Loss...

I don't avidly follow major league baseball much anymore (except during last year's playoffs and World Series, of course). Oh, I look at the box scores for the Phillies and the Nationals in the Sports page, but I don't watch or listen to games on a regular basis. But I sure did when I was growing up. It's somewhat unavoidable when your mother is one of the world's biggest Phillies phans! :-)

I was younger than Keeper Boy when the Phillies won their first World Series in 1980. But I knew every player and number on that roster. In second grade, I even wrote an essay on the topic, Who is Your Hero?, on a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. I don't remember who most kids chose. I'm thinking there were a lot of essays about moms and dads. But not me. I wrote my essay about The Bull: Greg Luzinski. But I digress. As a Phillies fan, there was one other thing I learned at a very young age. Before the 1980 championship and even before the essay, I think I could've picked Harry Kalas' voice out of a crowd.

Harry the K. He became the voice of the Phillies in 1971 -- the year I was born. There have been few other Phillies announcers in my lifetime. He shared the booth for 20-some years with another great announcer -- Richie Ashburn. They were quite the pair. In recent years, as Kalas got older and battled some health issues, others have come and gone and his actual commentating time decreased. I believe, at the time of his death, he was really only calling about three innings a game. But he was still there, and he was still The Voice.

I was just commenting a few weeks ago on an autographed photo of Harry Kalas on a high school friend's Facebook page. My comment was that what always comes to mind when I hear Harry Kalas' name is, "That ball is way outta here... homerun, Michael Jack Schmidt!" I have no idea how many times I heard that call while growing up... probably hundreds considering Schmidt hit 500+ homeruns in his career, which pretty much spanned my childhood.

So the unimaginable is, as of yesterday, reality. No more Harry Kalas calls. It's awesome that he got to see the team win the World Series last season, and that he made the call at the end of the final game. It was just one of the Phillies' many milestone achievements and great moments he narrated for millions of fans around Philadelphia and beyond. Two that I remember vividly:

Swing and a long drive, there it is, number 500! The career 500th home run for Michael Jack Schmidt!

The Tugger needs one more...Swing and a miss! Yes, he struck him out! Yes, they did it! The Phillies are world champions!

It's also somewhat fitting that, just last week, it was Kalas who threw out the first pitch prior to what would be the last home Phillies game he would call. His final call was a Phillies win against the Rockies at Coors Field on Easter Sunday.

He left this world while sitting in a press box preparing for a ball game. Really, could it have happened any other way? The only way it could've been more fitting would be had it happened at a home game, rather than here in Washington, DC.

And so ends a life many sports fans can only dream of. It seems Harry Kalas lived his dream, and lived it well. And now... well, now he's "outta here."

Rest in peace.