From WWJ.com: Former Detroit Tigers and Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell has been diagnosed with cancer. The 91-year old Harwell was hospitalized for a few days last month for treatment of an obstructed bile duct. He has told friends there is a tumor in the area of the bile duct. Doctors have told him it is incurable and after meeting with his family and doctors he decided against surgery or other treatment.
I spent a few years in the "North Country" (Flint, Saginaw, and St. Joseph-Benton Harbor) and wherever I went there, Ernie Harwell was the God of baseball, much as Jack Buck was here.
While I was in Saginaw (mid-1970's), another DJ and I, along with our ladies, drove down to the decrepit old Tiger Stadium for the home opener. It was late-Winter cold and rainy, but the game went on, because that's how Detroit baseball rolls. Our seats were barely under cover and the wind blew the rain and sleet in on us.
Ric Allen and I excused ourselves along about the seventh inning stretch (we had been drinking the Stroh's, after all) and found our way to the worst-maintained mens' room in any sports park on Earth. But it had a TV and a heater and we stayed there for the rest of the game.
By the time we returned to our seats, the ladies were very wet, very cold and very angry. The long ride back to Saginaw was, to coin a phrase, frosty.
I imagine this had something to do with the divorce the first Mrs. Anderson filed in the mid-'80's. She never could just let it go...
