One rainy Chicago day in autumn 1993, Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray met for lunch and the opportunity to reminisce about their lengthy sportscasting careers. Brickhouse and his former cross-town compatriot greeted each other warmly, two men from similar midwestern backgrounds. Caray, three years younger, was born in St. Louis, the son of Daisy and Christopher Carabina. Orphaned at the age of 8, Harry was reared by an aunt. Jack and his young mother, Daisy, were living in Peoria at the time.
The names of both Caray and Brickhouse are synonymous with baseball, although both also broadcast other sports. Harry’s career began in his hometown in 1944, when he was hired at WIL radio for fall and winter sports, primarily basketball and bowling. Learning that the Griesedieck family, owners of the St. Louis baseball Cardinals, needed an announcer for the 1945 season, he applied directly to club president Ed Griesedieck.
Harry got the job and was the KMOX radio voice of the Cardinals for years. In Chicago, after WGN (where he had worked since 1940) decided not to carry baseball, Jack moved to WJJD in 1945 to broadcast the White Sox. (Brickhouse returned to WGN in 1948, broadcasting both Cubs and Sox games for the then new WGN-TV. He was honored at Wrigley Field in 1979 on the occasion of his 5,000th game broadcast.)
(The 1945) season was thus a prime subject for reminiscing. Brickhouse to Caray: “I’ve been in this town following the Cubs for over half a century, and I’m still waiting to work my first Cub pennant. The one they won, I wasn’t around. So you and I both had a memorable 1945 season.”
Jack and Harry compared notes on the Midwest’s best-known baseball broadcaster of the 1930s and 1940s, Bob Elson. To Jack, Elson was the master, “the most imitated baseball broadcaster in history, whose pleasant, melodious voice never changed in a half century behind the mike.” To Harry, Elson did alter his manner of broadcasting after serving in World War II. “He wasn’t the same announcer when he came back. He changed his whole style. He used to be very enthusiastic; then I think he tried to be different-absolutely different-from Bert Wilson, who was a good announcer. I think Elson tried to be so different from Wilson that it affected his work.”
Jack responded: “When Wilson first came up, he sounded like a pup out of Elson. Wilson admitted that he’d listen to Bob and imitate him. Also, Bob was no kid by then. He was 12 or 13 years older than I was, and so in 1946 I would have been 30, he would have been in his 40s. Some guys slow up, you know, a lot sooner than others, and Bob kind of slowed up after that.” Harry disagreed: “I don’t think he slowed up through age. I think he slowed up because he deliberately wanted to be different. . . . But he was a good one before he went into the service.”
They did agree, however, on one Elson trait. Harry: “He had a great sense of humor, great laugh.” Jack: “When he started to giggle, you could have lost your best friend and you’d still have to laugh with him; it was contagious.”
Jack and Harry shared memories of a great event at Wrigley Field: Stan Musial’s 3,000th career hit. According to Jack, Cardinals manager Fred Hutchinson “wanted to save Musial for his 3,000th hit the next day in St. Louis. He wasn’t even in the dugout; he was sitting with the pitchers in the bullpen, sunning himself.” Harry continued: “They called him in the ninth inning to pinch hit. He got a double down the left field line that I think drove in the tying and winning runs.” After the May 15, 1958, game, Caray joined Brickhouse on the field for a televised interview with Musial. Jack recalls that day as a highlight of his own career.
Harry also remembered the Cardinals’ trip to St. Louis that evening: “The train made about eight stops. Everywhere, the whole town was there to yell at Stan, congratulate him. It was like a triumphant parade. Everywhere the train stopped, people were gathered, thousands and thousands.”
Harry’s story prompted a related reminiscence from Jack: “You know, I learned more baseball on trains than I did anyplace else, because you’d sit with the managers, the coaches, some of the players, with the guys in the club car, the smoker or even in the dining car. You could get up to walk around, and guys mixed. You can’t do that today on airplanes.”
“The game has changed,” Harry continued. “Now ballplayers aren’t together as much as they used to be. As a matter of fact, you’ve had more cliques. . . . The Dominicans couldn’t speak English; they stuck together. The Spanish couldn’t speak English; they stuck together. And now it’s money and changing teams. Seeing a Stan Musial with one team, a Ted Williams with one team, you’ll never see that again.”
Harry went on, “It’s unconscionable that ballplayers haven’t got the time to sign a little kid’s autograph. Do you know why they don’t do it now? Their agents advise them not to, because it lessens their worth when they go to those card shows. Now you’re getting down to ownership and management, which is all bottom-line. You know, the old-time owner may not have been as rich as (owners) are today, but he was more of a sportsman. You know, like (Philip K.) Wrigley, Calvin Griffith, Tom Yawkey, or even Gussie Busch in his own way.”
Jack responded: “But sometimes maybe we criticize the corporate guys a little bit more than they should be criticized. Here’s what I mean: OK, the corporation buys the ball club; but the guy who is CEO or the guy who is vice president in charge of that ball club corporation is really one heck of a baseball fan. He’s a guy with a little background, maybe played in school or is just a nutty fan. He’s got to be a bottom-line guy-we know that- but he’s not totally cold-blooded.”
Harry asked: “Do you remember, when the Tribune bought the Cubs, the ridiculous story that they were going to build a barrier to keep the people on the rooftops from seeing the ball game? What the hell kind of thinking was that? That’s one of the mystiques of Wrigley Field. You look out and you see them on the rooftops, drinking, eating some barbecue, having fun.
The total involved is less than 500 people. Here’s a ballpark full with 32,000, 35,000; now-especially for those who are in the people business-that’s ridiculous, but that’s corporate thinking. . . . I went to Jim Frey and raised holy hell. I said, ‘You guys have to be nuts.’ I said, ‘What’s wrong with it? No other team in the history of baseball has had this.’
“Then, suddenly, that idea died a quiet death. And, you know, I think general managers as a rule really know their business, but if they are handicapped by the owners-you can’t spend this, you can’t spend that-you’re not going to have success.”
The conversation evolved into a discussion of ball game attendance.
Harry: “Look at the problem of the Cubs. They just finished the (1993) season. They drew 2,700,000; they averaged 34,000 per day played. If they draw capacity for the 81 games, they’ll draw another 200,000 people. So the difference between winning and losing up until now hasn’t been important at the gate. But if they keep losing and those guys on the South Side keep winning, eventually the Cubs are going to go down the drain. They’d better realize it.”
Jack: “It happened once before. There was a time, you know, when the Cubs could automatically draw a million. But all of a sudden 750,000, 780,000 for a couple of years. They were down.”
Harry remembered the weekends when Lou Breese and his orchestra entertained at Cubs games. “It would be a gorgeous day at Wrigley Field. Announcing for the Cardinals, I would say, ‘Gee, just to hear the music and sit in the sunshine, you’d think there’d be more people than this.’ They’d have 2,500 on a Friday; that’s the year they drew 500,000 people.”
Jack: “I was at a party one time with Helen Wrigley-who was a fan, by the way-Phil’s wife. She asked, ‘Why aren’t we drawing more people?’ And I answered, ‘Well, Helen, when I sit in that booth and I look out at the bleachers, I don’t see enough hand-holding.’ She said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Up until the last year or two, it’s been very fashionable for a young guy to take his girlfriend to the ballpark and sit in those bleachers at Wrigley Field; young kids, the teenagers and the young college kids. I’m not seeing them out there anymore; they’ve found other places to go. You’d better hope that they’ll come back.’ Well, eventually they did come back. As a matter of fact, Phil Wrigley himself really liked those kids. He filled a charter plane one time and flew them all to Atlanta, the ‘bleacher bums,’ for a series down there, that kind of stuff.”
Harry: “I met (Phil Wrigley), but I really didn’t know him. I’ve often wondered whether he was a great visionary or whether he was just lucky. Either way, you have to give him all the credit in the world, because what’s made the Cubs has been daytime baseball. Even to this day the Giants can’t draw at night at Candlestick Park. They played 53 day games this year, trying to turn it around. And they did draw more than they had last year.”
Jack: “Look at the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, afternoons. A small ballpark, Thursday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, 32,000, 33,000.”
Harry: “Not only that; you’re drawing the people who are your fans for a lifetime, the little kids. They get on the “L” in the suburbs, get off at Wrigley Field, watch a ballgame, they’re home by 5:30. Can you imagine a little kid who’s been to Wrigley Field? Back at home, he’s got something to talk about with his parents: ‘You should have seen Ryne Sandberg! You should have seen Mark Grace!’ They might have nothing to talk about if it weren’t for baseball.”
Jack: “And you can give the kid a couple, three dollars, put him on the “L,” know that he’s going to be home for dinner; and he’s going to do it all in the daytime, when it’s safe.”
Harry: “Look at what we have, a World Series at night. Who the hell can keep a kid up that long? Even on weekends, at night . . . Now we’re in the Series; every game is at night. And we had an hour delay last night (Oct. 11, 1993). How would you like to have a kid out on a school night when you’re trying to discourage that kind of hours, taking him out, keeping him out that late to see a ball game?”
Jack: “Phil Wrigley owned the Los Angeles franchise in the Pacific Coast League, had a Wrigley Field out there. He went there one time-Bob Scheffing was managing the ballclub; John Holland was his general manager-and they filled the ballpark, 14,000 or whatever.
“They were real happy, with the boss there to see this big crowd. As they were walking out after the game, John said, ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight, Mr. Wrigley. We’re pretty proud of that crowd.’ Phil said, ‘Yes, very nice, but where were the children?’ Where were the children? Not in that neighborhood, not at night. But he pinpointed something important.”
Harry: “Day baseball really made the Cubs.” Then he returned to the subject of Phil Wrigley: “I asked you whether he was that man of great vision or whether maybe it was just a little lucky.”
Jack: “Well, maybe a little of both. He was a visionary guy.”
Harry: “I know that when he opened it up for television coverage, he opened it up to anybody, and radio, too.”
Jack: “Damn right. You know, he once threatened to pull his ball club out of the National League and play independent ball if they wouldn’t let him do radio broadcasts. The other owners argued, ‘Why give your product away?”‘
Harry: “I remember (Cardinals president) Sam Breadon. He had the famous Gashouse Gang, and one year he said he was not going to broadcast, because it would keep people from coming to the ballpark. With the famous Gashouse Gang, he drew 300,000 people, the lowest attendance in the history of St. Louis baseball.”
Jack: “I had an experience with Breadon one time. In those days we broadcast the ball club that was in town on WGN radio. This one day the Sox were in town but were rained out. The Cubs were playing in St. Louis, so we set up the Western Union ticker at the studio for the Cubs-St. Louis game. All of a sudden Sam Breadon, who found out we were broadcasting the game, claimed that we overlapped into his territory because WGN was a 50,000-watt station; he made the Western Union guy stop sending. In the fourth inning of the ball game, I had to stop broadcasting.
“We made a heck of a beef out of that. I wound up in Baseball Commissioner (Kenesaw Mountain) Landis’ office on the following Monday. I’ll say this for the (commissioner, a former) judge-he was a tough, rough old boy-but he was conciliatory on this one. He said, ‘You’ve got a very good point; we’ll get this straightened out.”‘
Toward the end of their noontime visit Harry enjoyed telling Jack about twice having been a guest of Elvis Presley in the 1960s-once at his Graceland home in Memphis after a St. Louis Hawks basketball game and two years later in Las Vegas. Presley initiated the acquaintanceship, introducing himself as “a great Cardinal fan and a Harry Caray fan.” They spent hours together on those occasions, with Harry remembering that Presley wanted to talk about “baseball, booze and broads, and not necessarily in that order.”
In 1994 Brickhouse was invited to record a reminiscence on WGN radio in commemoration of Caray’s 50th year in broadcasting. At the microphone, Jack spoke extemporaneously: “I have a story about Harry that really isn’t a sports story, even though baseball is involved. It’s a story about the great determination and the great courage that this man showed me one time, showed all of us.
“One evening in St. Louis (in 1968), Harry was crossing the street, and he was hit by a car. What happened was that it broke, I think, every bone in both legs. He was destined for a lifetime of being crippled; he was destined for a wheelchair-at the best, crutches.
“Harry Caray lay on his back that entire winter, into the spring, with both legs in a cast every minute; and everybody wondering if he would ever walk again. Harry kept saying, ‘I will, and I’ll be there for opening day.’
“Well, it just so happened that the Cubs opened the season at St. Louis that year, so I was down there. I was in the Chicago Cubs’ dressing room prior to the boys going out on the field, and into that dressing room walked Harry Caray-and I mean walked, briskly. He said, ‘Told you I’d be here!’
“This was a tremendous tribute to the guy’s determination, because you know and I know it wouldn’t be too tough to become very, very disappointed and melancholy and unhappy about a situation like that. Not only did he walk again, but I’ll give you a little tip. Don’t take him on in a game of tennis. I made that mistake out in Palm Springs one time a few years later, and the guy ran my legs off.
“Harry Caray-demonstrating the determination that it takes to succeed. Happy 50th, old friend! I’m glad there are still a few of us left.”
