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Harry Caray was the WGN announcer for the Chicago Cubs from 1982 to 1997, gaining national fame and friendship as the Voice of the Cubs. He was an astute journalist with a deep respect for the players and a love for the fans. Caray suffered a stroke in 1987 but resumed broadcasting for the Cubs in May of that year. He died in 1998, and Cubs players wore patches on their uniform sleeves with a photo of him in memory of the venerable broadcaster.
In 1984, the Chicago Cubs baseball team captured the Eastern Division National League Championship, their first in many, many years. Many names stand out from that winning team, but it wouldn’t have been the same without hearing WGN-TV Cubs announcer Harry Caray yell from the broadcast booth the day the Cubs clinched the title.
Harry Caray was the WGN announcer for the Cubs from 1982 to 1997. Although he spent 25 years as the Cardinals announcer in St. Louis, Missouri, he gained national fame and friendship as the Voice of the Cubs. As “superstations” like Atlanta’s WGN and WTBS became available on cable systems nationally and then internationally, a whole new audience materialized for these stations. The Atlanta Braves baseball team may have dubbed themselves “America’s Team,” but with Harry Caray as the voice, the Chicago Cubs arguably had more claim to the title.
Caray was born Harry Carabina in 1914 to an impoverished Romanian-Italian family in St. Louis, Missouri. He started broadcasting for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1945 and held that job until 1969. He went to Oakland, California to broadcast for the Oakland A’s for one year, and then to Chicago in 1971 as Voice of the White Sox .
When Harry Caray arrived at Chicago’s Northside in 1982 and began his career with WGN and the Cubs, he brought with him his joie de vivre and reputation as a “character.” Cubs fans immediately identified with his happy, joyful ways and his devotion to their team. Still, Harry Caray was an astute journalist, with an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and a deep respect for the players who behaved with class and played hard every day. He was a good interviewer and wrote and presented editorials with sincerity and skill.
While other teams completely remodeled their parks, building multimillion-dollar stadiums, Caray felt at home at Wrigley Field, built in 1914, with its ivy-covered walls. The stadium didn’t even have lights until August 9, 1988. It’s the second oldest park still in use and the players still hit home runs literally outside the park, on Sheffield or Waveland Avenues, if the wind blows ‘out’ that day. Caray liked former Cub Ernie Banks’ nickname “The Friendly Confines” for Wrigley Field and used it often. The field, with its authentically nostalgic atmosphere, matched Caray’s disdain for some of the modern advances in baseball and was the perfect setting to lead the crowd in chanting “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” into the seventh inning. He had done the same at Comiskey Park to White Sox fans, but those games weren’t nationally televised.
Harry Caray has not only demonstrated his love for baseball, but for the fans as well. No matter what city he and longtime broadcast partner Steve Stone called games in, he always received correspondence from Cubs fans and read most, if not all, of the air. People were always sending little notes to the broadcast booth, just letting the world know that people in every town were Cubs fans. Like a small-town broadcaster of yesteryear, he read greetings and sent birthday, anniversary, and even bar mitzvah wishes during each game. He was also known for his exclamations such as “Holy Cow!” and “Could…could be…it is! A home run!” and sweetest of all, “Pups win! The puppies win!” Cubs fans across the United States would cheer for the “Holy Cow” and “Cubs Win!” banners and placards during matches, knowing that all who watched would understand the meaning.
Harry Caray suffered a stroke in February 1987, but refused to allow it to halt his career. He overcame incredible odds to resume broadcasting for the Cubs in May of that year. He was honored with the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford Frick Award in 1988 for his contributions to baseball.
Caray’s broadcasting skills deteriorated in the last two or three years of his career and he became comedy fodder. However, he was such a beloved figure that WGN allowed him to continue, until he retired due to increasingly serious health problems in 1997.
Harry Caray died in 1998 of a heart attack, after a series of strokes. That season, Cubs players wore patches on their uniform sleeves with a photo of him, in memory of the venerable broadcaster. When he died, editorial cartoonists across the country paid their respects and his obituary was national news. These days, a guest still leads the crowd in singing his song in the seventh inning at Wrigley, and his image still beams from his Chicago-area restaurants.
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