Harry Kalas: the Best of the Best

It’s an oddity, but what must surely be a disproportionate number of sports broadcasters got their start in Hawaii doing baseball play-by-play for the Triple-A Hawaii Islanders of the Pacific Coast League. I’ve wondered over the years why that was, but never did settle on a plausible explanation.

The Islanders began playing in Honolulu in the early 60s and continued right on through until the final game of the 1987 season. The next year, the team moved to Colorado Springs.

Over the years, Islander games were broadcast by some very talented men behind the mike. There was Hank Greenwald, who went on to do the San Francisco Giant games for many years.

And Al Michaels, probably best remembered for one of the classic lines in all of sports broadcasts, uttered when the U. S. Olympic Mens Ice Hockey team defeated the Russians at the 1980 Winter Olympics and went on to win gold medals: “Do you believe in miracles? Yessss!”

Ken Wilson went to Seattle and the Mariner Games; Mel Procter broadcast games for the then Washington Bullets. And there was also the venerable Les Keiter, who years earlier called the Mohammed Ali-Sonny Liston fight.

But, as talented as those guys are, for my money the very best was Harry Kalas, who was the voice of the Hawaii Islanders for several years when the Islanders first started playing here. It was my great good fortune to have shared the radio booth with Harry for two seasons back then and everyone who heard him broadcast a single inning knew he was headed for the big leagues.

Harry went from Hawaii to Houston where he did the Astro games for several years. From there he moved back east where, for almost 40 years, he became the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies. And I do mean voice. You could identify Harry’s gravelly bass just a few syllables into one of his articulate sentences. He was also the voice for many of the National Football League films.

But Harry Kalas was a gentleman. A class act. A generous, kind and totally unpretentious man. The last time I saw him was in 2001 when I was in Cincinnati on business and the Phillies were in town playing the Reds. The last time I spoke to Harry was a year or so back. I’d been thinking about him — over the years, I thought about Harry a lot — and sent him a note, belatedly congratulating him on being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. A week after I had posted the letter, he called and we had a nice chat.

Harry Kalas died today. He was 73. And he isirreplaceable.