<p>Tears in my eyes remembering the Voice of the Tigers …</p>
<p>I’m with you. That voice brings back such memories.</p>
<p>I’m with you all. I was listening to the radio tributes this morning and crying in my car - what a sweet man! I think it was Al Kaline (or maybe Vin Scully?) who said that Ernie was the most perfect human being he ever knew…</p>
<p>Let me add my respects to this wonderful gentle-man. He is the voice I hear when remembering the Tigers of my youth. Godspeed Ernie Harwell~</p>
<p>For those of us in Michigan…</p>
<p>Ernie will lie in state at Comerica Park beginning on Thursday at 7 a.m. so the public can come pay their respects.</p>
<p>Even though we knew this was coming, I feel sad this morning. And yet I smile when I think of Ernie Harwell. What a great life.</p>
<p>If you were a baseball fan in Michigan in the 60s and 70s it was great to take advantage of WJR’s clear channel on am at 760 on the dial. At night, you could pick them up all over the state and listen to Ernie do the Tiger games. Sometimes if the weather conditions were right, you could pick them up at night all over the eastern US.</p>
<p>I swear this is true - I remember picking them up in Florida during spring break from U of M.</p>
<p>What a great guy. A few decades ago, I was walking through Oakland Mall on a weekday afternoon, and Ernie was sitting at a table at the entrance to a bookstore. He was there to sign copies of a book he wrote, but the mall wasn’t at all busy, and there was almost nobody in the bookstore. I bought a copy of his book, and he cheerfully signed it…a hall of famer whose spirits weren’t the slightest bit dampened by the dearth of customers buying his book.</p>
<p>I couldn’t believe it when they announced it last night during the Wings game. My dad couldn’t either. </p>
<p>There’s only been three times in my life that I saw my dad tear up, last night was one of them when they replayed Ernie’s last speech at Tiger Stadium. Dad is (well, now was) a huge Tigers fan who has met Ernie from time to time. We are lifelong Detroiters through and through.</p>
<p>There is a real push to get Comerica Park renamed Ernie Harwell stadium. Doubt it will ever happen, but if anyone deserves a stadium named after him, it’s definitely Ernie. </p>
<p>RIP.</p>
<p>^^ I loved that speech too romanigypsyeyes. It made me proud to be from Michigan at a time when nobody had a kind word for our state.</p>
<p>He was the voice of my summers by the community pool. Lying in the sun, the smell of baby oil, chlorine, and the voice of Ernie(over a cheesy transistor radio). When I was in high school, my best friends father was sports editor of the Detroit Free Press. And at age 15 when I met that voice in person, (along with Mickey Lolich!!! and Norm Cash!!!) at a BBQ, I was so excited that I cried.</p>
<p>I could sit in this one chair in the living room on Martha’s Vineyard and pick up Tiger games. Ernie was one of the true greats.</p>
<p>Piece of my childhood is gone (…I am getting old…). Musicamusica: so jealous > Norm Cash!!! My crush was Jim Northrup.</p>
<p>Michigan native here too–Ernie was always there in the background. He was a good man.</p>
<p>I remember “Swing and a miss!” and my favorite, “…and he stood there like a house by the side of the road.” </p>
<p>I loved WJR growing up. Sometimes I could hear it early in the AM after I moved away to another state.</p>
<p>Riding in the car at night … in the back seat …going to sleep listening to Ernie.
At the summer cottage …somewhere in the thumb …outside with the stars … listening to Ernie.
Wonderful childhood memories. :)</p>
<p>My dad and grandfather …huge Tigers fans. Always had the radio on for Tigers games.
(I was Bill Freehan fan but would get giddy when we passed Mickey Lolichs donut shop - lol)</p>
<p>Back in the summer of '68 my dad lost his job quite unexpectedly. He’d been with the company for 20 years, always a loyal and productive employee in a responsible professional position, and figured he was set for life—but they suddenly pulled the plug on the facility where he was working. Dad was devastated and became seriously depressed for a while, some days couldn’t get out of bed. He lived for Ernie’s daily broadcasts of the Tigers that summer. I’ve always believed it was that measured, controlled cadence, that warm, familiar, reassuring voice, that sense of optimism and anticipation that Ernie brought to every pitch that pulled Dad through. Dad eventually got himself together, found another good job, the Tigers won the World Series, and all was right with the world. I’ll always be grateful to Ernie for that summer of magic, and for what he did for my dad and no doubt many other Michiganders that year.</p>
<p>Bclintonk—that was a wild summer. I hope you were able to see the excellent HBO sports
documentary [A</a> City on Fire: The Story of the '68 Detroit Tigers (2002) (TV)](<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343535/combined]A”>A City on Fire: The Story of the '68 Detroit Tigers (TV Movie 2002) - Reference View - IMDb)
A City on Fire.</p>
<p>His voice was the sound of summer, gentle, good humored, and modest. Before pervasive air conditioning, the voice was heard from neighbors’ homes, from open car windows, from tinny radios at the pool or as we sunned on the patio. It was the voice that accompanied us on weekend car trips. And it was his voice that I remember as the Detroit area came together and celebrated in 68 after the terrible summer of 67. Cars were stopped on Woodward Avenue as people stood together and listened to that final game as Kaline scored.</p>
<p>RIP, friend.</p>