Harry Caray and the Summer of '84

Arizona Daily Wildcat Tom Collins

It was a bright, dusty, Dairy Queen summer in Chicago's south suburbs, all dirt bikes and Ghost in the Graveyard. It was Matteson-Olympia Fields Little League baseball season and I was playing third base for the Athletics, but away from the fields I was never without my mesh-backed, McDonald's-meal Cubs cap.

Afternoons were hot. My friend Jeff and I sought shade after home run derby and TV to waste the day. There were always Cub games.

There was always Harry Caray.

In 1984, the Cubs had destiny written all over their uniforms. They were refugees from other dynasties, washed up Phillies and Dodgers. It was a team of Rick Sutcliffes and Ron Ceys, Gary Mathews and Bobby Derniers.

It was a team with a new Ernie Banks, a National League's Cal Ripken, Jr.- Ryne Sandberg. Man, he was everybody's All-American, a guy who spoke with his bat and his glove. Like this kid Bucky on my little league team, who just played hard and never talked. Best second baseman in the league.

Jeff and I loved Ryne and so did Harry. Harry was a bigger fan. Harry was the biggest fan. He knew that this was it.

Harry Caray was not the poet-cum-announcer that Vin Scully is. When he talked about Sandberg his speech wasn't overflowing with epic similes and "hero with a thousand faces" references. No, Harry talked like us and like our fathers talked about Ron Santo or Hank Aaron. He talked the way our fathers' fathers did about the kid from the neighborhood who was playing minor league ball in Macon. Harry Caray was a little-league dad for a whole city and Ryne Sandberg was its No. 1 son.

Just like Jeff, who spent that summer beating me soundly at home run derby. Jeff was a switch hitter at the age of 9 - he could knock the cover off a tennis ball, could play all nine positions. He was a year older than me, played in the Sandy Koufax league and if anyone from Olympia Fields was going to make it, Jeff was the guy.

Jeff and I had been playing ball together for as long as I could remember, since whenever we first got mitts. Every year he got better, a perennial all-star.

That summer after Harry sang "Take me out to the ball game" and shouted "Cubs win!" with the bravado of a drunken uncle, we were in the backyard again, pretending. Adjusting our batting gloves like Bob Dernier, or practicing the wrist-dropping wind-up of Rick Sutcliffe, the strut of Thad Bosley.

Things change.

At the end of the summer of 1984, we moved north to Lombard, Illinois and my baseball career tapered off until I was lucky to get a shot at right field. I began to wonder if I was better off figuring batting averages than shagging fungos. Baseball itself was too much Albert Belle and Jack McDowell. And who wants to watch a team whose games are called by Skip Caray.

The Cubs won their division. Ryne Sandberg was MVP, Rick Sutcliffe won the Cy Young and they got screwed out of the World Series.

See, there was a reason the Cubs were my team. They played day games when the Sox were on after bedtime half of the time. But there is no money in nationally broadcast day games, so the league took their home field advantage away, gave it to the San Diego Padres.

The city was crushed.

I don't know if it was the letdown, but Harry's speech started to slur earlier in the game after that, seemed like the "Bud Man" was starting to lose control. Then he had that first stroke and he never was the same. He would call Mark Grace, Leon Durham.

A couple of years ago I decided to make a concerted effort to watch more Cubs games. After all, Sandberg had come back from retirement and Sammy Sosa was supposed to be the new Ron Santo. This could be the year, I figured. But Harry was all but incomprehensible. Steve Stone, the color commentator, was uncomfortable on the air, like an embarrassed son with a senile father. Harry deserved better, but no one convinced him to quit.

He died Wednesday at the age of 83.

Jeff didn't make it to big leagues, didn't make it to college ball.

I haven't seen him in 10 years, though I hear he has a kid and works in a casino somewhere in Illinois. Who knows what happened to Bucky?

Last month, I went back to the Olympia Fields for another friend of mine's memorial service. The little league field was covered with snow. It was smaller, diminished, in the barren light of a January morning.

That yard on Ionia Drive where Jeff and I swatted tennis balls was tired, the jungle gym gone.

Ryne Sandberg has re-retired.

This week, spring training kicks off and the Cubs will be in Mesa. Harry Caray is still dead.

Tom Collins is editor in chief of the Arizona Daily Wildcat.