... In The Booth Today

Column inches by the hundreds and blog pages by the thousands are paying tribute to Harry Kalas, the one and only voice of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Why?

Why is Harry Kalas, a guy who announced baseball games and narrated football highlight films for a living so beloved? Why is there so much emotion behind the tributes? Why do we care?

Because ...

It is rare to experience someone so clearly the very best at what he does — and experience it for so long (Kalas became the voice of the Phillies in 1971) with no hang-ups, no hiccups, no dust-ups.

Kalas loved his job. He respected his good fortune. Unlike Harry Caray, he was no clown but he never took himself too seriously. Unlike Vin Scully, he never tried to make baseball or the announcing of it more than what it was, yet he knew how to frame the drama of the sport. In addition, Kalas had the great fortune of having the perfect broadcast partner — Richie Ashburn — for nearly thirty years.

Listening to Harry Kalas do a baseball game was damn near sports perfection.

Countless books, articles and essays have been written about the generational pull of baseball — the magical way that it connects people to their past and those who inhabited it.

That is the greatest gift that Harry Kalas gave to those of us fortunate enough to hear his calls.

It's impossible to hear the voice of Kalas and not be flooded with images, sounds and emotions from summers and falls gone by.

The cliched image of a little kid listening to some piece-of-crap transistor radio under the covers fit like a glove in our chaotic, unpredictable household. And it was Harry Kalas who often carried us through the night — especially on the West Coast swings that stretched past midnight and beyond.

Not only the greats like Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa and Juan Samuel but forgotten names like Max Scarce, Willie Montanez, Tommy Hutton, Wayne Twitchell and Larry Hisle— not to mention Gene Garber, Oscar Gamble, Bake McBride and Dick Ruthven — came to vivid life across the airwaves via the memorable pipes of Harry Kalas.

The call by Kalas of Mike Schmidt's 500th home run is one of the great, emotionally stirring calls of all time.

Hearing it again these last few days gave me chills. It choked me up.

My brothers and I spent untold hours playing baseball and every variation of baseball every summer of my youth. And we always did Kalas when something memorable happened.

My old man was an accomplished minor-league and semi-pro baseball player and he lives and dies with the Phillies. Listening to Harry Kalas and Whitey Ashburn in the summer was one of the only things (possibly the only thing) we could all agree on.

So many of those moments Kalas called — from Rick Wise's no-hitter in 1971 to Schmidt's 500th in 1987 to Brad Lidge striking out Eric Hinske this past October — evaporate the distance between what we were and who we are now.

Finally — Mike Schmidt, the greatest Phillie of all-time, told a story today on ESPN radio about how Kalas would affectionately call him "In The Game Today" — as in "the greatest player in the game today." Schmidt would respond in kind with "In The Booth Today."

The booth today is empty and will never be the same.