Harry Kalas remembrance

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On this day when I was lucky enough to write about Vin Scully broadcasting the Dodgers’ home opener it was also a day to remember the also-revered Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas who passed away Monday.

I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 12 years before coming to Los Angeles and I was never a baseball writer and never wanted to be. But shortly into my stay in Philadelphia I was asked to make a road trip with the Phillies to Montreal.

I was nervous and it was a tough Phillies clubhouse and not particularly welcoming to a young woman reporter who wasn’t familiar. Jim Fregosi was the manager and on the first day of the trip, when I meekly tiptoed into the visitor’s clubhouse Fregosi and three other beat writers from major papers who also followed the Phillies were waiting for me.

A story inappropriate to be told here followed and for the rest of the road trip none of the other beat writers spoke a word to me, not even a hello. It was punishment of some sort for writing for the big paper, for intruding on a beat that I didn’t belong to, and just some general jealousy that was part of covering the Phillies for the Inquirer people that lasted several years.

I tell this story because only one Phillies media person was decent to me on that trip and it was Harry Kalas. He had no need to be. I wasn’t ever going to be covering the Phillies. But his kindness, his willingness to say hello and ask if I needed anything, that will always be remembered and it showed the kind of person he was.

Last fall when the Phillies won the World Series I was in our car in which we had recently gotten satellite radio. I listened to Kalas’s call and was thrilled. For him, for the Philly fans who got to listen, for me because it offered the chance to remember Harry’s kindness. Thanks, Harry.

-- Diane Pucin