A Goodbye to Harry

By David Marasco

On a Sunday morning late last September I headed out for Wrigley Field. The day promised to be rich in history, it would be Ryne Sandberg's last at the Friendly Confines and Curt Schilling was gunning for a single season strikeout record. Ryno was pulled for a pinch runner, allowing him to go out on a hit, and Schilling took advantage of the Cubs and tied the record. Those events are footnotes now. That day was special because it was the last game at Wrigley that would be graced by Harry Caray. Nobody knew it at the time, but we were there at the end of an era.

Harry collapsed in Palm Springs last weekend, just as pitchers and catchers were reporting. He never regained consciousness. Jokes about brainscans showing low brain activity turned more somber when it was revealed that Harry wasn't even breathing on his own. The doctors claimed that there was a magical three day mark. Patients who woke up before the three days had expired usually recovered to some level of their old capacity. Those who missed the deadline faced a much harder road. Those three days came and went for Harry. His family took him off of life support and nature took its course. At the risk of being tasteless, I'll never be able to look at one of those MTV-inspired "Harry Unplugged" T-shirts the same way.

Harry was not without his critics. It seemed as if he had to issue an apology to the Asian-American community after every Nomo game he covered. Some believed that Harry still got drunk in the booth. This isn't true, with his medication alcohol was banned. His slurred speech and mental lapses were results of his stroke. There also existed a cynical breed of Cubs fan who saw Harry as a representation of everything that was wrong with the Cubs. The theory was that Cubs fans would come down to Wrigley Field and consume simply because of the "tradition" that was Cubs baseball. This extreme brand of loyalty meant that the Tribune Corporation had little or no incentive to field a quality product. To some Harry was a mirror of this problem. Nobody would deny that Harry lost a step over his last few years. Glenallen Hill becoming Mel Allen Hall was just another day in the life. Harry's work of late did not consist of technical masterpieces. To some, Harry was an inferior product that was being handed to Cubs fans who ate it up on the basis of tradition, no matter how badly he performed.

But the Cubs stunk long before Harry and might very well stink long after. Harry died an old man, but the Cubs did not win a World Series in his lifetime. To hold him as being part of the problem isn't much more than mean-spirited scapegoating. Let's save that for the real goat, the one that cursed the Cubs in 1945 and has doomed them ever since.

Chicago has had a rough time in the recent past. The Sears Tower has surrendered its title as World's Tallest Building. We've buried icons like Mike Royko and Cardinal Bernardin. Mike Ditka coached the Saints. Yes, there is a Daley ruling the city, but it's not the real Mayor Daley. And now Harry. The Second City has lost another treasure. Wrigley Field will still have the Bricks and the Ivy, but it won't be the same. Even the South Siders feel the loss, he was a White Sox broadcaster for years before he crossed the line over to the Cubs. Chicago was once Hog Butcher to the World, now it has no stockyards. The Windy City used to mean machine politics in its lowest and purest form, now they kick dead people off the voting rolls. On good days I see Chicago as still being "the city that knows how." On others I see us slipping to become a Seattle or a Dallas. Great cities in their own right, but missing that spark that makes Chicago what it is. Harry's passing reminds us that Studs Terkel isn't young, and that Michael Jordan doesn't fly as high as he once did.

Declaring Harry's loss as a Chicago event would be big-city snobbishness at its worst. I should know, I play the part of big city snob just about every time I go down to Wrigley. I go to see baseball, and I get annoyed with all of the tourists who converge at Clark and Addison. "Wonderful," I think as I give directions to out-of-towners, "more hicks from Nebraska." Why do they come? Sure, to watch baseball just like me. But it's more than that. They are still awed by Wrigley, a nice place to watch a ballgame that quickly became just another pretty background to me. But there's one pose that the tourists always strike. They freeze like statues, one arm outstretched, fingers pointing to the pressbox. They've spotted Harry. To me it was meaningless, I'd see his head pop out of that window a hundred or so times a Summer. To the tourists it was magic. To them Harry was the Cubs as much as Ernie Banks or Mark Grace. A local like me can follow the Cubs by going to the games or reading the morning paper. We can separate the team from the announcer. Everyone else relies upon the broadcast media. If you were from out of town and you lived and died with the Cubs then you also lived and died with Harry. And many died a little bit yesterday.

What was it about Harry that made him such a beloved figure? Why could he get away with not knowing who was at bat, with pronouncing names backwards for fun, with sometimes not even following the ball in play? Because people saw him as being genuine. When a Cub screwed up he told everyone what he thought was the truth. Many times you could hear the disgust in his voice as he described candidly something that other professionals would try to sugarcoat. But it is not just that he was honest. Outside of the Midwest there are many broadcasters who "call it like it is." It is more than that. People could tell that Harry was having fun. He would get excited when the Cubs were doing well. Not a rah-rah go hometeam type of joy, but more of a "it's a wonderful day to be at the ballpark" kind of feeling. He would say it and people would believe it. When Bob Costas dies, a spontaneous shrine will not pop up at any ballpark. People will not leave offerings of beer on the sidewalk in front of Wrigley, and others will not drink that beer in his memory (Harry would have wanted it that way). Harry was special, you can't say it any more honestly that that.

Counting on the Cubs to do anything but fail isn't a good bet. But I'd like to see the Cubs to the right thing here. No tape recordings of Harry singing during the 7th inning stretch. Some have suggested abandoning "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in his memory, with a moment of silence in its place. This isn't right either. Harry wasn't bigger than the game, he knew that, that's why people loved him. He wanted baseball to be fun, how much fun is a moment of silence? I think the way to remember Harry would be tag on those last few words to the song, the words that many Cubs fans were raised believing were the actual ending. In Wrigley Field the last line should forever be "Let's get some runs."

Good bye Harry, I hope that right now you and Red Barber are doing a Spring Training game up in Heaven ("Our team looks pretty strong this year, but the other guys have Ty Cobb"). You'll be missed.