On the recordMay 5, 2010
I wish to start with a poem in honor of Ernie Harwell, who passed away yesterday. This is the way, for decade after decade, the great broadcaster of the Detroit Tigers started when the first game of the season came along. For, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the Earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Well, for four decades a man named Ernie Harwell would recite those words. He would recite them at the beginning of the first baseball broadcast of spring training, and those are the words that would tell our people the long, cold winter was over. Ernie was the radio voice of the Detroit Tigers for 42 years. During that time, there may have been no Michiganian more universally beloved. Our State mourns today at his passing yesterday evening, after a long battle with cancer. He fought that battle with the grace and good humor and the wisdom Michigan had come to expect and even depend on from a man we came to know and love. This gentlemanly Georgian adopted our team and he adopted our State as his own, as did his family. His career would have been worthy had he done nothing more than bring us the sound of summer over the radio, recounting the Tigers' ups and downs with professionalism and wit, as he did for all those years. Without making a show of it, Ernie Harwell taught us in his work and his life the value of kindness and respect.
