Silenced too soon

It still stings, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I thought I'd feel better today, but I don't really. It's really amazing how something that is ultimately so insignificant can have such a profound impact when its gone.

Okay, enough with vagueness. In case you haven't heard, Harry Kalas, the Hall of Fame broadcaster who spent 38+ years as the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies, died suddenly yesterday at the age of 73. He passed out in the booth while preparing for yesterday afternoon's game with the Washington Nationals, and never woke up. I got the news via email read on my cellphone at about 2:30 pm yesterday, and I'll be honest, it was hard to focus the rest of the day. And it's not like I've been moping around and depressed ever since, but in quiet moments when my mind has a chance to go there - it does, and I'm left feeling like something is missing that can never be replaced. It's not a loss like a friend, a family member, a loved one, but its a loss, none the less.

I'm sure to some of you, this doesn't make any sense - and from a totally outside perspective, it really doesn't. We're talking about a game here, and not even really a game, but the guy who broadcast the game. And yet, I have a hard time believing there's too many people out there who call themselves Phillies fans who haven't dealt with similar emotions, to some degree, since they got the news.

Baseball is, yes, just a game, but it is also a passion for many, and a significant part of our national heritage, as are broadcasters like Kalas - signature voices who have been the constant defining characteristic of the team they call for decades. I've been alive just 2 days under 29 years, and been a Phillies fan for most of those years, since I first understood what major league baseball was. In this era of baseball, more than ever, players, coaches, owners, they change all the time - but Harry's voice was the one constant you could count on at every Phillies game - it was always there, and even though intellectually, you know it wouldn't always be there, you FELT like it would be, and you could never imagine anything different.

Harry the K was a rare figure in the sports lore of the notoriously tough town of Philadelphia, in that he was universally and pretty much unconditionally beloved - and he loved the fans, and he loved the team he covered. Along with his distinctive voice and his signature calls "That ball is outta here!", he brought a clear passion and love of what he did and the game he called to the booth. He showed personality and feeling without being a Vitale like fanboy. He gave you the feeling, with every rise and fall of his voice in the big moments of games, that he cared about the game as much as you did as a fan, and did it all while being the consummate professional. In the eyes of many Phillies fans and players, something didn't happen on that field unless Harry made the call. It sounds corny, but I found out first hand myself just how true that was last October, in the moments shortly after the Phillies clinched their second World Series championship. The game was on Fox, of course, and I had heard Joe Buck call it live, and sure, I was excited. But a few minutes later, they ran the replay with Harry's call from the Phillies radio booth, and it brought just a whole other level of emotion. Don't ask me to explain it - I can't. There was just something fundamentally right about Harry's voice with that moment. Up until yesterday, I still got chills every time I heard that call. Now, the chills are still there, but there's just something different, knowing Harry will never again call a great moment in Phillies history.

As an aside, even though Kalas was the Phillies lead broadcaster in 1980 when they won their first World Series, 2008 was the first time he got to experience calling the winning out of the World Series live. You see, in 1980, network rules didn't allow for the local radio crews to broadcast games. The Phillies broadcast crew did a re-creation the next day. Not surprisingly, that rule was overturned in 1981, due in no small part to outrage from Phillies fans that they didn't get to hear Harry make the final call.

I knew this day would come, the day when Harry's voice would leave the Phillies booth. In fact, in recent years, I'd remarked to fellow fans that I hoped he would walk away before his skills had eroded too much, unlike a number of the other greats of his generation. I never wanted to have any memories of him other than as the Hall of Fame talent he was, and so I hoped he wouldn't hang on too long. But I always assumed that the day that came on Sunday, the day of his last call from the Phillies booth, would be announced, and that I'd have a chance to listen, to take in - that we fans would have the opportunity to say thanks. Even had he been forced from the booth suddenly, I always figured he'd still be around, that there'd be a sold out "Harry the K" day at Citizens Bank Park, another opportunity for a team and its fans to show their appreciation. And yet it wasn't to be.

I didn't get a chance to watch much of Sunday's game due to Easter time with family, and I hadn't watched a game on TV or listened on the radio in several days before that. And so I'm left with my final real memory of Harry, which came 4 days before his final game, when he threw out a ceremonial first pitch before Wednesday's game, the day of the Phillies World Series ring ceremony. I was there, watching from the front row of the 300 level behind home plate, as he strode out onto the mound to a standing ovation, wearing a Phillie red dress coat that on any other guy at any other time would have seemed completely outrageous, but for him, in that moment, was exactly right. I saw him rear back and throw - a pitch that made it maybe 2/3 of the way to the plate and then rolled across it. I heard the crowd, that crowd of notoriously tough fans who had just given a Citizens Bank executive who threw his ceremonial first pitch to the backstop a sound booing, roar its approval, and then I saw him give a triumphant thumbs up as he walked away.

It's a different era these days, with TV and the ESPN era having made sports broadcasters national icons, and glorified personalities like Vitale, Berman, and the like. This new age of broadcasters is full of guys who are trying "be someone". Harry was clearly only ever interested in being Harry, and that's what made him so special, and it's why, while they will continue to play baseball in Philadelphia, it will never be the same. Harry WAS Phillies baseball, and while they can, and will, fill his job, they will never replace him.

Rest in peace, Harry the K.