What a week it's been. Just seven days ago Harry Kalas was still alive and all was right with the world. It seems so long ago. This has been a week of genuine grief -- not at his passing so much as what he meant to us and what we'll never have again. As I write this the Phillies have been on a three game losing streak at home against the San Diego freakin' Padres and I can't even register indignation. I feel like the fans at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday night who gave Brad Lidge a standing ovation when he was pulled from the game after he had blown his first save in 49 games and then lost the game outright by giving up four runs in the ninth inning. It just didn't seem important enough to get angry about. I'm too filled up with appreciation for the opportunity to have heard Harry all these years and, yes, to have been a Phillies fan all my life. It's weird the perspective that death gives life.
And almost on cue last week after Harry Kalas left us, there were a number of sudden deaths of famous sports figures, the clostest to Philadelphia, ironically, being a death that took place in Hawaii where the redoubtable voice of Les Keiter was silenced after 89 years. Most of you are too young to remember Les Keiter, who was the voice of the Big Five broadcasts back in the day when the Big Five was, well, bigger. This was the 1960's and Les Keiter was the man who labled what happened inside the Palestra during a Big Five double header as "pandemonium" which is a big word that everyone understands even though it doesn't have the je nais se qua of other more famous Keiterisms such as baskketball shots he refered to as "in again out again Finnigan" or a three-pointer before their was such a thing that Les called "a ring tailed howitzer."
I have no idea what that meant, but in it's time Keiter's "ring tailed howitzer" was as famous as Kalas's "Outta Here!" That they died within days of each other is another Philaelphia story that started or ended in Hawaii. Harry Kalas's early career included a stint as the broadcaster of the University of Hawaii's football team. He was rememebered on a Hawaiian TV news show last week as a diligent young broadcaster who learned to pronounce the difficult name of the local Hawaaian players as easily as he pronounced Shane Victorino. Les Keiter left Philadelphia to move to Hawaii in the early 1970's where he became the "voice" of island sports for the next three decades. Losing Kalas and Keiter on the same week six thousand miles apart seems. . . what's the word I'm looking for? I suppose "perfect" will have to do.
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