George Kell: Sadly, God Waaaved Him In!

I always found it so ironic that George Kell mastered the art of the strikeout call, when he hardly struck out himself.

Kell, who died Tuesday at age 86, won the 1949 batting title, nosing out Ted Williams, no less. That much, you probably know. But how about this? In doing so, Kell struck out 13 times. Total.

A big league season is about six months long. So Kell, in hitting .342, struck out about twice a month. Once every 15 days or so.

Yet of all the signature calls that Kell, as the Tigers' longtime broadcaster, had, I think I'd put his strikeout call in the top two or three.

There were a few versions.

In a non-crucial portion of the game: "He STRUCK him out," in that Arkansas-coated accent.

In a more important situation: "Hey, he struck him out!"

In the last out of the game, a big Tigers' win put to bed: "STRIKE THREE! OH, HE STRUCK HIM OUT!"

I remember on one occasion, channel 4 edited together all of Kell's strikeout calls during a Jack Morris win in Kansas City. Morris fanned ten or eleven guys, and the montage was all of the third strikes, as described by Kell.

They were pretty much all the same. "Heee....struck him out." Nothing too exciting. But the fact that they WERE all the same was, to me, fascinating. For that wasn't a sign of boring repetition, but rather of sameness and reliability and, because of it, the comfort that Kell provided the viewer/listener.

He was a speaker of half-sentences, and that was OK, too.

I found one of our daughter's baby videos last summer, and it was shot back in 1993. The TV sound was on in the background, and, clear as a bell, there's Kell and Al Kaline, describing a Tigers game in Milwaukee.

"Here comes Cecil," was all Kell said at one point. That's all that needed to be said. Then, after the first pitch: "Up high." Again, all that needed to be said. A few moments later, after some blissful silence that today's announcers fear like the plague, there was this in the background as our two-month-old daughter rolled around on the bed: "Ball two, strike one. (long pause) Ground ball to short....(pause, then Milwaukee crowd cheers)...two out, in the sixth.

"Now it's up to Gibby!"



Man, it doesn't look nearly as good in print as it sounded to my ears, but those who grew up listening to Kell are probably smiling.

The one that gave you chills -- at least me -- was when a runner would try to score on a base hit and the ball was being hustled in to the infield.

"They're WAAAVING him in!" Kell would yell, and there wasn't anything more exciting. "There's gonna be a play at the plate!"

A ball would be fouled off, rather hard, into the stands. "Look OUT!" Kell would warn, as if the fans could hear him.

Of course, I could go on and on. And I'm really not imparting anything to you that you don't already know. That's what happens when the famous, the beloved pass away. We all say the same thing, pretty much -- but we somehow feel remiss if we don't say it.

Oh, and there's this. I used to be a pretend Detroit Tiger in my Livonia driveway as a kid. Sometimes I'd be myself, magically inserted into the Tigers lineup, or I'd be one of the real players -- Willie Horton, Norm Cash, etc. I'd have my plastic bat and my Tigers cap on and I'd dig in against an imaginary pitcher.

The "pitch" would be delivered and I'd swing. Funny how I always connected, dead-on.

Then I'd be Kell, announcing my heroics.

"There's a lonnnng drive! Way back! That ball is...GONE!"

I think I even tried to do Kell's Arkansas accent, as an 8-year-old.

Kell hasn't announced games regularly since 1995. But despite his 13 years away, his loss is still like it happened while he was an active broadcaster. He retired, but never truly left us.

Until now.

But only physically. There's still that home movie that I have, for example. And the stuff rattling around in my head.

"Thanks, Larry, and good afternoon everyone. The weatherman says we're gonna get this one in."

Stuff like that.

No Baseball Romance On Radio, TV Without Ernie And George

If anyone can find me an egg timer in the broadcast booth at Comerica Park, or any Major League Baseball playground, for that matter, I’ll buy you a pop. I’ll even spring for Towne Club – if we can find it.

I’m not worried, though. I doubt you’ll find such a gizmo in the quarters where the radio and TV guys hang out. Oh, but so many of them need one!

The speaker was Ernie Harwell, and I stood enraptured as he told me how he knew when to give the score of the ballgame he was broadcasting.

“Red Barber taught me,” Harwell said in that lilt in the “green room” of our cable TV studio in Taylor. It was circa the late 1980s, early 1990s – when I cobbled together an income producing and directing television programs Downriver. “You keep an egg timer in the booth, and every time you flip it over, you give the score.”

The score of a ballgame in three-minute intervals. Imagine that. It’s obvious some of the hacks who blab into microphones nowadays clearly haven’t grasped the concept.

The Tigers are relevant again, which means more and more folks are becoming glued to their TV sets and tuning in the game on the radio. In recent years past, you tried like the dickens to avoid watching or listening to them whenever possible. What was the point, really – when the losses outnumbered the wins by an almost 2-to-1 ratio most of the time? In 2003, the ratio was nearly 3-to-1, for goodness sakes.

I’m swamping the radio dial and stealing the remote quite a bit myself lately. I’ve subjected my wife and daughter to the old, “I just want to check the score” bit – and then end up doing more than that, for as long as I’m allowed.

But as smooth as Mario Impemba and Rod Allen are on Fox Sports Detroit – and Allen is actually one of the game’s best analysts, if you want to know – they’re not George Kell and Al Kaline. And radio’s Dan Dickerson and Jim Price are not Harwell and Paul Carey.

No crime there – and I haven’t told you anything that you (or they) don’t already know.

I’ve been listening to Harwell a lot lately – courtesy of an old tape a former co-worker made for me. It’s an audio cassette recording from the album “Year of the Tiger,” which was put out shortly after the Tigers clinched the 1968 pennant – but before the World Series was played, for whatever reason. The album is a stirring journey through that wonderful, exciting season – told mainly thru the actual game calls of Harwell and Ray Lane, along with their in-studio narration.

“Here’s the set – and the pitch – swing and a base hit to right! And it’s allll over! Kaline scores, Don Wert singles … the Tigers mob Don … and the Tigers have won their first pennant since nineteen-hundred and forty-five. Let’s listen to the bedlam, at Tiger Stadium!”

That’s how the album begins – with Harwell’s call of Wert’s hit in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Yankees and clinch the league championship. Back then, there were no tiers of intraleague playoffs. No divisions. You clinched the pennant in the regular season, and prepped for the World Series in September.

I was too young to recall the drama of the ’68 season, in which the Tigers constantly came from behind to pull games out of the fire. But thanks to the cassette that I have in my car stereo, ready to be popped in at any moment, I can re-live it. And then I realize how much I miss Harwell behind the mike.

It wasn’t just the constant giving of the score, though that was much appreciated – especially by a working kid in college who jumped into his car at night after his shift and wondered how the Tigers were doing. It was comforting to know that you wouldn’t have to sit through two or three batters before the announcer indulged you.

There was just something about Harwell’s voice, lightly coated with Georgia, that screamed baseball. And the more I think about it, the more I remember that voice popping up in various places.

Outside, in the backyard. My father working on something or another, or washing the car in the driveway. And the ballgame on, the sounds accompanying his chores. Maybe Norm Cash would hit one out, and he and I would stop and listen to Harwell call it, before going back to work.

Stuck in traffic on a Sunday afternoon, and we’re not the only ones with the game on – car windows opened as you could hear Ernie from the next vehicle. John Hiller would get a big strikeout, and you’d look over to your neighbor on the road and grin and nod as everyone inched forward.

Grabbing a few things at the party store and Ernie’s there, too – his voice emanating from the store’s back room. You can barely make it out, so you ask what the score is.


Kell (left) and Harwell: The two greatest voices in Tigers history

Or maybe it was Carey in his rich baritone. Paul did the middle three innings with Ernie in my day.

There wasn’t a better baseball play-by-play man on TV than Kell.

His voice was drenched with Arkansas. Lou Whitaker would poke a single to right and his teammate would try to score from second base.

“They’re WAYYYVING him in!,” Kell would go, and there just wasn’t anything as exciting. “There’s gonna be a play at the plate!”

My favorite Kell story happened in the heat of the 1987 divisional race. The Tigers were at Milwaukee, and pitcher Walt Terrell had just made a whale of a play, bare-handing a tapper, off balance, and gunning the batter out by a fraction of a step as Terrell fell to the ground. Naturally, the play was shown many times via replay, from different angles.

Enter Kell. “I’m afraid if they show that play one more time, he’s gonna be safe!”

I still grin.

So, I’m sorry, Mario and Rod. You too, Dan and Jim. Never again will baseball romance me so on the airwaves. But you should still invest in an egg timer.