Courtesy Detroit Free Press

(March 25, 2009) For decades, Tigers fans followed their favorite team through the play-by-play of two Hall of Famers: Ernie Harwell over the radio and George Kell on television.

They traveled to the same ballparks, stayed in the same hotels and described the same plays. Their calls were distinct, even as they shared clarity and Southern charm. And they were close friends.

Kell, who died Tuesday at 86, was enshrined in Cooperstown for what he did as a third baseman. But he witnessed many more Tigers games from the broadcast booth than he did from the playing field. On Tuesday, Harwell was among the many who remembered Kell's excellence in the second career that endeared him to multiple generations of Michiganders.

"It was a friendly style -- laid-back, forthright and honest," Harwell said in a telephone interview. "He was never overly critical of the players, even though he'd been a great player and had the right to be critical. He had the background of a player, and the players looked on him as an authority on the game.

"He let the game be paramount in his broadcast. He didn't interfere with it. He brought the game to the folks, where they got the idea that he was a friend of theirs."

Larry Osterman, who shared a television booth with Kell from 1967 through 1977, had read and heard of Kell's greatness with the Philadelphia Athletics, Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles. But he'd never seen Kell play.

In the end, the same adjective described his hitting, fielding and broadcasting.

Reliable.

"You could trust him," Osterman said. "His knowledge made the viewers comfortable. It wasn't a look-at-me thing. He was offering his insight, and he did it as if he were sitting down with his buddy at a ballgame. ... He was real."

Al Kaline, the Tigers' iconic Hall of Famer, joined him in the booth for 21 seasons -- after Kell had broadcast so many of his games as a player.

"The reason I got along so well with George and we worked well together is that he didn't have an ego," Kaline said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "He was able to share the microphone. That's not always the case with 'professional announcers.' They seem to want to come across as if they know everything."

Jim Price joined Kell and Kaline in a three-man booth during the 1995 and 1996 seasons. On Tuesday, he recalled one memorable dinner with his colleagues.

"Al and I were talking, and then George says something," Price said. "And it was like that old commercial, where everyone in the room turned around to listen. He just had that voice. Al turned to me and said, 'Well, they don't care about you and me, Jimmy. He got their attention.' "

Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, an Arkansas native, grew up idolizing Kell. The two briefly played together in Baltimore and were enshrined at Cooperstown in the same year, 1983.

Even as Kell mentored Robinson during the 1957 season, he never hinted that he would pursue a career in broadcasting. But he went on to call Tigers games for all but one season from 1959 through 1996.

"I don't think he ever tried to be something he wasn't," Robinson said. "He was from Arkansas; he loved it there, and that's the way he broadcast. He was doing the games with his Southern accent because there was no reason for him to change."