Missing Harry

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know I love Phillies baseball. Today the legendary voice of the Phillies, Harry Kalas, died at the age of 73. Fittingly, he was in the broadcast booth prepping for this afternoon’s Phils-Nats game at the time.

I’m sad. Very sad. I was surprised by the depth of my feelings when I heard the news, and the logical side of me kept telling me it was goofy to miss – so much – someone I never met. But then I realized that Harry wasn’t just the voice of the Phillies, he was the voice of my childhood. Even now, in my late 20s, whenever I hear(d) his smooth comforting voice (my brother Pete described it as “a warm blanket”), I slid back into little girl land.

I lost that today. 

A while ago, I wrote this poem – it pretty much sums my thoughts up.

Summertime Lullaby

On those nights when the heat overwhelmed

And the stickiness of the air made it hard to think,

Dressed in my thin cotton nightgown,

I’d sit at the table and wait for Daddy

To flip the switch on the radio

And turn the dial to my

Summertime lullaby.

 

But the voices that I heard on my way to sleep

Didn’t sing softly in mesmerizing tones, didn’t sing at all.

They shouted and chatted and groaned and joked

And when they talked, I was there

As the ball thunked – “He struck ‘im out!” – into the catcher’s mitt

Or squirted between the shortstop’s legs

Or was “OUTTA HERE! Home run, Michael Jack Schmidt!”

And in my young mind the dream was always alive,

No matter what the standings or how late it was in the season,

Back when the Phillies and Harry and the crew were my

Summertime lullaby.

 

Now I’ve moved on and discovered that no one else

Quite gets it right – not the way they did, the way they do.

So I still listen in from half a country away and

Something in the familiar rhythm of the game comforts me

And takes me back to when I was a little girl

Sitting at the table and waiting to hear

The latest version of my

Summertime lullaby.