Harry Caray learns St. Louis Cardinals are giving him the boot

[my2¢]

Below is audio of Harry Caray while working last game of season in 1969 as he learns from media that his 25 years as the Cardinals broadcaster are coming to an end. Came across this over the weekend and had never heard it before. As kids when the atmosphere was just right. we'd listen to baseball games on stations normally too distant to be pulled by the transistor radio.

 

[log cabin republican]

I'm on a baseball forum with an ongoing thread about favorite & disliked broadcasters. There are two guys from Indianapolis who are big Chicago Cubs fans. They must be really old because they insist that Harry always bled Cardinal red. That led me to think about this so-called rivalry between Saint Louis and Chicago.

That rivalry was supposed to be big because that's the reason the Cardinals were put in the Eastern Division. But was it really a rivalry? Or just a dumb Illinois thing? People try to pretend that the Yanks-Red Sox was always a big rivalry, but I don't see it. I doubt the Yanks fans saw it that way. The Red Sox were generally big losers until recently. And still, I don't call that a rivalry.

Ohio State-Michigan. Now there's a rivalry.

 

[Plagerist]

I'm on a baseball forum with an ongoing thread about favorite & disliked broadcasters. There are two guys from Indianapolis who are big Chicago Cubs fans. They must be really old because they insist that Harry always bled Cardinal red. That led me to think about this so-called rivalry between Saint Louis and Chicago.

That rivalry was supposed to be big because that's the reason the Cardinals were put in the Eastern Division. But was it really a rivalry? Or just a dumb Illinois thing? People try to pretend that the Yanks-Red Sox was always a big rivalry, but I don't see it. I doubt the Yanks fans saw it that way. The Red Sox were generally big losers until recently. And still, I don't call that a rivalry.

Ohio State-Michigan. Now there's a rivalry.

I don't really see any great MLB rivalries. Flyers-Devils was supposed to be this big rivalry. I never saw it when I lived there, but I'm big on the NHL. The Rangers-Devils games were supposed to be nasty, but I don't know.

Bucks-Michigan. I would agree, of course. Probably the best in sports. Duke_UNC is decent. A lot of them are contrived, such as The Civil War in Oregon. Kinda lame.

 

[ice man]

That's a helluva way to get fired. I have always been fired in person.

 

[my2¢]

The best baseball rivalry that I've experienced was that between the National and American League before inter-league play came about. There was something special about the All-Star Game back then, now that rivalry doesn't much seem to exist.

While I knew of Caray's time in St Louis and Chicago, first with the Sox and then the Cubs, I hadn't known he spent a year in Oakland with the A's in-between. I grew up listening to the Indians, but when the Tribe wasn't playing I often enjoyed tuning in WJR and catching Ernie Harwell call a Tigers game. After moving to Arizona and before the Diamondbacks came about local radio called the Dodgers games. So I got to hear Vin Scully quite a bit.

It sure was a heck of a way to learn about getting the boot. One similar firing that occurred a bit before my time was the firing of Julian La Rosa by TV and radio show host Arthur Godfrey. Growing up I knew there was something mysterious that shadowed Godfrey, how his popularity sort of stumbled. It wasn't until I saw a YouTube video of the on-air firing of La Rosa that I came to see what it was all about.

 

[22lcidw]

I'm on a baseball forum with an ongoing thread about favorite & disliked broadcasters. There are two guys from Indianapolis who are big Chicago Cubs fans. They must be really old because they insist that Harry always bled Cardinal red. That led me to think about this so-called rivalry between Saint Louis and Chicago.

That rivalry was supposed to be big because that's the reason the Cardinals were put in the Eastern Division. But was it really a rivalry? Or just a dumb Illinois thing? People try to pretend that the Yanks-Red Sox was always a big rivalry, but I don't see it. I doubt the Yanks fans saw it that way. The Red Sox were generally big losers until recently. And still, I don't call that a rivalry.

Ohio State-Michigan. Now there's a rivalry.

From my understanding when the leagues went to east and West divisions, the Cubs were not willing to do so unless they were in the East. It was about the starting time of games. Atlanta and Cincinnati geographically should have been in the East.

 

[odanny]

The Cards-Cubs have always been a rivalry, the problem is that it has always been a one sided rivalry, as the Cubs are so bad, and the Cardinals have been so good. The biggest rivalry in baseball is Dodgers-Giants, but the one everyone likes to see is Yankees-Red Sox. Those the three biggest rivalries in MLB.