Talk:Harry Caray

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College Football???[edit]

Why is this article under the College Football portal? Can anyone tell me that? -- Imadeausername! (talk) 03:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

name change[edit]

Did he have his name legally changed? Skip Caray and Chip Caray are referred to just as that, despite the name Carabina being present in this article. Tromboneguy0186 04:35, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

snl[edit]

what about that snl skit? --E tac 00:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember Harry doing Hawks basketball but I definitely remember him doing St. Louis University Billikins basketball

A little off the SNL topic, the article doesn't mention Dan St. Paul's Harry Caray imitation he did on the Bob and Tom Show, I believe it was, when St. Paul did a parody of Harry Caray, done during the time of Christ, where supposedly Harry Caray did the "First Baseball Game Ever Played" between the "Bethlehem Braves" and the "Jerusalem Giants" (pronounced jə-hiants by St. Paul, imitating Caray). If somebody could find a source for that and add it in to the article, that'd be great. -- Imadeausername! (talk) 03:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't this article include a mention of the famous Jeopardy! SNL skit? Sir Ian (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Harry Caray = Harakiri?[edit]

I propose we get rid of the link to seppuku on this fine man's page. It's out of place. How many people seriously think to themselves, "I'd like more info on Japanese ritual suicide... what's it called again? Hara... harry... Harry Caray! That's it!" MysticalGenesis 06:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to admit it, but when I was younger and didn't know any better I was like that... I think it could be far more common then you think. EnsRedShirt 06:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think a redirect from harikari to seppuku (harakiri) is enough. --Kjoonlee 09:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is, in fact, far more common that you think. It should stay, for the sake of clarity. And is often mispronounced as harry carry rather than hah-rah kih-ree or whatever. In fact, I never heard of seppuku until today. Not everyone has studied Japanese ritual suicide in depth. Baseball Bugs 15:27, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Citations, please. --Kjoonlee 20:24, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But please explain to me, a person who is looking for harakiri but is unaware of the spelling, would be more likely to type harikari than Harry Caray. We already have measures for people who type harikari. So why do we need a notice, on an irrelevant article? --Kjoonlee 20:26, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When I was a kid, everyone called Japanese ritual suicide "harry carry". I heard it said that way on TV, anytime they were doing some sort of Japanese satire in those politically incorrect times. I never heard the term "hara kiri" until I was in my teens. That's probably just typical American corruption of foreign words. In fact, we always thought it was funny that Harry Caray's name was a homonym (or so we thought) for this Japanese ritual. Baseball Bugs 23:31, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have to admit, we called it harry carry as a joke and ALSO because we would never have thought harikari as a possible spelling. Ill-educated perhaps, but we were what we were.

That said herrykerry might be reasonable as well. Where does the madness end? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.122.181 (talk) 03:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While looking for something else, I ran across this item on google images.[1] Hopefully this will put to rest the doubts about it being called "hari kari". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Where did he die?[edit]

It current says he died in Chicago, but I could have sworn the newspaper said he died in California. I'm not 100% sure where in California so I'm not going to change it for the time being. Bluecollarchessplayer 03:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to IMDB [2] he died in Rancho Mirage, California. I'll look into this further. I recall he was at a banquet, when he suffered a stroke or heart attack and fell, dying, and hit his head on a table or something. I just don't recall where it happened. But it should be easy to find out. Baseball Bugs 06:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely. Baseball Bugs 07:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problems[edit]

1. The seppuku/hari kiri link at the top is gone. Nobody is going to come here and think Harry Caray is related to seppuku.

2. This needs heavy copyediting. It's tone is totally wrong, it's full of OR and POV, and it desperately needs reliable sources.

I'm not an expert on Harry Caray but I know enough to say that this article needs a huge amount of work. Nobody of Consequence (talk) 20:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More sourcing would be nice, but the entire story has been documented in print and on camera more times than I can count, and it is ALL common knowledge to any serious Chicago baseball fan.

It seems to me that it is not very "objective" to lump Harry's time with the White Sox into the same snipet dedicated to his 1 year with the A's. Harry spent over a decade on the southside of Chicago. Caray (and Bill Veeck) saved the entire Sox franchise from moving elsewhere. From my limited perspective, people from Chicago who happen to be my age (40-something) have generally considered Harry Caray a SOX announcer first and foremost. The attention he recieved nationally (with the Cubs) is unfairly over-emphasized in this article, at the expense of an accurate account of what Harry meant to baseball in general, the city of Chicago, and the southside of said city in particular. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.209.196.159 (talk) 12:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to work on improving that situation. I'm old enough to think of Harry primarily as a Cardinals announcer. If you had told me in 1969 that he would end up as a Chicago icon, I would have been stunned. However, neither the Cards nor the Sox were nationally telecast, nor did they put up statues of Harry, as far as I know - and that's the source of the problem. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 13:56, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I preferred Harry with the Sox because he was less inhibited and more coherent. However, he became a rock star with Cubs and not until.


>>One thing that seemed overly clunky to me just now was in the section about his death. The way it is worded makes it sound like he died of cardiac arrest, and then four days later he received brain damage because of his death. I don't know how he died, but I would assume that the intent of that passage was to say something more akin to, "Because of resulting brain damage, Caray never woke up, and four days later died of cardiac arrest." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.19.51.113 (talk) 18:02, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fame as a Cardinal announcer and a nitpick[edit]

Caray was, in fact, extremely well known throughout the middle of the country during his years with the Cardinals. KMOX, which broadcast Cardinals' games, was a clear-channel 50-kw station and the signal was audible throughout perhaps more than half the U.S. states at night. Until 1958, the Cardinals were the westernmost and southernmost team in the major leagues, so the Cardinals had a following that reached the Gulf Coast and at least as far west as Colorado. To the north and east, fans tended to be more interested in the Chicago teams and the Cincinnati Reds. His broadcasting of Cardinals' games is mentioned in John Grisham's "A Painted House," set in Arkansas in 1952.

If somebody would correct the second photo caption, it would be good. The broadcast booth was behind home plate, so he didn't use the net to catch fly balls; he caught foul balls. Tito john (talk) 11:24, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving the Cardinals: Caray was fired from the St. Louis Cardinals. The rumor at the time was that August A. Busch, Jr. caught Caray having an affair with his wife at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtyroler (talkcontribs) 08:02, 2 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is discussed in William Knoedelseder's Bitter Brew. The rumor at the time was that he was having an affair with Susan Busch, wife of The Third, not Gussie (Trudy did eventually cheat on Gussie, but that was years later, after he had fallen into a slough of despond following Christina Busch's death in a car accident and she had found out about his womanizing on trips to Florida during the 1960s while she was back in St. Louis with the children).

I will add some stuff from the book about this to the article. Daniel Case (talk) 00:33, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnicity/nationality of Harry Caray's parents[edit]

After hearing Chip Caray talk multiple times on TV about his Macedonian/Albanian heritage, I started having doubts about the correctness of the Italian/Romanian descent stated here. I found an article on the website of The State Historical Society of Missouri about Harry Caray that seems very authoritative and doesn't seem to be referenced by this Wikipedia article. It is located at: http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/c/caray/index.html. The article suggests that Harry might have claimed to have Italian heritage but the Missouri census records show otherwise (and there is a facsimile of those records included on that page). I suggest this fairly authoritative source be studied and used in the improvement of this Wikipedia article. KamenG, 21:40, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Video[edit]

Caray can be heard and seen talking with President Reagan

Victor Grigas (talk) 15:59, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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External links modified[edit]

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Editing the Death Section[edit]

Hello Peers,

For my summer English research class, our goal was to actively edit a Wikipedia article. I chose Harry Caray because growing up and still to this day I am a huge Cubs fan. I have done research on his passing and I am proposing a new edit to the section. Please let me know if you have any comments or concerns. Cheers!

Harry Caray passed away on February 18, 1998 as a result of complications from a heart attack and brain damage. On Valentine’s Day, Caray and his wife, “Dutchie” Goldman were at a Rancho Mirage restaurant celebrating the holiday when Caray collapsed during the meal. Steve Stone’s 1999 publication Where’s Harry? suggests that Caray’s head made contact with the table, resulting in a loss of consciousness. This has never been confirmed, but is one possibility. Caray was rushed to nearby Eisenhower Medical Center where he unfortunately never woke up from his coma and passed on February 18, 1998. He was 83.

Caray’s funeral was held on February 27, 1998 at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. The Chicago community came out to pay respect to the Hall of Fame announcer, including Chicago Cubs players Sammy Sosa, Mark Grace, manager Jim Riggleman, and ex-players Ryne Sandberg and Billy Williams. Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, Mayor Richard Daley, and Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka were also in attendance [1].

The organist of Holy Name Cathedral, Sal Soria, did not have any sheet music to play the song Caray made famous in the broadcast booth, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, which resulted in him borrowing the music. He said in a Chicago Tribune article, “I had to sort of somber it up and slow it down tom make it a little more classy. Actually, it was kind of fun to do it”.[1]

Harry Caray is buried at All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois.[2]

Sources Used:

 [1] It Was Harry's Kind Of Funeral. (1998, February 28). Retrieved from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-02-28/sports/9802280033_1_chip-caray-harry-caray-funeral-mass
 [2] Harry Caray (1914 - 1998). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/c/caray/

Thank you again, Siu0831 (talk) 21:23, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Editing the Seventh Inning Stretch Section[edit]

Hello Peers,

Again, I have researched the seventh inning stretch and would like to change some material in this section:


Caray is credited with popularizing the Seventh-Inning Stretch throughout his career. The song itself, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was created in 1908 by Jack Norworth on a train. Through the years, the song has stuck through stadiums across the MLB.[1]

One theory proposed by baseball historians is that William H. Taft was responsible for the creation of the Seventh-Inning Stretch. Taft was a very large man, and loved the sport of baseball. In 1910, Taft attended Opening Day of the season; the game was the Washington Senators versus the Philadelphia Athletics. As the game progressed, the President became more and more happy being crammed into the small wooden chair he was provided with for the game. As the game reached the bottom of the seventh inning, he rose from his seat to stretch and get away from the chair. Many people observed this and stood up as well as a sign of respect; the game even stopped. When the President was ready to sit down again, everybody else took their seats and the game resumed. A new baseball tradition was created.[1]

Throughout his broadcasting career Caray would sing to the tune of the song in his booth. There would only be a few people who could hear Caray sing; his broadcast partner, Jimmy Piersall, the producer, and the select fans whose seats were near the booth. When Caray joined the White Sox, owner Bill Veeck would observe Caray and some fans singing to the song and wanted to incorporate Caray into a stadium-wide event.

It was a few games into the 1976 season when Veeck secretly placed a public-address microphone into Caray’s booth and turned it on once Nancy Faust, the organist, began playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. Thousands of people would now have the opportunity to sing along with Caray every single home game. Caray questioned why Veeck decided to implement such an idea. Veeck would explain, “ anybody in the ballpark hearing you sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ knows that he can sing as well as you can. Probably better than you can. So he or she sings along. Hell, if you had a good singing voice, you’d intimidate them, and nobody would join in.”[2]

Once Caray passed away in 1998, the Cubs would bring in guest conductors of the song, this tradition is still alive to this day. His wife and grandson, Chip Caray, were the first people to guest conduct the song following his death. [3]


Sources:

1. 7th Inning Stretch History by Michael Aubrecht. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/7th_inning_stretch.shtml 2. Caray, H., & Verdi, B. (1990). Holy cow!New York: Berkley Books. 3. Gomez, L. (2018, January 04). How a man and a song turned the seventh inning into hallowed Wrigley tradition. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/celebrity/chi-wrigley-field-7th-inning-stretch-harry-caray-20140401-column.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Siu0831 (talkcontribs) 03:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]