The Voice

In the last few months, I tried to get in touch with Harry Kalas. My keeper league was about to have its second annual draft, and I wanted to get him to record the order of the draft to play before we started, like our collection of geeks was a batting order.

If nothing else, I wanted to hear him say all of our team names with that dry chuckle in his voice, the one that was always present when he said names like "Neee-No Ess-Pah-No-Sa." (A flammable pitcher of my youth, but a name that Harry just loved, by all accounts.)

But more than anything, I just wanted to hear Harry Kalas say my name.

You know, like when I was a kid, and Harry was the play by play guy when we were playing pick up games, and I was the star second baseman for my home town team.

The Phillies never followed up, and I didn't mention it to the entire league, because, well, I wanted to get it done for the next year. And so it goes.

Kalas was, after the passing of his equally beloved color partner Richie "Whitey" Ashburn a decade ago, the most loved man in the greater Philadelphia region. He certainly was the most impersonated. At the same league draft, one of my owners spent much of the draft saying off-color things in his reasonably good Harry voice. Even after hours of this, no one told him to stop.

It also never struck me as all that impossible to happen, because, well, Kalas just seemed so incredibly approachable. He voiced the Puppy Bowl and Campbell's Soup commercials, all kinds of other voiceovers, and even did quick one-offs for people's weddings in the Philadelphia area. He knew that he was, like Jack Buck in St. Louis, Vin Scully in Los Angeles, Bill King in Oakland and a few dozen other people who people all over the country can easily volunteer, someone who belonged to the town where he lived and worked.

More importantly, he was comfortable in that. You know, kind of like the team, or at least, how the team should be.

People remember the boyish joy of Kalas's "Outta here!" home run calls, but there was so much more to him than that. He consistently gave you the pitch type, location and speed if he was on the radio, but not on television. He almost never lost track of the outs or count. When the game was close, nothing on this earth could have made him start talking about some other game, personality or topic of debate that didn't have a clear and obvious relationship to the game that was in front of you. He also had that clean and clear virtue of appreciating great plays and performances, regardless of the laundry of the wearer.

Which isn't to say that you couldn't tell when the Phils lost, or played badly, or irritated him. There was always this small note of defeat in his voice, like a 14-year-old boy trying to be magnanimous but failing, when the Phils would blow a game. Players come and players go, but you never got the feeling that winning wasn't great and losing didn't suck from Harry. He wasn't cool, or post-modern, or snarky, or beholden to a catch phrase. When he disagreed with an umpire, it never got over-the-top or grating; he was just, well, too good of a man to go to those places. He was the best kind of fan, and in an age when we multi-task and watch the time commitment on a million things, there was just something timeless and easy about listening to him call a game.

Baseball is, of course, unique in the regard that a dedicated fan will spend hundreds of hours of years and thousands of hours in a lifetime with a long-tenured play by play man. It's possible, of course, to be a completely different person than what you appear to be on radio and television, but Kalas was with us all for just short of 40 years, with his son following him into his profession. (A small note to the Phillies: Hire Todd Kalas away from the Rays. Today. It'll help.) It's very possible that longtime Phillies fans have heard Kalas more than any other person in their life.

And then there was, of course, that voice, lush and warm and consistent, a simple pleasure even when you heard it attached to something that was wildly *not* baseball. My ex-wife wasn't a sports or baseball fan, and she loved his voice. How could you not?

Here is the awful, awful truth about the relationship that you have with the beloved baseball play by play man that you listened to in your formative years. You never really get over his passing. Millions of people are now feeling this way, and for those of us who are of a certain age, we all just got about ten to twenty years older. Which isn't fair, because it remembers his life in sadness rather than in joy, but it also probably can't be helped. It's tough to be positive about loss.

He died today in the pre-game in Washington, a game that the Phillies would win. One of his favorite players, Jamie Moyer, got the win. The last game he called was in Colorado, where last year's NLCS hero, Matt Stairs, hit a game-winning pinch hit home run. His last season, of course, ended with the Phillies' second championship ever, and the audio file of that inning will be on my computer for the rest of my life.

And while it might have been more poetic had he passed on in the off-season, with his last public words being tied to a championship, I'm sure that he's happier having seen a few games more. That, and making sure that the moment that gave the team's fans such happiness wouldn't be lessened by his passing.

A final point: I'm not a Phillies fan, at least not much of one.

But a Harry Kalas fan?

Yes, yes, a million times, yes.

Some things, the Lemur does well

Millions mourn, and Jayson Stark does a nice turn.

Harry

WASHINGTON -- Long-time Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas passed away Monday afternoon after collapsing in the broadcast booth prior to Philadelphia's game at Washington. He was 73.

Kalas, the 2002 Ford C. Frick Award winner, was found by Phillies director of broadcasting Rob Brooks and was immediately taken to George Washington Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He had been broadcasting Phillies game since 1971. Before that, he was an original member of the Houston Astros' broadcast team from 1965-70.

More on this later. Terrible, terrible, terrible loss.

For no reason

Nick Adenhart was a 22-year-old starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels. He never appeared in a police blotter, didn't say anything dumb in front of a microphone, had no public persona of being a drinker or a cheat or anything else but a reasonably talented prospect. The Angels gave him the ball for their second game of the year against Oakland, and he worked six shutout innings despite struggling with his career. The Angels wound up losing the game.

The next day, Adenhart was killed in a traffic accident.

When someone dies at such a young age, especially a person of means like a professional athlete, the brain searches for answers. He must have been involved with something that brought him down. The perils of not distancing yourself from bad associates. Personal demons that we want to romanticize on some level, because evil is always romantic in the abstract (and ugly and dull in reality).

Adenhart didn't have any of that. He just got killed by someone operating a car, with a history of drunk driving who seems to have been drunk at the time, who then fled the scene. The suspect is being tried It could have happened to anyone. It just happened to hit someone working a famous job.

And it serves as a bit of a reminder, really, that there are no guarantees in this world, and those decades that we all think we have in front of us are just illusions. We all know this intellectually, of course, but having the emotional kick added to things is what makes it all so unsettling.

And so it goes.

Epic Drop: Under Ground Cover Brother

Eddie Griffin died last weekend in a fiery SUV crash (he hit a freight train). What a tragic waste... because I'm pretty sure that had to be a sweet ride, with big rims, good paint, and knowing Eddie, one mighty fine onboard entertainment system. The full list is over at the Carnival.

Thank you, Coach Walsh

Any number of sites will be treating this passing at length, many of them better qualified to do it than me. When Walsh was in his glory, I was 3,000 miles away, wishing that my team could be like his.

Perhaps the best way to remember Walsh is to read Michael Lewis's fantastic book about football, "The Blind Side." In it, Lewis examines the chess match between Bill Parcells and Bill Walsh -- and in that chapter, you get to the point of really understanding and appreciating both men, and what they brought to coaching.

Walsh, simply, made you feel like it was OK to think about football. The way his offense worked, at its height, didn't look like a one-time gathering of world-changing talent, though of course they had that as well. It just looked like they were ahead of the game, smarter, more sophisticated.

In a time when offense looked like World War I-esque tests of wills to run it up the gut, or the same old Al Davisian deep outs and bombs, Walsh devised slants that looked like they should get their WRs killed, and yet they never did. Even when they were beating my team, it was hard to really work up a good hate on them.

His defenses were some of the most underrated in NFL history. His secondaries defined shutdown, to the point where an ordinary pass rush generated constant and effective pressure. His safety was Ronnie Lott. That, alone, made them not a finesse team. Since his offense usually provided a lead, his defense could play downhill all game -- and they did it well. For a "cerebral" coach, you rarely saw his line get trampled. Just because they were smart didn't mean they also couldn't play a little smashmouth.

His offense was not as revolutionary as you might be led to believe. Hints and touches of it were around as early as 1960, with an Eagle team that won a championship without being able to run the ball worth a damn. The AFL also had tons of stuff that Walsh used later.

But the mystique that he brought to it -- the hubris of scripting plays in advance, the simple but relentless mastery of the same sets, and the play-calling mix that always seemed to be on point -- was remarkable.

When the Niners came to power, I rooted for them as my back-up team, as did most of America, it seemed. There was a simple reason to this: either you rooted for the Niners or you rooted for the Cowboys, and rooting for the Cowboys was like rooting for a holier-than-thou version of the Yankees.

Besides, there was never a time, before Walsh, that the Niners created any kind of animosity around the league. They just weren't very good very often.

Since Bill lost the fastball and moved on, the Niner faithful have looked and behaved like the rich kid whose family hits hard times -- unable to accept that the glory years have gone forever.

There will also never be, I am certain, a coach that gets this far in front of the game, and maintains his lead for as long as Walsh did. The league is more competitive now, and the race to imitate any innovation is much faster.

He also, and this is true no matter who you root for, made the game better -- simply because he made it OK to think about pro football in all new ways. There isn't too many people who you can say that about.

In Which The Pistons Are The Snakes, And The Bulls Are Lunch

This is what 19 for 19 at the line from Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton looks like, especially in the fourth quarter when you're behind.

Some days, it looks like the Pistons are just playing for drama. Up 3-0, it was all going too easy. So punt a few games, look slow on defense, get lit up at home when everyone expects you to close. Are they too old? Do they want it enough? Is Rasheed Wallace going to explode? Will people keep adding "ess" to the end of Tayshaun Prince's name?

The answers tonight were no, yes, kind of but not really, and ye gads, maybe Prince really is better than Carmelo Anthony or Chris Bosh. (Well, no, not really. But when he's playing the fourth quarter like he did tonight, it's easy to miss that.)

The Pistons advance to another series that they should win fitfully, conserving their energies to whenever it amuses them, but the clock is ticking -- this team could easily fall apart without Billups, who has the option to be a free agent this summer.

As for the Bulls, they may be the future of the Eastern Conference, in that they are the only team in the East that's good and relatively young. Their front office appears to not take a short yellow bus to work, putting them significantly ahead of much of the rest of the conference.

But before we start sucking each other's Pulp Fiction references, let's look at these facts...

1) They have no low post game, and that's been true since Eddy Curry was in town. Now, I understand how Curry could put you off having a low post game, but it's been two years, gents. Turn the page.

2) With Wallace's back hurting, they could not control the glass when they had to tonight. 33 year old backs usually don't get better, especially for a guy with a lot of court time on his body.

3) The Knicks pick might be pretty ordinary, really. (But if they get Durant somehow... good gracious.)

4) Their best player, Luol Deng, is nice and all, but not exactly someone that causes sleepless nights for opponents.

5) Scott Skiles got outcoached in this series... and for a guy that was busting nuts over headbands earlier this year, it's telling that he's soft-pedaling his players showing up late for the game. Check out this (hat tip to the AP):

Chicago's Ben Wallace showed up at the arena about 1 hour, 15 minutes before tipoff -- just as he did before Game 3 -- and Chris Duhon and Gordon were a few minutes late. Players are supposed to be there 90 minutes before the game. Coach Scott Skiles shrugged it off, saying, "It took (general manager John Paxson) well over an hour to get down here."

Sure, Scott, sure. So, do the players have your balls 24/7, or do they give them back to you on off days?

Warrior Eulogy

Start with the name – Golden State. Not Oakland, or Bay Area, or San Francisco or San Jose (and yes, I know they don’t play there, but that doesn’t stop the East Rutherford Giants or Jets or the Not Detroit Pistons or the Arlington Rangers and I’ll just stop it and move on).

It is, in the top three of North American sports leagues, the only marketing moment involved in the name of the team. You don’t hear about the Orange State Heat, the Keystone State Steelers, or the Peach State Braves. Only the Warriors are so, well, mysterious.

As a child learning about the NBA for the first time, with the usual childhood fascination with maps and places, the name intrigued me. What made the team Golden? Did the team have a Golden player? Was the floor gold? Where the hell is the Golden State, anyway? My map had no Golden listed on it.

Then, I finally saw them play against the mid-‘70s Sixers of Julius Erving, Bobby Jones and Henry Bibby, the first team of my NBA consciousness. Their uniforms were weird, they only had one player that anyone would ever remember (Purvis Short, a scoring small forward who shot jumpers with such a pronounced arc, it was like he was trying to hit the ceiling), and the Sixers crushed them like bugs. Next. Portland is where? What’s a Port?

Time passed, and my basketball consciousness formed in the range war that was Sixers-Celtics. The Warriors were of no real concern. Then, suddenly, Run TMC. A frantically paced, wildly entertaining team, especially if you haven’t seen it all before in Don Nelson’s previous incarnation as the ringleader of the Milwaukee Bucks (though, to be fair, Tim Hardaway was always more fun to watch than Sidney Moncrief). They did what Nellie’s teams always do – entertain, intrigue, inspire a fan base, scare the hell out of teams in playoff matchups, then fail due to their lack of quality big man. Same as it ever was.

It all ended spectacularly badly, as life usually does. You can blame Chris Webber, Nelson, PJ Carlessimo, Latrell Sprewell, or Chris Cohan, the Warriors’ secretive and mostly useless owner. None of it really matters, because the simple fact of the matter is that Nelson wasn’t going to win in Golden State, even if everyone involved ate the happy pills and loved each other. Those Warriors weren’t the Magic Lakers, or even the Hakeem Rockets. No championships were harmed in the destruction of the franchise. Chris Webber is going to end his career without a ring. (Yes, I like the West in the finals. Big surprise.)

Time went on. I discovered, up close and personal, what the destruction of a franchise looked like, as a Sixers season ticket holder. (It looked like Doug Moe and Harold Katz – which is to say, it looks a lot like the down market version of Nelson and Cohan.) Then I moved to the Bay Area for work, and got to know the Warriors and their fans, and discovered what an underdog attitude (Oakland is to San Francisco as Newark is to Manhattan) looked like when it was tempered with a fantastic and ludicrously expensive place to live – nice, but with an edge. I started watching Warriors games.

Believe it or not, they always had talent. Gilbert Arenas was a joy. Antawn Jamison was flawed as all get out and far from a plus on defense, but you always got the feeling that he was a coach away from being an asset, since he could score without being the focus. Larry Hughes can do some things; the Warriors, in a classic bad organization move, forced him to play point, exposing everything he couldn’t do. Erick Dampier was, like many NBA big men, a heart away from wreaking havoc.

In other words, they were just intriguing enough to keep an eye on. And that’s what over 15,000 people did, on average, for years. They didn’t even really grumble all that much about it. They just came, sat on their hands for a club that was beneath them. After about 50 games every season, the debilitating “injuries” would start piling up, the team would roll off a 3-30 type finish, and the coach would get ran out of town. The next season, the team would make some mildly intriguing high draft pick (J-Rich... hmm... and Troy Murphy looks like he cares about winning... maybe), and 15K+ people would show up all over again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’d point out the crowds to out-of-towners, and we’d all wonder how they were doing it. It must be the marketing – the multi-game packages, the strong numbers of people in the Bay Area who aren’t originally from there coming to watch their team, the Sacramento sellouts of RVing Kings fans, the strong Laker numbers, etc. But it really wasn’t that. It was, simply, this – the Bay Area likes basketball. It gets basketball, more than baseball or even football. Cal and Stanford draw, too. And finally, this year, they got some.

Some people have talked about how the Oaktown crowd that took out the Mavericks benefited from an organization that Gets It – that there is less artificial noise and nonsense then in many NBA arenas, and that this is the way that things used to be, dammit, when the world was young and better. Well, perhaps – I haven’t been in so many arenas as to know – but the Whiff Of Bullshit is strong here.

Others have congratulated the Warriors for having the courage to roll the dice with hardened playoff performer and well-known lunatic Stephen Jackson. Well, OK – it’s not like the team gave up much for him. (If nothing else, getting Mike Dunleavy Jr. off your roster alone should be worth five more wins a year.) But that trade wasn’t canny or brave. That trade was about two teams dumping their problems on each other, and the Warriors making out better in the short run. In the long run, none of the four players involved inspires a ton of confidence. And besides, this is a team that paid Adonal Foyle – Adonal Foyle! – to seven years and $41 million, mostly on the strength of his media interviews.

Nelson, to his credit, took a good hard look at Adonal and pretty much put him in the NBDL. He did similar surgery with Patrick O'Bryant and Ike Diogu, then gave earned minutes to Andris Biedrins, Monta Ellis and Mikael Pietrus. Baron Davis decided not to be injured this year, and voila – an actual team, lightning in a bottle, the rebirth of basketball in an area that had been crying out for it for 15 years.

But – and this is a huge but – the current cast of characters won’t do it. Harrington has no defensive position. Davis can’t stay healthy. Richardson isn’t really a franchise player. Biedrins is going to get a contract and stop developing (and the reason why I’m down on him is simple – there is no way that an NBA player should still be shooting free throws like that 100+ games into his career). Jackson is, well, Stephen Jackson. Say this for them – at least they go down fighting.

After 1-2 more years of the same level, Nelson will move on, and Mullin will keep trying to recapture this false spring – with big men that aren’t quite good enough, with remarkable athletes that don’t know / won’t learn how to play the kind of eat your vegetables defense that inevitably wins in the NBA.

And the crowd will go fallow once more, the lushest field in the Association, just waiting for another Golden Spring.