Man, I kicked a hornets nest today.
So, for those old enough to remember, what was your opinion of Harry Carey? Preferably as a Cubs announcer, but all opinions are welcome.
He is what helped make me, a Detroit boy, a Cubs fan. Growing up watching the Cubs on WGN, with Harry, is what gave me a National League team to root for. His baseball voice is almost as woven into my childhood as Ernie Harwell’s. (Almost.) In fact, I remember at one point being surprised anyone in my circle of friends knew who he was. I thought I had discovered Cubs baseball on a cable station and that this goofy looking guy with the big glasses was my own little secret there in Detroit.
But beyond those childhood memories, I don’t really have an opinion of the man.
Loved him. My first trip to Wrigley Field was his last season. My dad got me hooked on the Cubs back in 1984, and Harry charmed me.
I grew up in SoCal as an Angels fan listening to Dick Enberg (and Vin Scully with the Dodgers). Carey was too homerish and clownish for my taste but he was fun to listen to. I miss the oldschool announcers.
My Dad was a huge Cardinals fan, so I grew up listening to Harry and Jack Buck announcing the games for the Cardinals. One of my most memorable moments as a kid was listening to Harry as he called the last game of the 1964 season, when the Cards clinched the pennant by a game over the Reds and Phillies. I was sad to see him leave St. Louis, and I had a hard time listening to him when he called the games for the Cubs.
How many people knew who he was when Will Ferrell started doing him on SNL?
(I did, although I’m not sure how. I was never a Cubs fan, but I did live in Central Illinois and got WGN on cable TV.)
“Caray,” I feel obliged to point out.
I was brought up a Cubs fan and the Cards were the enemy. I stopped listening to Cubs games when Harry the enemy came to town. I also thought he was a terrible announcer. You could listen for an hour and never know the score.
When I got to LA I found Vin and THAT is a broadcaster. Spoiled me for listening to everyone else call a baseball game, for life.
Did not see him much but he seemed drunk to me sometimes. Maybe that was just his personality. Will Ferrell played up the drunk stuff when he did the character.
Since that was not my part of the country I only knew him later when he had already reached icon status but well past his prime. I am a fan of the old time announcers but he was no Phil Rizzuto.
I agree that Harry’s broadcasting skills deteriorated over the years. Maybe my memory is jaded, but I thought he was much better in St. Louis than when he was in Chicago.
And you are right about Scully. Best baseball broadcaster I’ve ever heard.
I grew up when Harry was the Cardinals’ announcer. He was a “fan’s announcer” and sometimes the game he was calling was a lot more exciting than the one that actually was happening on the field. I preferred Jack Buck.
I didn’t hear much of him in the decade between the time he left the Cardinals and the time the Cubs hired him. When I saw him on WGN on cable, it struck me that he had pretty much quit calling the games entirely and was pretty much free-associating.
Bolding mine. Excellent way to describe not only Harry but a lot of sports announcers! Also “free-associating” seems to be the current “method” for the current color announcers.
I remember him best as the Sox announcer. He had already departed the Cardinals by the time I started tuning into KMOX (after dark only), and I left Chicago around the time he became the voice of the Cubs (to me, that’ll always be Brickhouse on TV and Lloyd on the radio).
He wasn’t one of my favorites, though I’m not sure I could tell you just why. Better than Rizzuto or Cosell, though.
Oh, he did have one year in Oakland. Must’ve been fun, Finley and Caray on the same side. For whatever reason he seems like he would’ve been miscast as the A’s announcer…
Way better than John Madden’s football announcing, he’d fixate on something inconsequential then go off on a tangent and completely miss the action on the field.
Cantilevers, for example.
I always thought Carey was a no-nothing clown, but I never liked the Cubs and their lovable loser turned insufferable winners personas (he was really obnoxious during the 1984 NL East pennant race). I much preferred Carey’s more humorous son Skip, who did the Braves’ games on TBS.
His life was over before I even arrived out here to go to college, but he seemed much loved by the large majority of baseball fans that I met. I got the impression that he was as much a part of Wrigley Field and the Cubs as the Ivy on the famed brick walls.
So, after a lot of chat with Cubs people, it seems he’s got the reputation of being the good drunken uncle. Not the type that rants about politics or how much better things were back in the day, but the nice guy who rambled about baseball, occasionally getting a few facts wrong, but the heart was in the right place.
The Harry Caray who announced for the White Sox was outspoken, colorful, entertaining, and opinionated, especially during the five years (1977-81) when he worked with Jimmy Piersall. The Harry Caray who announced for the Cubs was a neutered shill. Matters got worse after he suffered a stroke in spring 1987. His faculties never fully recovered and he would constantly be getting names wrong, the score wrong, and the number of outs wrong, and the broadcasts consisted mostly of Steve Stone cleaning up his mistakes.
Also I got really tired of hearing “They’re here from Pesotum”. I didn’t care.
Concur, due to being a Braves fan. I really miss Skip.