How to tell a true baseball story

Harry Kalas, March 26,1936-April 13, 2009

It’s nine o’clock on a weeknight. Despite protest, my mother has sent me to bed. I’ll never wake up for school, she says. But it’s the seventh inning, and I don't want to miss this. Cocooned under the covers in my bottom bunk, I turn on my AM radio and slip on a pair of headphones. I turn the dial until I hear a familiar chorus of muffled voices and static: the sound of anticipation. Then, the game speaks to me in a mellow, baritone voice. It tells me how confident the pitcher looks, how he might not need that fast-as-lightning jab-step pickoff move.

Terry Mulholland threw a no-hitter that night. Or another night. It doesn’t really matter.

It’s a couple of years later. I’m having a catch with my father in the backyard. He’s dressed in khakis and an oxford shirt: the attire of a store manager. His briefcase sits on the hood of a beleaguered Toyota Corolla that has now been mercifully allowed to rest. There’s just a sliver of daylight left. The sun is setting behind me; it must be hard to see. But I am still firing away, trying to knock my tired old man off his feet. In my head, I'm Curt Schilling, and a familiar voice is saying: “Now, the 0-2 pitch…Struck him out!”

High school. I’m nearing the end of my playing days. Baseball has a way of letting you know when it’s time to hang it up. There comes a point when you can stay with a curveball, or you can’t. Batting practice is about the only time I can still get my hits in. Our star pitcher, a compulsive practical joker, is watching from behind the backstop. I swing as hard as I can on a pitch right down the middle, but I drop my shoulder. Pop up. And as the ball sails upwards, I can hear it from behind: “Loooooong drive….that ball is…OUTTA HERE!” It's a spot-on impression. There’s laughter from the dugout. I manage a chuckle, too.

Some years later, I watch from the stands as the Phillies win the World Series. I’m there with my family. There’s pandemonium and wild celebration. I’m happy and proud. But mostly, I can’t wait to hear what was said in those final moments.

These are all true stories, about the way baseball has spoken to me through the years. I’ve found that baseball doesn’t rely on historical facts to persist, but on faces, feelings, emotions, and the joy of shared experience. Thus, a baseball story is free to evolve and, in doing so, remain immediate; to pass beyond the limits of mere recollection. It's an ongoing conversation with the past.

When the heart is captured, the mind doesn't resist.

In short, baseball speaks to the soul. And more often than not, it has spoken to mine in the voice of a humble, unassuming man from the Midwest who flew into the airwaves over a hard-luck town just about the same time my parents decided to make it their home; a man with an uncanny knack for channeling the soul of the game and making it apparent to all willing listeners.

Yes, it will be hard not to hear that voice on a daily basis. But I am determined to remember it; to let it live on in my imagination, so that it makes its way into the soundtrack of future memories, of true stories not yet told.