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.

Tuning Out toTune Back In

Last night I did something that I rarely do. Rather than watch the Tigers baseball game on the tube I elected to sit in my bedroom and listen to it on the radio. And while it was not exactly like the days of yore, it did allow me a little taste of that childhood of mine spent next to the small transistor radio of my Dad's hearing the wonderfully dulcet tones of Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey as they called Detroit games back in the day.

It probably helped that the game ended dramatically. Ryan Raburn hit a pinch hit walk off two run home run for the Tigers to down the Chicago Cubs 5-4. Further, there is strong link to my Tigers childhood fandom in that one of the current announcers, Jim Price, was a backup catcher on our 1968 World Series Championship team. The other, Dan Dickerson, has a great radio voice, a necessity when it comes to sports broadcasting on the small box.

Any way you slice it, It was a great way to rediscover the joy of listening to a game rather than watching it. To be sure, seeing probably trumps hearing, but I have to admit there is an added excitement in having to wait for someone else to tell the story. On TV or in person, you see what's developing and usually know what's about to happen as it unfolds. Yet when someone else controls the tempo, it adds something to the event. The unknown gets thrown into the mix; how can that not be enthralling?

I don't want to risk overstating the point, but it's a little like being read to by your parents. You're arguably more engrossed in the action precisely because you must actively imagine what's going on, and perhaps anticipate just a bit more what may happen next. It isn't simply there in front of you. You must take some part in the construction of the story. You must be able to accept that just maybe a guy from Franklin actually caught that foul pop into the stands and is taking home a souvenir.

Undoubtedly part of my reaction is nostalgic. I do miss Ernie and Paul recreating the action from old Tiger Stadium during those pre-teen nights, their words emanating magically from my father's old black and white transistor radio. But why should we ever want to leave our past completely behind us? Especially when we are talking about the good old days?