Courtesy Washington Times

(September 8, 2009) There are many reasons to cherish memories of Ernie Harwell and to wish him well during his latest and hardest challenge. Perhaps the most unusual is this: He remains the only baseball broadcaster ever traded for a ballplayer.

This was in the long, long ago, meaning 1948, and Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey wanted to lure Harwell from Atlanta, where he was doing games for the minor league Crackers. Club owner Earl Mann refused to release Ernie from his contract unless the Dodgers sent him a player, who turned out to be a justifiably unfamed catcher named Cliff Dapper.

That's how Harwell got to the bigs, and he hung around for more than five decades as a "voice" for the Dodgers, New York Giants, Baltimore Orioles and, for 42 years, the Detroit Tigers.

But now his days appear to be numbered at age 91. When the announcement came last week that Harwell was suffering from inoperable bile duct cancer, folks around the nation undoubtedly felt a tug at the heartstrings. You see, Ernie's low-key, friendly manner came through loud and clear to nearly everybody who knew or listened to him.

To no one's surprise, Harwell attributed the outpouring of affection to other factors, saying: "I think this response is an example of the impact of baseball and the Tigers. ... Whatever happens, I'm ready to face it. I have a great faith in God and Jesus."

When Harwell last visited the District in 2007, a columnist wrote: "This will be a nice, gentle piece about a nice, gentle man. There is simply no other way to write about Ernie Harwell."

So perhaps Ernie, unlike Dylan Thomas, indeed will go gentle into that good night if the seemingly inevitable occurs. He has never been one to rage, rage against the dying of the light or anything else.

Harwell was one of several Southern broadcasters who migrated northward in the 1930s and '40s to charm baseball fans, joining the likes of Red Barber, Mel Allen, Russ Hodges and the Washington Senators' Arch McDonald. Ernie worked the Orioles' first game at Memorial Stadium in 1954 and returned briefly for the last in 1991. He also was behind the Giants' TV microphone when Bobby Thomson whacked his epic, pennant-winning home run in the 1951 National League playoff.

Before the last three innings of the third and decisive game, Hodges told Harwell, "I think it's my turn to do TV [then the lesser sports medium]."

Replied Ernie: "No, it's my turn." Thus it was that Hodges' hysterical account ("The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!") survives as the best-known sports call of all time while Harwell's more muted TV description vanished into, literally, thin air.

"Ernie was an old-fashioned type of broadcaster," says Bob Wolff, a fellow member of the broadcasters' wing at the Baseball Hall of Fame. "The voice was important. Getting the facts correct was important. Wearing well was important. You felt like he was a good friend when you listened to him day after day. Now they tend to hire guys with more razzmatazz."

There was little difference between Harwell's on-air and off-air personas, unlike some of today's blowhard and blow-dried sportscasters who consider themselves megastars.

"Ernie genuinely loves people," Wolff says. "Whenever I saw him, he greeted me like a long-lost relative."

He was that way with me, too - and undoubtedly with everybody else who came up to say hello. Somehow Harwell avoided the conceit that infuses too many men and women who squint at cameras and squeak into mikes nowadays.

Baseball fans in Detroit surely and sorely miss Ernie's presence on Tigers broadcasts, though he has returned for cameos there and elsewhere since his retirement in 2002. When flagship station WJR-AM attempted to force him out in 1991, the wailing and gnashing of teeth in Detroit and environs prompted his reinstatement for a lengthy encore.

Detroit won only two pennants (1968, 1984) during Harwell's long tenure in Motown. Ernie himself was a winner every day of every season.

In a profession and a sport filled with big egos, Ernie Harwell stood tall as an example of modesty and good cheer. Very tall.

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