For several months I`d been hearing stories at home and on the road. There were all kinds of rumors going around about me. The most spectacular rumors were all about sex. I was allegedly having an affair with this executive`s wife or that executive`s wife.
At first, these rumors annoyed me. Then they began to amuse me. They actually made me feel kind of good. I mean, let`s face it. I was almost 50 years old. I wore glasses as thick as the bottoms of Bud bottles, and as much as I hate to say it, I was never confused with Robert Redford. Yet it seemed like half of St. Louis and nearly the entire National League thought that no young, beautiful woman could resist my charms.
If you were me, would YOU have gone around denying rumors like that?
Hell, no.
So I didn`t deny them.
If anyone asked me point blank, I had a stock line. ”I never raped anybody in my life,” I`d say.
It was certainly true, and it usually got a laugh. But I got a little worried that the Cardinals weren`t laughing, so I went to see Gussie Busch.
We had been friends since he had bought the ball club back in 1953. I liked Gussie and respected him, and I felt I should try to clear the air.
I went to his office at the brewery and told him I was concerned about these rumors.
Gussie started to laugh.
”I`ve heard your response to these rumors. You`ve never raped anybody, right, Harry?”
”That`s right,” I replied and started to laugh, too.
”Well, if it`s not rape, then it`s mutual consent. And if that`s the case, you`ve got nothing to worry about.”
But I did worry.
On the road, other broadcasters would tell me they`d been asked to submit audition tapes to the Cardinals because there was supposed to be an opening coming up.
And one day, the Post-Dispatch, the big afternoon newspaper in St. Louis, owned by the Pulitzer family, ran a story confirming that I would not be returning to the Cards after the season ended.
Still, no one had said a word to me-not the station, not the brewery, not even the advertising agency.
But I`ve always been a realist, and I know that where there`s smoke there`s usually fire. So on the last day of the season, the first place I stopped when I got to the ballpark was the Stadium Club. I had a special request for Marty Marion, the great Cardinal shortstop of the 1940s, who was the Stadium Club manager at the time.
”Who knows?” I said to Marty. ”This might be my last day here. And if it is, I want the fellows on the team to have a little something to remember me by. As soon as the game is over, send a couple of cases of champagne down to the clubhouse and charge `em to my account.”
It was still hours before the game, so I then headed straight for the clubhouse. I wanted to shake hands with everyone and wish them all well for the winter. That`s something I pretty much have always done. Before the first game of the season I wish everyone good luck, and after the last game I bid them all goodbye. Between those days I try to stay out of the clubhouse. Anyway, that day when I was down shaking hands and bidding my adieus, I ran into Jack Buck. Now Jack and I had been partners since 1954, the first year Anheuser-Busch sponsored Cardinals broadcasts. He`s an outstanding broadcaster-one of the best who ever lived-and to this day he`s a good friend. But friend or not, I had a feeling he might have known something.
Once we`d stepped out of the clubhouse, into a corridor where we could have a little privacy, I turned to Jack.
”Jack,” I began, ”we`ve been through some trying personal experiences together. I`ve proven my friendship to you, and I`ll always consider you one of my friends. But I have to ask you, do you know something that I should know?”
He mumbled that he really didn`t know anything.
”I know about the audition tapes,” I said, and when I did Jack broke down and spilled the beans. He revealed that Al Fleishman and Bob Hyland had asked him to recruit other announcers. He didn`t like it, but he`d had to do it.
Well, Fleishman-whose public-relations agency still represents Anheuser-Busch-and I had been enemies for decades, going back to the days when he was the St. Louis Browns` publicity man. He`d once said that if he could get rid of Harry Caray, the Browns could run the Cardinals out of town. It was a little late to do the defunct Browns any good, but it looked like he was finally getting his wish.
Hyland, on the other hand, was an old and dear friend, instrumental in my career and in my son Skip`s and one of the truly great radio executives ever. He was-still is, in fact-the general manager of KMOX, which, through the years, had probably been the best-run radio station in the country.
”Harry, I should have talked to you,” Buck admitted sadly. ”But confrontation is not my style, and I`ve been asked to keep it secret.”
If the situation had been reversed, I would have told Jack all I knew, but I understood where Jack was coming from. And as soon as he told me about Fleishman and Hyland, I knew it was all over, that it was just a matter of time.
Actually, it was a matter of about three weeks.
It happened about 1 o`clock, on a late October afternoon, after the playoffs and the World Series were over. I was sitting in the Cinema Bar, a nice saloon above a theater across from the ballpark and about a block from KMOX, where I still went to work every afternoon to do the drive-time sports report at 5:30. I was sitting with an old friend of mine, Tom Sullivan, who was visiting St. Louis from California. We were having a few beers and reminiscing about old times when the telephone rang.
Frank Ceresia, the owner of the Cinema as well as a bartender there, hollered that it was for me. I was surprised. Who knows I`m here? I thought to myself.
It was Don Hamel, another old friend.
”Don,” I said, ”how the hell did you find me here?”
Hamel, who had been on the job for only a short while, was the advertising manager for Busch Bavarian beer, the sponsor of the Cardinals`
broadcasts. Before that, he had been general manager of a radio station in town. He astutely pointed out that we had spent a lot of nights in a lot of the same places.
”I know your drinking habits pretty well,” he said with a laugh.
I had to agree.
Then he got down to business.
”Harry,” he almost whispered, ”I don`t know how to put this to you. We`re good friends, and I`ve only been in this job a month, and why the hell they picked me to tell you this I don`t know. But they`re going to make an announcement at 2 o`clock in which they state that they`re not going to renew your contract.” So, after 25 years of never missing a game, of being the most loyal Cardinal supporter on the face of the Earth, they fired me over the telephone in a saloon. It was probably appropriate, but I couldn`t really appreciate the irony at the time.
Hamel read the press release to me. In it, they explained that the determination not to renew my contract as the Cardinals` broadcaster was ”the decision of the marketing department” of Anheuser-Busch.
”Don”, I had to ask, after he finished reading the release, ”who`s the best beer salesman you`ve ever met?”
”Harry,” he replied-and honestly, too, I`ve got to give him that-”you ask that question of anybody in the business, and they`ll say you are.”
The crazy thing was, if there was one thing in the world that proved my prowess as a beer peddler, it was Busch Bavarian beer, which is now simply called Busch.
Busch was introduced out of nowhere in 1955. When the brewery made its big push, they sent me over to the Bavarian Alps to film television commercials. After a time, they made it the principal sponsor of the Cardinals` games, replacing Budweiser. And the strategy worked. Busch became the first new beer in many, many years to be introduced successfully by an American brewery. Today it is still probably the biggest-selling beer in St. Louis, bigger even than Bud. Yet here they were, saying that the marketing department had decided I wasn`t doing the proper job for the product.
”They wanted you to know this before you heard it on the air,” Hamel said. ”I did, too.”
In somewhat of a daze, I thanked him, hung up and asked Frank to turn the radio to KMOX.
KMOX was then, and still is now, all-talk radio. They made the announcement just as Hamel said they would, on the 2 o`clock newscast, they they went back to their regularly scheduled programming. Unfortunately for them, the program happened to be an open-line call-in show. Listeners could call up and talk about whatever was on their minds.
Much to my delight, it was ”bombs away!”
The calls started pouring in, and they were all about Harry Caray. This was not the way the station or the brewery had planned it.
As I understand it, Bob Hyland, the general manager, had instructed the girl screening the calls to refuse anyone who wanted to talk about Harry Caray. Only this wasn`t as simple as it seemed, because EVERY call was about Caray. Every single one. When they put 14 calls on hold, and every button on the telephone console was flashing, then they had no choice but to put that next call on the air. The 15th call was about Harry Caray, too.
After a while, Hyland apparently was beside himself. He called down to this poor girl and yelled, ”Damn it, didn`t I tell you not to take any more calls about Harry Caray?”
And she yelled back ”Mr. Hyland, all the calls are about Harry Caray. If you think you can do better, you come down and handle this yourself. Because I quit!” And she hung up the receiver. It han`t taken more than a few minutes for my departure to become a cause celebre in St. Louis. It was the biggest story in town.
– – –
I wasn`t out of work a month when Charlie Finley, the owner of the Oakland A`s, called.
”I want you to come up to Chicago and meet with me,” he said over the telephone. ”I can use a guy like you out in Oakland. You can put some fannies in the seats.”
After a few days of thinking it over, I ran out of excuses. I called Charlie and told him I would take the one-year deal.
At the end of the 1970 season, I thanked him for everything and told him I was going to return to the Midwest and try to find a job closer to my home in St. Louis.
I had done pretty well in Oakland. I`d had an interesting experience, made a host of new friends and, as I`ve recounted, learned several important lessons. For all that, I credit Charlie Finley.
My next stop, of course, wound up to be even more interesting.
Chicago.
My Kind of Town.
HARRY`S ALL-STARS
Harry`s all-time picks, based on players he has ”seen often enough to really judge,” are:
First base: Stan Musial, who ”did more things for the game-on the field and off-than anyone else who ever played.”
Second base: Jackie Robinson. ”But there have been a lot of god ones at that position. . . . And the young man on the Cubs now, Ryne Sandberg, has a chance to be the best of them before he`s through.”
Shortstop: ”It`s got to be Marty Marion, though it`s almost impossible to pick between Luis Aparicio, Pee Wee Reese and Phil Rizzuto among the veterans and Cal Ripken and Ozzie Guillen today.”
Third base: George Brett. ”If there`s anyone who can be compared to my baseball idol Stan Musial, it`s George Brett-on the field and off.”
Outfield: ”It`s practically impossible to select the three best outfielders. You`d have to start with Babe Ruth. But you`d also have to find a way to work Mays, Aaron, DiMaggio, Mantle, Clemente, Snider, Kaline and Frank Robinson into the lineup.”
Catcher: Johnny Bench-”he`s probably the greatest who ever lived”-and Roy Campanella.
Pitchers: Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax. ”The best righthander I ever saw, and the best lefthander I ever saw.”
The captain of this elite squad? ”Stan Musial, the greatest baseball player I have ever seen.”
