All the sorrow turned to laughter Friday at Holy Name Cathedral, where fur coats and hard-hats alike gathered to honor a common friend, Harry Caray.
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It was time to say goodbye to this icon whose face is recognized around the world, yet whose name and number are in the phone book. Harry preferred to have an unlisted age, but the rest of him was pretty much part of the public domain.
Maybe that’s why he transcended his occupation, which was broadcasting, and his avocation, which was spreading the gospel of joy, even to life’s darkest corners.
Friday could have been a downer. Nobody sold baseball or beer better than Harry, but on Friday in God’s house, he might as well have had the Kleenex concession too. Many of us never saw Harry with his eyes closed. Now, when they brought him in, the casket was closed.
We shall not see Harry, or anyone quite like Harry, again. A daunting thought. Ashes to ashes. Even Harry couldn’t talk his way out of this jam by spelling death backward, couldn’t make a final trip to the bleachers for a cold one on a hot afternoon, couldn’t urge us to wait till tomorrow.
But Harry surely would have approved of this lineup. Rev. John Smyth of Maryville Academy set the tone, reminding us that Harry left nothing on the table when he checked out except a generous tip. Jim Dowdle of Tribune Co., who hired Harry for the Cubs, was terrific, and so was Mike Roarty, up from St. Louis, where the legend of Harry began.
Harry would have loved that, being hailed by a Budweiser baron in church.
And then there was Pete Vonachen, who never was able to say this much with Harry in the same room. They were bookends, with many chapters in between, but while Pete sincerely celebrated his pal, Pete also tread cautiously on this matter of resurrection.
Pete, too, was given but one life to live, and so much of it had been attached to Harry’s, there would be so little left to donate toward another whirl. Pete’s prayer, then, was that Harry rest in peace while those of us he touched just rest, period.
Gov. Jim Edgar was there, and Mayor Richard Daley, and ballplayers, active and retired. Mike Ditka, a man of Harry’s spirit, wouldn’t have missed it. Nor Steve Stone, such a pro as Harry’s sidekick, or Bob Costas, who didn’t have to work with Harry. He grew up with him, as many of us did, grew up happier.
How else to explain all those regular folks crowding into pews and hanging from barricades outside Holy Name? Harry was magic because Harry was, as Father Smyth said, unafraid of being himself. Scared of the Cubs’ bullpen perhaps, but otherwise willing to greet each day with an utter disregard for pretense.
Harry was The Natural, only he never hit a home run. He fathered Skip, who stood firmly beside Harry’s widow, Dutchie, on Friday lest her strength waver.
Not much chance of that. Not much chance, either, that Chicago won’t welcome grandson Chip, a pallbearer who will next carry the baton. He’s a prince of a young man, and an outstanding announcer. Harry seasoned many of them, like Thom Brennaman, who has moved on to another city. But Chip is blood. Chip is destined. Chip is the chosen one.
Let us also hope that Chip is a better driver than the dear departed. Harry was colorblind, and when he began his career in the mid-1940s, that took courage.
But so did being Harry’s passenger. He could not differentiate between black and white; alas, he treated red and green accordingly.
Harry insisted, however, on separating fact from fiction, and as Mark Grace was saying later at the man’s restaurant, the athletes whom Harry vexed were the same athletes who couldn’t connect with the truth.
“I haven’t been to many Catholic funerals,” Stone said. “Do they always play, `Take Me Out to the Ball Game’?”
Dutchie smiled, Jimmy Piersall smiled, we all smiled, the best antidote for a knot in one’s stomach.
It won’t be the same, but Harry’s gone to a better place. It won’t be the same, because Harry made this a better place.