The news this week that Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas died took me back to my childhood even if he wasn’t a part of those years.

Harry was a throwback.  He was as much a part of the Phillies as any player and he was as famous in Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell.  That just does not happen any more.  Sure there are some real pros working in Major League press boxes around the country but the day is long gone where any of them will become a local icon.

Growing up I hung on to every word (and occasional malaprop) of Bob Prince doing Pittsburgh Pirate games.  “The Gunner” was a piece of work.  He was hard living and fast talking and in the 50’s he was to Pittsburgh the equal of dirt from the steel mills in the air.

In those days baseball was better on radio and more often than not the local teams games were broadcast on the most powerful stations in town.  At night a kid could dial around and  listen to games from the east coast  (Hello everybody, this is Mel  Allen)  all the way to  St. Louis and Harry  Carey  and Jack Buck.  It was like a geography course  on a radio dial.  For a kid who never traveled more than a hundred miles from Pittsburgh discovering Bob “The Commander” Elson on WCFL Radio in a remote outpost called Chicago was a true revelation. And having Ernie Harwell in Detroit and most of Michigan was a real treat. While Harry Kalas came a generation later he earned the honor to be among those great voices from the 50’s and 60’s.

One of those voices not only remains but is as strong and truly poetic as ever.  That would be Vince Scully  of the Dodgers.  Baseball is  about statistics and quirks and no stat  is more astounding as this;   Vince Scully started doing Dodger games in Brooklyn!  Think about that.  The Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1958.

I am one of those baseball nuts that laying out a couple of hundred bucks each year to buy the baseball package on satellite TV is a no brainer.  It would be worth every penny just to listen to Vince Scully.   He is so good at what he does that I did not realize at first that he works alone.  That’s right there is no other announcer in the booth with him.  He does play by play and he does the “color.”  He might as well also be the Baseball Encyclopedia.  The only impact time has had on him is that he no longer does games east of the Rockies.

Of course most of the games he does then are late at night here in the eastern time zone.  When I watch and listen I find I am not alone at that hour on my porch because an old friend is talking baseball with me.

If you love baseball you owe it to yourself to listen to  Vince Scully.  Now that Harry Kalas is gone it will be the end of a long glorious era when Vin hangs up the microphone.