The great Detroit Tiger radio broadcaster, Ernie Harwell, died yesterday at the age of 92. It was the news I knew was inevitable, since he had been diagnosed with inoperable bile duct cancer, but was dreading all the same. I knew it would be hard to take. If anyone seemed like he should live forever, it was Ernie. It doesn't seem fair that someone as gentlemanly and decent as Ernie Harwell should be taken away from us. Like generations of Michiganians, I grew up with Ernie's voice. He was one of the people that introduced me to baseball and the Detroit Tigers. He was part of my childhood and young adulthood. There are so many memories I have that are tied to that distinctive Southern accent: my dad outside working on the house or in the yard with his old paint-splattered transistor radio, and Ernie describing the action at Michigan and Trumbull; upstairs in my room on a warm summer night in the great year of 1984, the sound of crickets outside, a breeze pushing up the blind...
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