Twice he's had longer consecutive-game streaks than Cal Ripken Jr., baseball's all-time iron man. Aside from the year he was away after having been fired, he's missed exactly two contests: one when he attended his brother Davis' funeral in 1968, the other when he was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 1989. (He's in pretty much every Hall of Fame he could possibly be considered for, including the one in Cooperstown.)
And now he's going out on his own terms. It would have been great if the Tigers had sent him off with an exciting season, but on this July evening they are 36-62, on a six-game losing streak and in last place in the American League Central Division, 23 games out of first, seven and a half games behind the fourth-place Royals, tonight's opponent.
"He and I kidded off the air one time," says Price. "'Boy, good thing they didn't dedicate this year to you, Ernie.' 'Yeah, thank goodness.' I think it's very sad. I was hoping it would be a real solid year for him."
No such luck. The Royals, winners of 10 of their last 11, have arrived in town to find the Tigers not just losing but in turmoil. General manager Dave Dombrowski has said some ugly things about the effort-to-salary ratio of several players to a group of season-ticket holders, then denied saying them, then been busted by the emergence of a cassette recording of his comments.
The controversy has replaced the losing as topic A in Detroit sports circles.
"I think Shakespeare wrote a play about this stuff," Harwell says. "'Much Ado About Nothin'.' They've really blown it out of proportion."
He says the losing doesn't bother him much either. "We've had that going now for 10 years, so I'm sort of immune to it, I guess. It'd be a lot more fun if you had a team in the pennant race. That's the ideal situation. I think most people think you're a good announcer when you have a good team and you're a bad announcer when you don't have a good team. But I've had good and bad. I'm used to it. I just take it as it comes. The game's the thing anyway. I'm just there to report it."
As the game's first batter approaches the plate, Harwell sits perched on the edge of his chair in the press box, leaning on his forearms, which rest on a scorecard and an ancient leather index card file containing handwritten cards on each team's players, arranged according to the batting orders. Harwell updates each player's card in the offseason with his basic stats. He uses them so he doesn't have to page through media guides. "I don't use it much, but it's there if I need it." He wears his headset microphone over a golf cap, having put aside the berets and Greek fisherman caps he favored for a while. Price sits to his left, and Dan Dickerson, who does play-by-play of the middle three innings, to Price's left. The field-level seats below them are mostly empty.
"Well, here they are," Harwell says on the air, "the Kansas City Royals. Sort of reminds you of a hot dog. They're on a roll. Chuck Knoblauch will lead it off."
He can be corny and old-fashioned. A team that's putting a lot of men on base has "more runners than a sled factory." An umpire might be an "arbitrator" or "the ol' maitre d' from Tennessee." Teams are sometimes referred to in early 20th century newspaper style: the Bostons, the Clevelands, the Detroiters. Players, managers and umpires often get a formal treatment: Mr. Pujols, Mr. Fick, Mr. Higginson. Hitters are, like the Mighty Casey, "at the bat."
And then there are the "Ernieisms," phrases and sayings Harwell's made famous. A collage of them serves as the opening theme to Tigers radio broadcasts. After a called third strike: "He stood there like the house by the side of the road," or "He's called out for excessive window shopping -- he looked at one too many." A home run is a shouted, elongated "Loooong gone!" A double play is "two for the price of one." And when a foul ball reaches the seats: "A man from Plymouth will take that one home," the city pulled off the top of his head each time.
Though his trademarks sound like they come from the golden age of wireless, they're actually of relatively recent vintage, mostly since the '70s. And for all his old-timey charm, Harwell is a fan of right now. "I'm not one of these good ol' days guys," he says. "I like the past all right, but it's past. We're living in the present." He loved all the history represented by Tiger Stadium, the 88-year home the team left after the 1999 season, but he also loves the new Comerica Park, with all its modern amenities. And just this month, Harwell mentioned in his weekly Detroit Free Press column that he thinks the greatest World Series of all time was ... last year's.
"The great thing with Ernie, I think, is that he always stayed current," says Jon Miller, ESPN's lead baseball announcer and the voice of the San Francisco Giants. "Ernie's not one of those guys who as he got older started getting bitter and saying, 'Well, these guys today, they can't play compared to the old guys.' Ernie has always said, 'Really, I think the guys today are the best they've ever been,' athletically and whatnot. And I think that's part of why he's been able to last so long, because he stays fresh."
Not that the past is his enemy. The Royals' Luis Alicea is on first base with one out in the first inning: "Man on first, here's the pitch, it's a ball, low. Ninety-five stolen bases for this Kansas City team, they lead the league. In 1957 the Washington Senators stole three bases. No, they stole 13 bases, the whole year."
Harwell is a storehouse of baseball trivia, history and knowledge. "Some of it's off my head," he says. "I have my cards too that I bring out with me, index cards. I'll grab a bunch of them when I leave home, and if it works in I work it in and if it doesn't I don't use it."
After pulling that stolen-base stat out of the hat, he talks about the Senators' leading stealer that year, with three, "our old friend Julio Becquer," pronounced Becker. "He later became Beck-AIR, after he got in the big leagues a while."
Next page: He also calls himself a failed sportswriter