Day 36: The Bud Man

     Outside of Wrigley Field stands four statues.  One of those statues is of the larger-than-life broadcaster Harry Caray.  Harry was born in 1914 in St. Louis.  After a period of time working his way up the broadcasting ranks(including stops in Joliet and Kalamazoo, Michigan), he started calling games for the St. Louis cardinals in 1945.  He proceeded to call their games for the next 24 seasons, until he was ultimately fired after the 1969 season(allegedly due to an affair that he was having with the daughter-in-law of the owner of the Cardinals).  Regardless, he moved on and spent the 1970 season broadcasting for the Oakland Athletics.  After one year of that, he moved on to Chicago, where he would go on to cement his legacy with the...White Sox?

     Yup, he called Sox games for 10 seasons, a time in which his partying became legendary(he acquired the nickname "Mayor of Rush Street" during this time), as well as his singing(it was through a Bill Veeck prank that Caray's treatment of Take Me Out to the Ballgame became famous).  In 1979, Caray was a spectator to one of the craziest events in White Sox history: Disco Demolition Night.(this will be discussed at length in a future entry, but suffice it to say that the following equation holds true: Steve Dahl+Disco Records+Intoxicated Fans=Chaos).  After the 1981 season, the owners of the White Sox were toying with the idea of moving televised coverage to a new pay-TV venture called SportsVision.  Caray balked at this idea.  Coincidentally, Jack Brickhouse was nearing the end of 33 years covering the Chicago Cubs.  The Cubs needed a new broadcaster, Caray didn't like the way things were going on the South Side, it seemed to be a perfectly natural fit.
 
     So, the 1982 season dawned with Harry Caray calling from the booth.  Of course, when you consider that the Cardinals and the White Sox are the two biggest rivals of the Cubs and that Caray spent 35 years calling games for them(along with the fact that the '82 and '83 teams were not that good), there was a bit of an acclimation period.  But once 1984 rolled around, the Cubs started winning, and all of Chicago(and soon the country) fell in love with Harry. Because the Cubs were broadcast on WGN nationally, Harry soon developed a following spanning the entire nation.  It was also during this time where Harry started doing Budweiser commercials, where he proclaimed that he was a "Cubs Fan and a Bud Man".  Additionally, he brought his Seventh-Inning Stretch tradition with him to Wrigley.  Harry would go on to call games in the Cubs booth through the 1997 season.

     In February of 1998, Caray had a heart attack and died. The Cubs proceeded to have many remembrances of him in the 1998 season.  One of the most lasting tributes has been the Guest Conductor that the Cubs have come out for every home game and sing the stretch like Harry Caray did.  Another annual tribute is the Worldwide Toast to Harry Caray, an annual tradition that we'll be talking more about soon.  For now though, the next time that you crack open a Bud, just remember Harry.