Courtesy Allentown Morning Call

(April 14, 2009) Diehard Phillies fans will always remember how a teary-eyed Harry Kalas handled the TV broadcast from Shea Stadium on that September 1997 night after Richie Ashburn had passed away earlier that morning in a New York City hotel.

Kalas handled it with his typical grace and class and there was really no one else Phillies fans wanted to hear the sad news from other than his close friend, Kalas.

On Monday afternoon, Tom McCarthy and Chris Wheeler had the similar, but unenviable task of doing a game from the same broadcast booth in which Kalas had collapsed just a few hours earlier.

It had to be the most difficult broadcast of either man's career.

''This is the second time I've had to do a game after losing a dear friend,'' Wheeler said. ''And it's not fun.''

''There's no road map for this,'' McCarthy said.

''Harry would have wanted the game to go on like always,'' Wheeler said. ''He loved this game and loved being here.''

As the day unfurled, every Philly media outlet offered some sort of tribute. Comcast SportsNet replayed Sunday's Phillies-Rockies broadcast which turned out to be Kalas' last.

The ever-steady McCarthy, one of the nicest guys in the business, will likely assume Kalas' role as lead play-by-play voice.

McCarthy came back to Philadelphia last year after a stint with the Mets and graciously accepted a bizarre role that had him roving through the crowd for a couple of innings.

But the assumption was always that McCarthy was being groomed as Kalas' replacement one day.

Sadly, that day came sooner than we hoped.