George Kell: A Detroit Legend Passes

George Kell

1922 - 2009

Story of one great remembering another great can be found here.

Growing up in Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s, there wasn't a lot to be thrilled about. As a kid having never lived anywhere else, you really didn't know the difference. Then again, as a kid I mean how much more would you be doing—short of surfing.  I suppose we had just as much to do as any other city kids across the country...we just had to watch out for bullets a little bit more.

One of the best things we had, and this is something I didn't realize until I was an adult, was our baseball stadium and our announcers. I still to this day remember sitting in Tiger Stadium—absolutely almost on top of the players—and watching the likes of Allen Trammel, Lou Whitaker, Lance Parish, Jack Morris, and Kirk Gibson do their thing.

And we are talking close—like touch the players close. I remember sitting along the first-base line when Gibson hit a ball over the right-field roof and saw the ball go out of the park—not on a screen but to be close enough to see the actual ball.

I have always loved Fenway Park in Boston, and when people ask me what is so great about Fenway, one of the answers I always give is that it comes the closest to what Tiger Stadium was.

When not going to games—which, if we were lucky, we would make it to three a year—we would listen to the games on TV and radio. So I ended up listening to the likes of Ernie Harwell and George Kell, who arguably, as announcers, are among the 10 best that ever called the games.

I am too young to ever have seen Kell play, but the images, sounds, and memories of Tiger Stadium and the voices of George Kell and Ernie Harwell define baseball for me and millions of other fans.

Originally Posted at THE HOME OF THE DOODLE

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