Harry Christopher Carabina became a household name despite mispronouncing names, slurring his words, being a major homer (favoring the home team), rambling during his broadcasts, being over-opinionated about players and coaches, sometimes not even giving combining the first and last names of players correctly, and well renowned love of alcohol.
Harry Caray as he is better known got away with a lot of things a normal sportscaster would never make a 50+ year career out of if they did the same things he did. Harry Caray was a highly sought after voice in the world of baseball, however, from the mid-1950's all the way till the late 80's during his most memorable and antic-filled times with the North side Chicago Cubs. Things started for Caray back in St. Louis in 1945 when he got his break due to his ability to sell Anheuser-Busch beer to the radio audience. Once he got his break, he made the most of his opportunities and spent 25 years with the Cardinals, one year with the Athletics in Oakland, 11 years with the South side Sox of Chicago, and finally finished off his career by letting Cubs fans fall in love with his unique style and mannerisms from 1981 to 1988.
In the prime of Caray's cookyness he was with the Chicago Cubs. He reportedly couldn't pronounce the name of their pitcher Jason Isringhousen and constantly combined the names of Ryan Sandberg, Jim Sundberg, and Scott Sanderson in every imaginable way but the correct one. Why did people love him so much? The man had a job in broadcasting for over 50 years with four different teams, and was tenured over 10 years with two of those squads.
Harry Caray was a people person, plain and simple. Caray was the clumsy, goofy fool of the friend-group that everyone expected to be there unless he somehow lit himself on fire and fell down the stairs to his death. Despite his constant mistakes and cardinal sins of broadcasting, he formed a friendship of sorts with the fan bases he entertained over all those years. Of course he was the friend who everyone was slightly embarrassed to say they knew, but he was still a friend no matter what. He did good work when it came to being a reporter, he wrote his own scripts, conducted his own interviews, and did most of his own research as well. When it came time for him to come on air he just went out there and had a good time, which when you think about it is what baseball and sport in general is all about.
People don't want to listen to a game on the air to be bored to death, they want to be entertained and informed. With Caray behind the mic, they would certainly be entertained, and obviously he had just enough of the ability to inform folks that they accepted him for the name mispronouncing alcoholic that he was.
Another thing that made Caray so darn lovable was his style of delivery for big calls in a game. There were four things in almost every Caray broadcast that everyone could expect to hear, one of them was guaranteed.
First was repetition. Caray would repeat big calls to the point that nobody tuning into the broadcast or barely paying attention to the radio would fail to hear him. Although at times this would be slightly overboard, the way Caray lived his broadcasting life, people started to relish in it and mock him in a way that it became a form of entertainment.
The second thing you could expect to hear was Holy Cow... Holy cow was used for everything from a defensive play to a home run. It was the go to for Caray, and honestly, he just used it so he didn't say holy shit on the radio or television. Although simple, people fell in love with it and Caray knew just how to say it for people to look forward to one of those clutch plays.
Third was his epic home run call, which again, he admittedly used because he once called a ball a home run when it wasn't. In order to stop himself from doing it he simply waited till the last possible second to call a home run and quickly followed it with a "Holy Cow" of course...
The final thing which everyone was going to hear when they listened to Harry Caray was him leading the singing of the Seventh Inning Stretch. This all started when one of his White Sox partners turned on the mic while he was singing it (per usual) and the fans actually grew to love it.
Whatever he did, people eventually mocked, and fell in love with. Caray was a quirky man with a speech impediment, but he was a people person. He knew how to work a crowd and call a baseball game. The rest of his errors he solved with being someone that people wanted to be around. Harry Caray defied all logic when it came to tenuring a sportscaster, but that is precisely the reason I am writing about him today.
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