"Wheels, smoking a cigar is like falling in love," Kalas said that day, echoing an old Winston Churchill quote. "You are first attracted to its shape. You stay with it for its flavor. But always remember: Never, never, never let the flame go out."
Yesterday, at 1:20 p.m. at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, the flame went out.
Harry Kalas, whose voice served as the backdrop for millions of lives, collapsed in a broadcast booth at Nationals Park and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. He was 73.
Kalas is survived not only by wife Eileen and sons Todd, Brad and Kane, but by legions of baseball fans who spent all or part of the previous 38 seasons listening to his smooth baritone and iconic home-run calls. Funeral arrangements are pending.
"We lost our voice today," said a visibly shaken team president David Montgomery, before the Phillies' 9-8 win over the Nationals.
It was a voice that was 6 decades in the making.
Born on March 26, 1936, in Chicago, Kalas grew up in the sleepy town of Naperville, Ill., listening to radio broadcasts of Cubs, White Sox and Cardinals games. But the Washington Senators were his true love, thanks to a chance encounter with Delaware County native Mickey Vernon before a game against the White Sox at Comiskey Park. A 10-year-old Kalas and his father were sitting behind the visitor's dugout when Vernon spotted him in the crowd, picked him up, and brought him into the Senators' dugout.
"Thus began my love of baseball and the Washington Senators," Kalas, a 2002 Hall of Fame inductee as winner of the Ford C. Frick Award, once said when relaying the story.
His love affair with broadcasting did not begin until his freshman year at Cornell College in Iowa, when a blind speech professor named Walt Stromer encouraged him to pursue the craft. Kalas obliged, and spent the rest of his college days pursuing a future in radio.
