By the seventh inning the Tigers have built a 9-1 lead, a rare laugher for the Detroiters. They add another run. Now George Lombard, a young outfielder picked up in June from Atlanta, is batting for Bobby Higginson.

"Lombard digs in to wait on the next one. Here it comes. He takes a slow curve, and he stood there like the house by the side of the road and watched it go by. Struck him out."

"The House by the Side of the Road" is a 19th century poem by Sam Foss that Harwell had to recite as a boy, part of his treatment for a speech impediment, one of the more ironic childhood problems in broadcast history.

"I was tongue-tied. I couldn't say an S or a ch," he says. "I'd say ficken, or I'd say fister instead of sister. And my family was rather poor, we didn't have much money, but they had enough to send me to what we'd call a speech therapist now. I think then we called them expression teachers or elocution teachers." That teacher, Mrs. Lackland, helped him overcome his condition, and he was able to recite the verses and speeches and engage in the debates that were required of Atlanta grade schoolers at the time. Harwell says that years later, after a piece about them appeared in Guideposts magazine, Mrs. Lackland wrote him a letter and sent him a program from an Atlanta school event. "They were still reciting the same old speeches. You know, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address."

After the seventh inning an image of Wade Boggs, the former Red Sox and Yankees batting champion, comes on the Comerica Park video screen looking not unlike a schoolboy at a recital. He's standing rather awkwardly in front of a bookshelf, talking.

"Ernie, there's a saying," he says. "Definitely you are the best there was, the best there is, and the best there ever will be. That's Ernie Harwell." With the broadcast in a commercial, Harwell watches the video and listens on his headset. This is a nightly event, a video tribute from a famous admirer. "Congratulations on your Hall of Fame career, and Ernie, you are a grand gentleman. From Wade Boggs to you, all the best and may God bless."

The Comerica Park crowd stands and cheers, looking toward the press box, where Harwell leans out the window and waves his cap to them. So that the home audience doesn't miss anything, Price reviews the tribute each night as the eighth inning starts, adding his own congratulations to his partner. The day is fast approaching when Price will have to wrap up the season's last broadcast with his own final tribute.

"I've thought about it," he says. "It'll be a goodbye to Ernie, representing the fans. I want to represent the fans the proper way. I won't write it. I ad lib most everything. I have an idea what I want to say. It'll be tough."

Dickerson says he's thought about it, too. "I don't know how to do it without immediately veering into the maudlin," he says.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"Well, here we go, ninth inning. The Tigers with a commanding lead here at Comerica Park, 10-1 over Kansas City."

Harwell's radio listeners probably aren't aware that he practically broadcasts the last half inning with one foot out the door. As soon as the last out is recorded and announced, he bolts, headed for his car and home.

"Game's over, Ernie's like a freight train," says WXYT radio engineer Phil McAuley, sitting behind Harwell and manning the sound board. "He'll bowl you right over if you get in his way. One night he forgot and left his headset on. It pulled him right back."

Harwell calls the top of the ninth with his tote bag on his lap. His quick getaway is an effort to beat the traffic, he says, though he admits that these days the traffic isn't much to beat. Tonight's crowd is 14,470.

The Royals get a walk but are quickly down to their last out, and Raul Ibanez waits for the pitch from Tigers reliever Juan Acevedo.

"Here it comes," Harwell says. "He swings and hits a chopper toward Easley. He grabs it. Here's the flip back to Pena. The game is over" -- at this point Harwell has his hands on the earphones of his headset, ready to remove it, and his chair is swiveled a half turn to the left to facilitate a quick exit -- "and the Tigers win it. The final score, Detroit 10 and Kansas City 1." The station cuts to a commercial, Harwell's headset hits the desk and he's up a short flight of steps, past the engineer's table and out the door, bound for the parking lot.

His last season is in its last-place dog days now. Soon enough -- too soon if there's a strike -- he'll call the last out for the last time, and there won't be a forgotten headset or anything else pulling him back. He says he'll miss the people more than the job, and he's not overly sentimental about his career coming to an end: "To a degree, but I can get over it. I don't wallow in it. It's over, it's over, we've got to move on."

That might be easier for Harwell than for Tigers fans. Michelle Arquette, 32, of nearby Perrysburg, Ohio, sitting in the upper deck with some friends, says she grew up listening to his voice. "It's going to be hard not hearing him on the radio anymore," she says. "He's Tiger baseball, in my opinion. I think it'll be very hard to find someone to fill his shoes. It's just: His voice is Tiger baseball."

Labor trouble willing, the Tigers have a day planned for him on Sept. 15. His final broadcast will be Sept. 29 in Toronto. Dickerson says he's heard the Blue Jays have some kind of tribute in the works. And he says his partner will take it all in stride.

"He's funny," Dickerson says. "The various tributes, people wanting him to throw out the first pitch, so he does that a lot. And people ask him, Well, do you mind? He says, 'No, I don't mind, but why don't you just put my face on the scoreboard and wish me good luck.'"

"It's gonna make him feel pretty nostalgic, I think," Miss Lulu says about her husband walking away from a game he's covered for six decades. "But he'll keep up with writing his column and making speeches, and he might write another book. And I'm sure he'll be at spring training in Lakeland next year."

Recent Stories