Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 4, 1994 TAG: 9404040023
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
"I hope to do 50 more," Caray said between innings of a recent Cubs exhibition game.
The seventy-something announcer says he would like to die with his boots on, if his health is good, "and I was still going pretty good as of last night."
He relishes the line and punctuates it with his famous laugh: "Hawgh-hawgh-hawgh."
Caray is beginning his 13th season with the Cubs. Before that, he spent 11 years with the Chicago White Sox, a year with the Oakland Athletics and 25 years with the St. Louis Cardinals.
President Clinton grew up listening to Caray on the radio and recently recalled how Caray described Stan Musial's crouch in the batter's box.
Today, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a longtime Cubs fan, is to throw out the season's first pitch and later join Caray in his Baseball standings in Scoreboard. B2 legendary off-key sing-along of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" with fans during the seventh-inning stretch.
"We are interested in having Harry as long as he wants to be here," says Dennis FitzSimons, an executive with the Tribune Co., which owns WGN radio, WGN-TV and the Cubs. "We consider him a huge asset."
Caray was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989 and into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame this year.
He has some close relatives in sports broadcasting; son Skip, an announcer for the Atlanta Braves; and a grandson, Chip, who announces Seattle Mariners baseball games and Orlando Magic NBA games.
For a man orphaned at age 9 and teased by other children about his poverty, Caray's upbeat personality belies a residue of depression from his childhood. It still plagues him around Christmas, he says.
Caray's lifestyle is as famous as his broadcasting style, which includes exclamations of "Holy Cow!" after good plays.
He was pushed out of St. Louis when rumors surfaced about an alleged affair with one of the Busch family wives, according to an account compiled by the Chicago Sun-Times. Caray has been married three times and has five children - including three daughters with whom he's lost contact.
He rarely goes to bed before 4 a.m., and, as befits a colorful character who by his own account grew up in smoke-filled saloons, his late-night escapades and drinking have given rise to numerous tales.
"I like to go to a bar, I like to talk with the bartender. I like to make friends with the people at the bar," Caray says. " . . . I've learned more from my business by listening to guys in bars who are the guys who listen [to broadcasts]."
Caray always has prided himself on never having missed an inning of broadcasting until he had a stroke during the winter in 1987. He was back two months into the season.
"I love it," he says. "I can't conceive of what I'd do if I wasn't broadcasting baseball."
Steve Stone, the former Cubs and Chicago White Sox pitcher who won a Cy Young Award with Baltimore, has worked with Caray for 12 years and has corrected more than a few of his on-air misstatements.
"He is not a wordsmith like some of the other greats," Stone says. "But he is the single greatest salesman of the game that ever lived. I believe the game will suffer a huge loss when Harry decides to stop."
by CNB