Bill Conlin: Remembering Kalas, a heavenly voice

I was a rookie beat writer in 1966 when a slender kid in a golf outfit approached me at the Astrodome batting cage. "Hi, I'm Harry Kalas, one of the broadcast crew," he said. I shook hands and told him who I was. He looked no more than 16 years old, so I figured he had won one of those high-school broadcast competitions and was there to do his inning. Harry was actually 30. I'm afraid I big-timed him a little that day.

Who knew that 5 years later, I would be conducting a Daily News reader poll asking who fans wanted in the radio booth, By Saam or Bill Campbell. Soupy had been unceremoniously dumped when Harry's good friend from Houston, Phils veep Bill Giles, persuaded Bob Carpenter to replace Campbell with this young voice from the Astros.

Campbell won in a landslide. But it was one of those hissing-up-a-rope deals that reflected public opinion while ignoring reality. And the reality was, By Saam and Atlantic Refining, the Phillies' major sponsor, were in a death-do-us-part arrangement.

So Harry had the anvil of being a total unknown replacing an extremely popular broadcaster. It took him about two mellifluous sentences to turn it around. And about two hilarious exchanges with His Whiteness.

One classic from among hundreds - this one in St. Louis on a postcard Sunday afternoon. The night before, after a long dinner hour at a riverboat restaurant moored adjacent to the famed Gateway Arch, Harry found it necessary to take a brief nap in the grass against one of the massive pillars of Saarinen's masterpiece. He was wearing a white suit, which became so grass-stained it had to be trashed.

(Harry, talking as the camera pans to a wide shot of the Arch beyond the Busch Stadium stands:) "There's the famed Saarinen Arch, the Gateway to the West." (Whitey comments:) "Harry, I know you've never been up in that Arch." (Long pause) "But have you ever been under it?" It was a long time before Harry could stop laughing enough to force out something like, "Not recently . . . "

There is a small landscaped tribute to Rich Ashburn at the Shipwatch Yacht and Tennis Club, where he was a condo owner from 1986 until his death. He was a fixture at the tennis club and the members planted a small palm tree surrounded by beds of bright flowers with a simple engraved tablet in front. It simply said "Rich Ashburn, Member" with the date of his death. Another recently deceased member, Richard Havener, shared the simple memorial.

On Whitey's birthday, March 19, Harry would come to Shipwatch each year to lead some of his friends and colleagues in a brief prayer.

And I think he might have said this yesterday when Harry took him by a stroke, curling in a 20- footer. After muttering, "Golden Years, my ass," of course:

"Thanks for all the kind words on my birthday every year. But do you mean to tell me a man who has his own plaque in Cooperstown didn't rate his own monument at Shipwatch?"

And Harry would have laughed the mellow laugh that punctuated millions of words spoken to you - and only you - during a hectic life he turned into an oasis for millions of his closest friends. *

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For recent columns, go to http://go.philly.com/conlin.