Hawk Harrelson is still making himself heard

Harrelson’s foundation in baseball made him a great broadcaster, but it was his colorful personality and natural storytelling ability that set him apart. And with a career in baseball spanning nearly 60 years, Harrelson had a story for every occasion.

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Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson waves  after his final White Sox broadcast in 2018.

Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson waves after his final White Sox broadcast in 2018.

Nam Y. Huh/AP

The chocolate-brown leather couch in his Florida home was large enough to seat several people, but Ken ‘‘Hawk’’ Harrelson sat alone with his legs crossed. His iPhone rested on a table to his right, and his family and friends, who kept him company, waited in hushed tones in his living room.

Harrelson had been in this position before — three times, to be exact — so he was staying cautiously optimistic. Still, on that afternoon in December, he became more anxious the longer he waited for his phone to ring.

When the call finally came, Harrelson didn’t hesitate to answer it.

‘‘Hello?’’

On the other end was Tim Mead, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

‘‘Hey, I just want to share some good news with you,’’ Mead said as Harrelson nervously grimaced and scanned the room. ‘‘You’ve been selected as the 2020 Ford C. Frick Award recipient, so congratulations and welcome to the club.’’

Harrelson, a man who always has something to say, didn’t at that moment. He was nearly speechless and stumbled to find the right words as he fought to hold back tears.

Even two months after he received the news, Harrelson struggled to describe what this honor means to him.

‘‘Wow,’’ the famed former White Sox broadcaster said. ‘‘I guess that says it all. . . . It’s been a wild ride.’’

Harrelson never made it to Cooperstown as a player, but getting there as a broadcaster is just as meaningful to him. He’s one of only six former major-league players to receive the Frick award for excellence in broadcasting, joining Joe Garagiola, Bob Uecker, Jerry Coleman, Tony Kubek and Tim McCarver.

‘‘That’s something special,’’ Harrelson said.

There are two types of people in the world: the ones who love ‘‘Hawk’’ and the ones who don’t. If you’re a Cubs fan, you’re likely a member of the latter group.

Harrelson unapologetically rooted for the Sox and famously slammed Wrigley Field, saying, ‘‘You couldn’t give me a $5,000, $10,000 bill to put another foot in that place. I’m telling you what, that place sucks for the visiting team.’’

Harrelson spoke his mind and didn’t care what others thought of him.

‘‘When people called me a homer, it was a compliment,’’ Harrelson said.

His signature sayings — known as ‘‘Hawkisms’’ — became household expressions.

‘‘You can put it on the board . . . yes!’’

‘‘He gone!’’

‘‘Grab some bench!’’

He repeated each of those lines thousands of times during his 33 seasons with the Sox.

Harrelson’s foundation in baseball made him a great broadcaster, but it was his colorful personality and natural storytelling ability that set him apart. And with a career in baseball spanning nearly 60 years, Harrelson had a story for every occasion.

He loves to share stories about Lou Piniella and all the times he got ejected for throwing bases or kicking dirt on umpires.

There was the time, Harrelson remembers, during Piniella’s rookie season in 1969 when he got so mad at an umpire’s call that he threw his helmet 15 feet in the air.

‘‘Of course, the guy threw him out,’’ Harrelson said, laughing as he pictured the scene in his head. ‘‘And I asked Lou, ‘What did he say to you?’ And he said, ‘Son, if that helmet comes down, your ass is out of here.’ ’’

Another guy Harrelson likes to talk about is his buddy Sam McDowell.

Harrelson never will forget the time that he and some buddies were at a Cleveland steakhouse the night before his Red Sox played the Indians. They thought they were the only ones there, but McDowell emerged from the back room. The hard-throwing left-hander, who was scheduled to pitch the next day, stopped by Harrelson’s table to taunt him.

‘‘[McDowell] said, ‘I’m gonna throw you nothing but fastballs, and I’m gonna blow your ass away four times,’ ’’ Harrelson recalled. ‘‘So I said, ‘Sam, you better get your behind out of here, I’m in no mood to have any of your B.S.’ So he left.

‘‘At the game the next night, the first pitch he threw me was a fastball, and I hit it all the way out of the whole Cleveland stadium, but it was foul about 15 or 20 feet. Well, that’s the only fastball he threw me all night long, and he struck me out four times.’’

Ken Harrelson speaks on Hawk Day as he was honored by the White Sox on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2018.

Ken Harrelson speaks on Hawk Day as he was honored by the White Sox on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2018.

Nam Y. Huh/AP

It seemed Harrelson had crossed paths with everyone in baseball at some point. And he thought it was important to incorporate those anecdotes into his broadcasts.

“Every partner that I’ve had in the broadcasting booth, we would talk before the first game, and I would tell them, ‘Hey, this is like playing the game: You’ve gotta be ready,’ ’’ Harrelson said. ‘‘When you walked onto that field, you [had] to be ready. Every time I walked into that booth, I said, ‘OK, Hawk, let’s get it done.’ And by that, I meant let’s give the fans what they deserve out of that ballgame. . . .

‘‘If you’ve got a 7-0 game or a 9-0 game in the third or fourth inning, that’s where stories come in . . . and you have to learn how to eat bad ballgames.’’

That never seemed to be a problem with “Hawk” in the booth.

†††

Harrelson doesn’t have any regrets.

‘‘I played my ass off,’’ he said with his Southern drawl. ‘‘I’m proud of that. I wanted to win.’’

Harrelson said there is only one guy he crossed paths with that outdid him from a work-ethic standpoint, and that’s Pete Rose. The two played one season together in Caracas, Venezuela.

‘‘[He’s] the only guy I’ve ever seen or heard of that if you were losing 10-1 in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, nobody on, 0-2 count, he thought you could still win the game,’’ Harrelson said.

Harrelson was an all-around athlete. In high school, he was one of the top-ranked basketball prospects and was offered a scholarship to the University of ­Kentucky. He also was an All-America football player and accepted a scholarship to play at the University of Georgia.

But with money tight for him and his mom, he decided to sign a professional baseball contract.

Though he thinks he could have gone pro in any sport he played, Harrelson thinks he made the right pick in choosing baseball.

He went on to have a successful nine-year career in the big leagues. His best season came in 1968, when he hit .275 with 35 home runs and a major-league-leading 109 RBI with the Red Sox. Harrelson earned his only All-Star selection that season and finished third in MVP voting.

After an ankle injury ended his career at 29, Harrelson walked away with countless stories — all which made perfect back-pocket material for when he became a broadcaster in 1975.

‘‘I look back at it sometimes, and I say to myself, ‘Boy, did you really do all that stuff?’ ’’ Harrelson said.

†††

Harrelson doesn’t believe in retirement. If anything, his schedule has gotten more hectic since he stepped away from broadcasting after the 2018 season.

‘‘Retirement’s overrated, in my opinion, because I’ve worked all my life,’’ he said. ‘‘But watching your grandkids grow up is not overrated; it’s underrated.’’

Harrelson has become a frequent spectator at his grandchildren’s sporting events, especially those of his 6 1/2-year-old grandson, Hank, who also lives in Florida.

‘‘It’s just been fun watching him compete because he plays his ass off,’’ Harrelson said.

Hank’s passion for the game reminds Harrelson of himself.

‘‘I said, ‘Hank, I’m just so proud of you; you play hard,’ ’’ Harrelson recalled. ‘‘And he told me a few weeks ago, he says, ‘You played hard, didn’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I did. . . . You play hard, too, and I’m proud of you for that.’

‘‘So that’s the only thing that’s saving me. If it weren’t for that, I would be going stir-crazy.’’

Between youth sporting events and speaking engagements, Harrelson routinely has been going to the doctor for the last two months. In January, he fell and suffered a head injury because of high blood pressure. He later learned he needed a pacemaker, which has made him feel ‘‘100 percent’’ better. He also has been undergoing five weeks of radiation therapy for skin cancer on his ear.

Because of this, Harrelson hasn’t had much time to start his Hall of Fame speech, though he has a lot more time after his induction ceremony was postponed to 2021. He knows he’s limited to seven minutes or so, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he went over a minute or two. Harrelson asked Jeff Snook, the co-author of his autobiography, ‘‘Hawk: I Did It My Way,’’ for help.

Harrelson has a lot of people he wants to mention, including Uecker, who played mind games with Harrelson in spring training in 1969.

‘‘He’s a piece of work,’’ Harrelson said with a laugh.

More important, Harrelson surely will take the time to thank the two most influential women in his life.

First is his mother, who worked tirelessly to provide for him. She raised him alone after divorcing Harrelson’s father and did so despite earning only $56 a week.

‘‘We lived on the wrong side of town, so to speak, in Savannah, Georgia,’’ Harrelson recalled. ‘‘She taught me how to be tough, it’s just that simple. She said, ‘Don’t let anybody bully you. If somebody hits you, you hit them back harder. If they hit you once, you hit them twice.’ And then she used to drive to all my games, and she was just a wonderful mom.’’

Then there is his wife, Aris.

‘‘She changed my life,’’ Harrelson said. ‘‘She really did. She saved me. When I met her, I was going out at night, drinking and getting in fights and all that stuff. I knew if I didn’t stop, I was going to lose her, so I stopped. That was 46 years ago.”

†††

Harrelson has loved the game longer than most people alive. But the 78-year-old is worried about the direction Major League Baseball is headed.

Technology and analytics are tainting the game, Harrelson said. And he isn’t just referring to the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.

Harrelson never has been a fan of umpires, especially as a broadcaster, but he couldn’t imagine the game without them. And he said he’s ‘‘vehemently’’ against the idea of implementing an automated strike zone or robot umpires.

‘‘Umpires are no different than players, they’re no different than lawyers, they’re no different than doctors,’’ Harrelson said. ‘‘You’ve got good ones, you’ve got mediocre ones and you’ve got bad ones. Why would they be any different?

‘‘[In terms of] baseball players, you’ve got great ones, you’ve got good ones, you’ve got mediocre guys and you have bad players. And to take that element out of the game [would be a mistake].’’

While robo-umpires are a question for the future, Harrelson can’t fathom the obsession teams today have with analytics.

Don’t get him wrong, Harrelson sees some benefits to keeping basic statistics.

‘‘I do feel like there’s a place for numbers in baseball because that’s the connecting factor from the fan to the game,’’ Harrelson said. ‘‘People who loved the game and wanted to play it and just didn’t have the skills to play it, the way they connect is batting averages, home runs [and] RBIs.’’

But the increased emphasis on sabermetrics is ruining the game, Harrelson said.

‘‘The way they’re taking this thing in such a quick fashion . . . when you start thinking mechanics, when you’re talking about swing angles and launch angles and launch speed, exit velocity, what you’re doing, you’re getting these hitters [to think too much],’’ said Harrelson, who also believes players are too media-conscious nowadays. ‘‘I never heard that term, swing angle, until they brought in this analytics.’’

In Harrelson’s day, they didn’t think, he said; they just played the game. And though players are better nowadays, he thinks his era was more competitive.

‘‘When I started baseball, the minimums were $6,000,’’ Harrelson said. ‘‘My first two years in the big leagues, I made more money playing golf, shooting pool and arm wrestling than I did playing Major League Baseball. . . . We had fun back in those days. We played our asses off, we had fun, we got in fights, we had fun. And we wanted to win. When you’re trying to get to a different income level, you play a little harder than if you’ve got $100 million in the bank.

‘‘And I don’t blame these players at all because this is the only thing they know. This is what they’ve been taught; this is what they’ve been brought up in.’’

Even though Harrelson doesn’t necessarily agree with the current trends, he said he could never fall out of love with the game that gave him so much joy.

‘‘Forty-two years of announcing, and . . . I love the game today more than I ever had,’’ Harrelson said.

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