argue that sportscasting today is bad. But too many play by play callers are bland and Midwestern. It does, I think, take a bit of the intimacy away. Although I do like the current Tiger radio man (Dan Dickerson) he is in the unfortunate position of not being Ernie. 

To be fair I don't think even Dickerson would put himself in Harwell's class, and at the end of the day I'm not talking moral imperatives but merely differences. Still, no one filled the baseball airwaves like Ernie. Perhaps one day, but I don't see it.