Having hit rock bottom the year before with 106 losses and total home attendance of just 495,355, the Chicago White Sox opened their season on April 7, 1971, with new uniforms keyed to the color red, a new manager in Chuck Tanner and a new radio announcer.
It might be, it could be, it was … Harry Caray.
Caray, then 57 despite claiming to be younger, made his regular-season debut with the Sox 50 years ago in Oakland, the same place he ended the 1970 season after a fitful year covering the Athletics and clashing with owner Charlie Finley, broadcast partner Monte Moore and others (although Caray later said he and Finley got along).
This was not uncommon for Caray, who landed in Northern California after a run in St. Louis from 1945 to 1969 as announcer for the Cardinals and, for a time, the Browns. His time ended abruptly when Caray ran afoul of Cardinals leadership.
There would be conflicts during his 11 seasons with the White Sox, too, which ultimately drove him across town to become the voice of the Cubs, something of a national folk hero and, at the end, a caricature.
Like the Cardinals, Browns and A’s, the White Sox got Caray at the height of his powers. But it speaks to his charisma and skill that he would be warmly embraced by Wrigley Field fans who in 1969 would chant, “Harry Caray, quite contrary, how does your ego grow?”
Here are five stories about his time on Chicago’s South Side.
1. Harry Caray’s first three regular-season games were unusual.
Curiously enough, the Athletics and White Sox opened the 1971 season with a doubleheader.
The Sox swept the A’s — which was even more unusual for a team that won just 56 games in 1970 — then headed home to host the Minnesota Twins on Good Friday. Paid attendance was 43,253, the largest home-opener crowd in Sox history to that point.
The Twins scored two in the eighth to tie the game at 2-2. But Rich Morales led off the bottom of the ninth for the Sox with a single off Ron Perranoski, went to second on reliever Vincente Romo’s sacrifice bunt and reached third on a wild pitch.
BeeBee Richard struck out looking, which brought Rich McKinney to the plate, pinch-hitting for Jay Johnstone with two outs.
“Perranoski from the belt … the pitch … here it is,” Caray said in what would become a familiar cadence for Chicago baseball fans. “Base hit! Left field! Sox win! Sox win! Holy cow! The White Sox win!”
The Sox then returned to form, losing seven in a row.
2. It was very difficult to hear Caray’s Sox broadcasts early on.
Powerful WMAQ-AM dropped the Sox after the 1970 season, with announcers Bob Elson (the team’s lead announcer since 1946) and Red Rush leaving town to replace Caray in Oakland.
None of the big Chicago radio stations wanted the team, so the Sox wound up airing on a weak ad hoc network of four FM stations and one AM outlet outside the city. Each was paid $25 a game to carry the Sox broadcasts, and the team sold its own advertising, keeping the revenue, according to Don Zminda’s 2019 biography, “The Legendary Harry Caray: Baseball’s Greatest Salesman.”
The stations were Evanston’s WEAW-FM, Joliet’s WJOL-FM, Dundee’s WVTV-FM, Lansing’s WLNR-FM and La Grange’s WTAQ-AM. Caray would complain no one could hear his broadcasts, a gripe he would reprise when he moved primarily to TV and WSNS-Ch. 44 in 1973.
Caray’s first broadcast partner with the Sox was Ralph Faucher, who happened to be WTAQ’s sales director and would occasionally broadcast high school football and basketball games.
Weak signals and all, Caray and the Sox nevertheless were a draw. After two seasons of Caray calling the action, Sox radio broadcasts were back on WMAQ.
3. The White Sox couldn’t afford to match what Caray made in Oakland.
Because the cash-strapped Sox couldn’t afford to pay Caray what he wanted, he reached an unusual deal with the team. For every 100,000 in paid attendance over 600,000, he would get a $10,000 bonus on his base pay of $50,000. So when he was encouraging fans in the area to drop in, he had incentive.
The Sox finished 79-83 that first year and drew 833,891, so Caray made a total of $70,000 — the equivalent of roughly $450,000 today.
4. Imagine if Harry had become the Cincinnati kid.
Before he was named the Sox announcer, there was a rumor that Caray might be up for an opening with the Cincinnati Reds.
It’s not clear if there was anything to it, according to Zminda. Those were the days of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Tony Perez and the Big Red Machine, so it would have been a good job.
The Reds wound up hiring the 26-year-old voice of the minor-league Hawaii Islanders, a fellow named Al Michaels.
5. Caray used to absolutely torch players, management and owners.
Caray famously rode players such as Ken Boyer in St. Louis. When he was in Oakland, he called Reggie Jackson a flash in the pan. Bill Melton and Dick Allen were among the targets of his wrath with the Sox, and he was no fan of manager Tanner.
Sox owner John Allyn believed Caray’s criticism was hurting the team and went on TV after the 1975 season to announce, “If I own the club next year, Harry won’t be with us,” which led to Caray calling Allyn “a stupid man.”
“Why would he fire me? I’m the only thing fans have to talk about,” Caray told the Tribune. “If there are any players who don’t like me, it’s only the ones who had lousy seasons — Bill Melton, Ken Henderson and maybe Wilbur Wood. They weren’t producing and I said so. Do you think the fans want something else?”
Caray got the last laugh when Allyn sold the team to Bill Veeck, who brought Caray back for the 1976 season and beyond. It was on Veeck’s watch that Caray, accompanied by organist Nancy Faust, began leading fans in singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch at Comiskey Park.
Veeck sold the Sox to a group led by Jerry Reinsdorf in 1981, and Caray stayed around for another season. But with the team set to launch its own pay-TV channel and Jack Brickhouse backing away as primary Cubs announcer, Caray jumped to the North Side and WGN’s national cable platform.
The Sox wasted little time after Caray’s departure in announcing the hiring of Hawk Harrelson and Don Drysdale as announcers. Caray remained with the Cubs until his death in February 1998.
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