Ernie Harwell(1918-2010)

Veteran baseball announcer, Ernie Harwell was born in Washington, Georgia. Harwell became an Atlanta correspondent for "The Sporting News" at the age of 16. By 1936 he was working in the sports department of the "Atlanta Constitution". From there, he became sports director of WSB in Atlanta in 1940. From 1942 to 1946, Ernie served in the USMC. After spending a few seasons doing play by play for the minor league Atlanta Crackers team in the late 40s, Ernie got a call to come up to Brooklyn to do play by play there. He was the announcer in Brooklyn (working with Red Barber and Connie Desmond) from 1948 to 1949. In 1950, Harwell began working with Russ Hodges calling the plays for the New York Giants. In October of 1951 when Bobby Thomson hit his famous "shot heard round the world", it was Ernie who was announcing the game on national television. The coaxial cable had just been laid and it was one of the earliest coast to coast broadcasts. Unfortunately, no kinescope or recording of that broadcast exists. In 1954 Ernie became the very first announcer for the brand new Baltimore Orioles team. When Van Patrick was let go from the Tiger's broadcast booth because of sponsor conflicts, Ernie was hired and quickly became a familiar voice to millions of Tiger baseball fans. Ernie called play by play from the corner of Michigan and Trumbull from 1960 to 1991. He was teamed with such announcers as George Kell, Ray Lane and Paul Carey. On August 2, 1981, Ernie was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. At the end of the 1990 season, Ernie was informed by Tiger President Bo Schembechler that the team wanted to go in a "new direction". Harwell was told he could announce the Tiger games until the end of the 1991 season. Baseball fans everywhere were shocked and saddened to hear that their old friend Ernie had been fired. Millions of fans had spent countless hours listening to Ernie's laidback style of calling the games. In 1992, the team was bought by Mike Illitch who announced that Ernie would be hired back to announce the Tiger games over radio for the 1993 season. From 1994 to the present Ernie has announced the games over the Tiger cable and television networks. He is a devout Christian and once gave his testimony at a Billy Graham crusade. He is still a favorite of fans everywhere and is truly a national treasure.