Ernie Harwell, the legendary radio voice of the Detroit Tigers, revealed last week that he has an inoperable cancer. He's 91, and he's lived a rich and rewarded life, and from his public statements he's at peace with the reality that that life is nearly over.
Every once in a while somebody asks: Why are you so hard on John Gordon? Mind you, not everybody asks me that. Sometimes they ask my editor, with the hint that he tell me to knock it off.
And the answer, folks, is that I've heard Vin Scully broadcast baseball games, and I've heard Ernie Harwell. And Bob Uecker, and Bob Prince, and Harry Caray. Not game in, game out, night after night, but enough to know that the game can be described on the radio with grace and wit and style and accuracy. Herb Carneal — for one year an on-air partner of Harwell's — did it for decades, and Halsey Hall.
We Twins fans don't have that. Maybe it's not all Gordon's fault; possibly Scully himself couldn't do a Twins game smoothly with all the promo copy required of Gordo and Gladden. Maybe. But the promo copy doesn't mean they can't tell us where the baserunners are.
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The Twins tragic number (Twins losses and Tigers wins needed to eliminate Minnesota): 22.
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Poll results: On the question of which team will win the AL Central, we had 14 votes. Nine (64 percent) said Detroit; four (28 percent) said Minnesota; 1 (7 percent) said the White Sox.
New poll up
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