Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Harry Caray, the Cubs’ legendary announcer for the last 16 of his 53 years in the booth, remained hospitalized early Monday in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in critical but stable condition after collapsing at a nightclub Saturday night.
Caray, 78, was rushed to Eisenhower Medical Center at 10:10 p.m. Saturday from Basin Street West nightclub, where he had a Valentine’s Day dinner with his wife, Dutchie.
Bill Wills, a consultant to WGN radio and TV and Caray publicist and family friend, said early Monday that the broadcaster was undergoing tests because of “a sudden change in his heart rhythm, which affected his circulation.”
Wills, who joined the family at the hospital, said Caray has moved his legs although he remains unconscious, and doctors do not think he suffered a stroke. Wills said he did not know if the heart irregularity was related to Caray’s falling at the club.
Caray was leaning on a table as he and wife prepared to leave the club “when the table top gave way and he fell,” said Corey Newell of Mundelein, Caray’s son-in-law. “The table top hit him on the head. That knocked him unconscious.”
Newell said he packed his bags to fly to the hospital Sunday, “but I talked to the family and they said his condition was stable, so there’s no dire concern yet. He was still unconscious, but breathing on his own. We took that as a good sign.”
Newell co-owned and managed the recently sold Harry Caray’s Restaurant in Wheeling. He said restaurants sometimes create banquet tables with table tops placed over smaller tables and surmised that Caray might have leaned on such a table.
Caray was felled on the inaugural day of spring training. Cubs pitchers and catchers, the first to report to their Mesa, Ariz., camp, signed a get-well card Sunday for Caray.
Pitcher Kevin Foster, an Evanston native, recalled a big part of growing up as a Cubs fan was watching Caray lead the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.
“As a player, I enjoy going out on the top step and watching him sing now,” Foster said.
Fans come to Wrigley Field for the game, “but they also come for Harry Caray,” Foster said. “He doesn’t just do his job. He loves to mingle with the fans and players.”
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“He is a part of baseball, part of the game,” said newly acquired Cubs relief pitcher Rod Beck. “Good things are supposed to happen to good people, so hopefully he’ll recover soon.”
Cubs manager Jim Riggleman, who has done a daily pregame show with Caray, praised him for being “very good to me” during the Cubs’ recent struggles.
“Harry has a genuine love for the game. He loves the Cubs, but first and foremost, he loves the game,” Riggleman said. “And that comes across in his delivery of the game. . . . I hope he’s back for Opening Day.”
Caray’s first scheduled Cubs telecast on WGN-Ch. 9 this season is a March 8 exhibition game against the Oakland Athletics. Channel 9 station manager Jim Zerwekh said Caray has talked recently about doing a few selected road games, in Atlanta and St. Louis, besides home games.
He had stopped going on the road last season, citing the grind of a 162-game season. He suffered a stroke in this same week of February 1987, but returned to the booth in the second month of the regular season. In June 1994, he collapsed in the heat of a Miami day and was hospitalized with facial cuts and bruises. Again, he returned to the booth, missing only a few games.
He has struggled with some speech difficulty and pronunciation problems on-air since the stroke, particularly in recent years. But it has not muddled his bond with fans.
Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar counts himself among them. “Harry’s got a lot of spirit, and that’s going to be important,” Edgar said Sunday. “The best thing going is we’re getting close to Opening Day. I can’t imagine him not being around for Opening Day.”
Zerwekh said WGN officials “haven’t thought about how we’re going to cover” Caray’s absence, however long it might be. He said Wayne Larrivee, Chip Caray and Steve Stone are in place. Josh Lewin, whose Cubs announcing responsibilities have been cut back, reportedly is set to move to Fox Sports Detroit.
Harry Caray is “a Chicago icon and an important person not only for the Chicago Cubs but for WGN-TV and Radio,” Zerwekh said.
Chip Caray was signed by WGN in December to join his grandfather in the TV booth this season. The ballclub announced last month it would honor Harry Caray with a commemorative day at Wrigley Field this season.
“People around here are very concerned, and we wish him the best,” catcher Scott Servais said at the Cubs’ training site. “It’s kind of ironic, now that he gets a chance to work with his grandson and this happens.”
“As friends and fans of Harry Caray’s we are obviously concerned for his well being and hope for the best,” said WGN-TV General Manager Peter Walker.
That sentiment was echoed at Caray’s restaurant at 33 W. Kinzie St., where worried fans called throughout the day and customers saluted the broadcaster as a fellow fan.
“His style is genuine,” said Brian White, 38, of Chatham, adding that Caray “is very knowledgeable about baseball.”
“For me, it’s hot dogs, apple pie and Harry Caray,” said Tim Murphy, 37, of Springfield. “It didn’t matter whether the Cubs were winning or losing, when he did the seventh-inning stretch, it was great.`”
And, as he did at the ballpark, he would often lead those at his restaurant in raucous song, hopping atop a crate. But first, he would kiss all the female bartenders, said one of them, Sally Landman. She said Caray came into his establishment three times a week during baseball season.
One of Caray’s notable peers of more recent vintage, Bob Costas, was in Chicago Sunday to call the Bulls-Detroit Pistons game.
“He’s known now as a personality, but he was both a great personality and a great broadcaster at his peak,” Costas said of Caray.
While those who heard Caray three or four decades ago in St. Louis are likely the most appreciative of his technical skills and encyclopedic knowledge, Costas said, “Even if you only knew him from his Cubs days, he was great.
“When he sings `Take Me Out to the Ballgame,’ it reminds people of why it can still be fun, or why it was fun, instead of thinking of some guy making $5 million a year and complaining about it.”
Steve Stone, who has known Caray as a Cubs broadcast partner for the past 16 years, noted that the WGN booth started the 1987 season without Caray. “We’d hate to do it this time,” Stone said, adding that he expects to see Caray come back. “Harry is the toughest human being I’ve ever known.”
There may have been managers, owners, players and general managers who didn’t like Caray, “but the fans have always loved him,” Stone said. “That’s why he’ll always have a job. That’s his signature.”
That, and a glossary of beloved Harry-isms well beyond the one distinctive phrase that so many broadcasters seek to notch as their identity:
“Holy cow!” “I might be, it could be, it is. A home run!” “Paaahhhhpped it up!” “That wouldn’t be a home run in a phone booth.” “Strruck him out on a TERR-ible pitch.”
Curt Smith, who has written extensively on sportscasters, puts Caray among the elite of baseball broadcasters.
“He’s an original. He’s the Jackie Gleason of baseball broadcasting. No one is more beloved,” Smith said. “He understands more than anyone else what baseball is. And that’s fun.
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“It comes at you as a friend, a companion. It’s a daily fact of life during the season, not an event. He expresses all of that to his audience.
“What he’s done is remarkable,” Smith said. “He was regionally beloved as a Cardinals announcer. Now, he’s a national icon with the Cubs. . . . And he’s cable TV’s first superstar.”