Harry the K's inspiring legacy

Bill Lyon is a retired Inquirer columnist

There is a palpable rhythm to a baseball game, a leisurely, languorous, measured pace that builds to a peak, then subsides, then repeats, like the slow certainty of the tides.

Its narrative is best served up by a rich, burnished baritone, a voice that evokes Moroccan leather, say, or polished mahogany, a voice that understands this is a game for the long run, not one to be force-fed to the audience but rather allowed to develop on its own, a voice attuned to a sedate unfolding, a voice that understands when to get out of the way and when to step center stage.

A voice like Harry Kalas.

He was taken from us this week past, but he left behind an inspiring legacy, a 73-year example of sustained excellence and unassuming, unaffected modesty. The sport could use more Harry the K's. And the real world most definitely could use more of his gentlemanly kind.

The best practitioners of his craft understand that they serve as an emotional umbilical between their teams and the fans. In the minds of those listeners and viewers, Harry Kalas was the Phillies, just as Merrill Reese is the Eagles, just as the late Gene Hart was the Flyers, and just as Bill Campbell was the voice of baseball and basketball and any number of sporting endeavors in Philadelphia.

The best respect is the unspoken covenant between fan and messenger, a bond of trust and emotional investment. They recognize that the people open their homes to them . . . their homes and very often their hearts.

And, invariably, from time to time they admit in private to a sense of wonderment at their great good fortune.

"I feel like I'm stealing, doing what I love and getting paid for it," Gene Hart said.

His sport was new to Philadelphia, so he was not only narrator but educator, and his delivery, a frenzied nonstop machine-gun play-by-play, was the polar opposite of Harry the K's, and for good reason - the Blade Runners play at a frenetic pace.

Hockey on the radio? It shouldn't work, but Gene made it work, and when you heard "the Flyers are skating left to right on your dial" you swear you saw it.

He was a genuine Renaissance man, a world traveler, a lover of the arts, with a fondness for opera. (One of his proudest moments was as a spear carrier at the Metropolitan Opera.) He also called the races at the now defunct Brandywine Raceway. If life was a buffet, Gene sampled every item, and did so with undisguised gusto.