Harry Caray diary from 1972

KnappShack

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God bless Harry. There will never be another announcer like him. We're in an era of bland. Where the personalities of the broadcasters just blend together and into the background.

Only a few stand out these days. I guess that's what we get when a person like Ryan Seacrest is seen as anything more than time filler. Thankfully Seacrest doesn't call baseball games....or does he?
 

Cyclones_R_GR8

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Whenever I was channel surfing and came across a Cubs game and they were playing the Giants, I always had to watch until José Vizcaino came up to bat just so I could hear Harry butcher his name.
 

JP4CY

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Whenever I was channel surfing and came across a Cubs game and they were playing the Giants, I always had to watch until José Vizcaino came up to bat just so I could hear Harry butcher his name.

Vizcaino, that's spelled V I Z C, holy cow a beach ball just bounced in front of us. I swear Stoney, you could have touched it!
 

RubyClone

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I recall as a youngster listening to a Cubs game on the radio with Harry and Steve. It was towards the end of Harry's calling days and he was more than slipping.

Being radio, I couldn't see what actually happened, but from what I gather the Cubs catcher snap threw to first and got the runner. Harry apparently had his head in the "tilt back, consume Old Style" position when the threw happened and missed it. The next one to two minutes were sadly hillarious as we heard everything from kicked out to botched bunt and anything else that went through his head. Stone had to sheepishly work his way in and kinda mentioned in passing it was catcher pickoff and 2-3 putout.

My first ball game with Dad was Cubs and Pirates back in like '87-'88. Game went 17 innings, and Harry did the stretch twice. To this day I think someone was holding him the pressbox by his suspenders duing the 14th. Completely hanging out the window swaying that mic. I would've loved to hear the game. He had to be sloshed.
 

Cycsk

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I loved how he would sometimes do the broadcast from the bleachers and people would hand him Budweisers all game.
 
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CycloneErik

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They were interesting. Harry Caray came off as kind of a grandfather who was friendly but losing it, and it was funny to hear his version of names, especially Andres Gallarraga, the Big Cat. Harry couldn't get that name right at all.

Then Steve Stone would speak and actually teach something about baseball. You'd come away from listening to him thinking that he knew something, and that you knew more now, too. Sad that we fired him for criticizing an underperforming team.
 

klamath632

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It always cracked me up when he'd sing "Jody, Jody Davis, King of the Cubs Frontier." (to the tune of Davy Crockett)

Or when he'd spell player's names backward. "Do you realize that Dykstra spelled backward is Artskyd?"
 

Pat

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One of my great regrets is that Harry passed away before we got to hear him attempt to say Kosuke Fukudome.
 

TruClone

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It always cracked me up when he'd sing "Jody, Jody Davis, King of the Cubs Frontier." (to the tune of Davy Crockett)

Or when he'd spell player's names backward. "Do you realize that Dykstra spelled backward is Artskyd?"

Loved this one, "Sandberg spelled backwards is Grabbed an ***".
 

RubyClone

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I'm not a Cubs fan, but I loved to listen to Harry. He was all over the place towards the end, but he was always entertaining.

Yes he was. You'd miss what happened 2 of the 3 outs in each inning. But he was a riot to listen to. I don't know how many times he'd call up a hitter, start jabbering about something and then actually call up the next hitter without mentioned what happened to the last guy. Maybe it was Steve's job to do that - and he'd do it well. But I often wonder if it was intentional or Harry just kinda forgot about the game and Steve filled in the gaps.
 

Cyballz

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"Pop fly to short, Rey Sanchez under it...he'd never drop one of thosooooohhhhh he dropped it!"
 

JP4CY

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I loved how he would sometimes do the broadcast from the bleachers and people would hand him Old Styles all game.
Budweiser, Harry was a Bud heavy guy. There are legendary stories of him inviting people into his limo to bar hop.
 

Cycsk

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Budweiser, Harry was a Bud heavy guy. There are legendary stories of him inviting people into his limo to bar hop.


Guess you are right. I just always think about Wrigley Field as an Old Style place, but that was before Harry Carey got there.
 

kentkel

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I've always been a huge Brewers fan but, in my adolescence, I listened to a lot of Cubs games & followed them quite a bit (Milwaukee-Chicago was not a rivalry in those days because the Crew was in the AL East). I loved listening to HC! I just love the following clip of Holland and Dempster doing "dueling Harry Caray impressions."
[video=youtube;YQMhaGcH1tk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQMhaGcH1tk[/video]
 

Al_4_State

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Loved this quote:

Which makes me wonder how he knew he was on vacation. I guess if nobody was playing baseball in front of him and when he looked over the rim of his drink he saw Mexico, then he knew he was on vacation.
 

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