Stan Hochman: Take Harry Kalas along on your next lunch break
IS THERE anybody out there who thinks Harry Kalas sounded like "a wrecker demolishing cars?"
Curt Smith thought so. Smith wrote a terrific book in 1987 called "Voices of the Game" about baseball broadcasters that included that line about Harry. Smith has written another, not-so-terrific book about Dodgers' broadcaster Vin Scully, "Pull Up a Chair." On page 130, he writes, "Vin denoted easy listening; Harry Kalas a wrecker razing cars."
Now, thank heaven, here comes a wonderful book called "Remembering Harry Kalas." Smith contributes a piece that includes his now-threadbare analogy: "The voice is astonishing. It evoked. I always thought, a bass or lead cello or a wrecker raising [sic] cars."
OK, the last one is a typographical error. "Error?" Yogi would gasp. "It looked like a clean hit to me." Acetelyne torch, sledgehammer, steel cutters? Conlin called it a "four-Marlboro-into-a-three-martini-lunch baritone."
Yogi, that's Yogi Berra, mouthing another malaprop. Torch, hammer, those are wrecker's tools. Conlin is Bill Conlin, legendary Daily News writer. And that's the problem with Smith's book about Scully. For 180 pages Smith throws dried Ramen noodles into a bowl, half-sentences, obscure references, ancient history. The reader has to pour boiling water and stir vigorously. It ain't easy.
Finally, Smith gets around to explaining Scully's popularity, his longevity, his style, his philosophy. "Laurence Olivier was once asked what makes a great actor and he said, 'The humility to prepare and the confidence to bring it off,' said Scully. 'Believe me, I'm loaded with the humility to prepare. I've always been afraid of going out and sounding like a horse's fanny.' "
Different verbs for different 'burbs. Harry never talked that way. The only Laurence they know in this town is Lawrence Taylor and he couldn't spell humility if you spotted him the h-u-m.
When Scully followed the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, thousands of fans brought transistor radios to the game, and Vin helped them understand what they were watching. Bring a transistor radio to a game in Philly in the late '50s and you'd need a forceps to pry it out of your ear or some other orifice.
Enough about Scully, who is literate, impartial, beloved. Smith ranks him at the top of his list of baseball broadcasters. Kalas didn't make Smith's top 24, even after acknowledging the uproar when Harry did not get to do the 1980 World Series on national television.
The Kalas anthology costs $9.99 at Wawa. Yo, they're selling hoagies for $2.99 for a limited time. You can fill your belly and your brain for under $13.
It's all in there, including those wary early years when Kalas replaced the popular Bill Campbell on those Phillies' broadcasts. Show us what you've got, kid. He did.
And all those incredible years with Rich Ashburn, the willingness to play second banana, to set up a funny one-liner from Whitey with an innocent phrase, a simple question. The fans loved that, cherished the rapport, chuckled through the lean years.
It was never the same after Ashburn died. Harry tried. He never sounded like a wrecker razing cars to me. Summer weekends at the shore he sounded like a guy unwrapping packages. Unknot the string at the start, peel back the wrapping paper in the middle innings, lift the lid near the end. Damn, more than half the time there was a lump of coal inside. But on those nights when the pieces clicked and the home team won and the gift glistened, Harry Kalas was enchanted, enchanting.
There's some inside stuff about Harry in the book. It turns out he held the other broadcasters responsible for the Phillies doing well in the innings they worked. And if the opposition scored a fistful of runs and a lead melted like a popsicle in July, Harry would return to the booth with a dismissive wave at the other broadcaster.
Harry was more than a fan of unique names. Sure, he broke Mickey More-and-DEAN-eee into four operatic syllables, but it was using Michael Jack Schmidt as the full name of the best third baseman to ever play the game that helped win the fans over to the too-cool Schmidt.
"Chase Utley, you are the man!" told you all you needed to know about Kalas. He wore his emotions on the sleeves of that powder-blue sportcoat. He knew the game. He cared about the fans. And he loved the players, with a special ardor for someone who would dare score from second on an infield grounder.
They're putting him in another Hall of Fame now. Who's gonna sing "High Hopes" that day? All of us. *
Send e-mail to stanrhoch@comcast.net
