Harwell's Personality Made Him a Legend

Sports broadcasters -- especially baseball play-by-play men who work much of their careers on radio -- build a special bond with fans.

It's a personal relationship based on emotion, familiarity, shared experience and trust.

Many baseball broadcasting legends (men such as Mel Allen, Jack Buck, Harry Kalas, Harry Caray and Bob Prince) worked games on radio. They were a connection to the home team and the sport for every fan listening for their respective teams.

Unlike TV, which provides a picture and sound, baseball broadcasters on radio provide a description of the action and paint a picture of what's happening on the field and around the ballpark. In baseball, with its generally slower pace, those broadcasters also provide humor, personality and stories.

For those listening on radio, a special relationship results -- and it makes those broadcasters special friends.

Unfortunately, those broadcasters are a dying bread -- literally -- and sports fans across the nation and Detroit in particular lost another such friend when longtime Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell, 92, died Monday as the result of cancer.

Harwell was the voice of the Tigers for more than 40 years until his retirement in 2002.

Along with is competency and conversational approach, Harwell's compassionate personality shone through on broadcasts. It was easy for listeners to feel a kinship with the kind-hearted professional.

That's why so many -- from Mitch Albom and John Lowe in the Detroit Free Press to series of ESPN contributors -- remember Harwell so fondly. And they represent just a small part of the deserving praise that has been heaped on Harwell in the hours since his death.

His death leaves Dodgers legend Vin Scully as one of the few remaining iconic voices of the broadcast booth for baseball. (Although Jon Miller in San Francisco, George Grande in Cincinnatti and Bob Uecker in Milwaukee also merit mention near that category.)

With the move of so many sporting events to TV in the past couple decades, radio has lost its spot as the primary medium for sports coverage. Harwell's death probably ranks as one of the final times when a broadcaster (other than those few mentioned about) who worked almost exclusively on radio will be mourned beyond his home market.

On TV or even online, the relationships just do not have that same personal touch. Plus, few radio broadcasters transcend their teams and the action on the field any more.

And, almost certainly, none do it as well as the eloquent and personable Harwell.