A sportscaster who was acquired by the Brooklyn Dodgers for a catcher in 1948, Ernie Harwell went on to spend 42 of his 55 broadcasting years with the Detroit Tigers–his sweet, Southern diction gracing the Motor City over the course of five glorious decades. It’s extremely difficult to describe what made Mr. Harwell great; I guess legends do that on occasion to us admiring scribes. But let me try: he was easygoing, smooth, and his voice was unmistakable; fellow Hall of Famer Vin Scully simply used the words “gentle” and “caring” in describing a man whose catch phrases enthralled even the most casual of baseball fans. When radio listeners/TV viewers heard the words “LOOOOONG GONE!” (home run) or “TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!” (double play) while Ernie Harwell worked a broadcast, they KNEW these were coming from a man who simply loved the game of baseball. Nope–nothing forced, nothing meant to be self-serving, and never any self-promoting “shtick” from one Mr. Harwell. It was just one man demonstrating the love of his craft while relaying info to an audience who truly loved him back–probably more than he ever realized.

Oh, what a thrill on those rare occasions in the past when I’d be watching a televised “game of the week” and be treated to a live ‘look in’ on a Tigers game for some particular reason–and hear Ernie Harwell describing the action in a manner nothing short of magical. He possessed the type of demeanor and delivery that made you FEEL like he was your friend; yeah, what a gift. And he was magical OUT of the booth, too. Baseball writer/rules consultant Rich Marazzi on Harwell: “I first met Ernie at Yankee Stadium around 1982 as a rookie writer and he made me feel like a million dollars. He was so friendly and it made me proud that he always called me by my first name. He was baseball royalty–and I was privileged to know him.” Shelly Riley–a contributor to Seamheads.com who was recently present on a day when Harwell would lie in internment at Comerica Park–added this: “Ernie was a man of the people–an everyone’s man. Regardless of whether you had ever physically met him or not, you felt as if you had a close personal connection to him. Losing Ernie was like losing a grandparent; we all knew his death was coming, but no one wanted to admit it.” Finally, Tony DeAngelo–my co-host on CTV-14′s “Monday Night Sports Talk“–remembered Harwell this way: “Just to hear him say ‘Gary Roenicke was left standing at that curveball like the house by the side of the road and watched it go by’–that told me everything I needed to know about Ernie. He brought such a color and respect to the game; when you heard the voice of Ernie Harwell, you knew you were listening to a special event.”

I never had the opportunity to meet Ernie Harwell personally, but was lucky enough to interview him last year on ESPN Radio’s “Inside Yankee Baseball” shortly after the death of former Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych. He talked fondly about his memories of “The Bird”–graciously answering me with the same warmth that had engulfed so many others over his remarkable lifetime. He was real, he was genuine–and for those few cherished minutes became MY friend; it would be from THAT day forward–after experiencing his wonderful persona over the airwaves–that I’d always refer to him as “the GREAT Ernie Harwell.” Yes, I’ll always treasure the opportunity I had to converse with a true “journalistic giant” whose personality made me feel like we were equals; to him, it was just two guys talking baseball. Thanks for that, Ernie.

Currently, a life-size statue of Ernie Harwell graces the entrance to Detroit’s Comerica Park; the press box, called the “Ernie Harwell Media Center,” now stands as a tribute to a man–or should I say “friend to many”–whose contributions to sports journalism surely remain beyond the scope of one particular weekly column. After calling his last game back in 2002, part of Harwell’s final words to his listeners were as follows: “It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello–hello to a new adventure. I’m not leaving, folks–I’ll still be with you.”

Yes, Mr. Harwell–goodbyes ARE sad–so I’ll just say “So long” for now. And yes–you’re STILL not leaving–as your legacy assures that you’ll always be in the hearts and minds of many.

The 92 year-old sports broadcaster had been diagnosed with cancer less than a year ago. Harwell opted not to receive surgery. He courageously battled the disease without losing his good humor or strong religious faith. Al Kaline, one of the greatest players in Detroit Tigers history and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 1980 accepted the award for his longtime friend. Kaline recalled his first meeting with Harwell, “I met him as a Baltimore broadcaster in 1954. We became friends right from the start. “Kaline played with the Tigers from 1953 through the 1974 season and was a broadcaster for the team from 1975 through the 2002 season. Thus, he was in close proximity with Harwell for decades, even though the two worked together in the broadcast booth for only one year. His advice to Kaline was expressed in words he himself always followed, “He told me to be myself, and to be as honest as I can.” He vividly recalled to reporters a four day cruise the two men and their wives took. It was during those days that Kaline truly realized the breadth and depth of Harwell’s interests and his knowledge of so many subjects.

Harwell became connected to the sport of baseball as a young boy in Atlanta when he served as a batboy for the minor league Atlanta Crackers. After graduation from Emory University, Harwell began work as a newspaperman. He was broadcasting games on the radio for Atlanta when he was ‘traded” to the Brooklyn Dodgers for a minor league catcher, Cliff Draper. He travelled north to replace the ailing Red Barber during the 1948 season. After two seasons with the Dodgers, Harwell was replaced by a young graduate of Fordham University, Vin Scully. It’s interesting to note, as Scully would say, that more than six decades later, Harwell would be granted an award in Scully’s name by the Fordham University radio station. Harwell would have been pleased to be a recipient of the honor. Kaline related, “Ernie told me that he thought Vin Scully was the best broadcaster he ever heard.”

Harwell’s career did not end after parting with the Dodgers. He remained in New York City calling games for the New York Giants from 1950-1953. When Baltimore gained a Major League franchise in 1954, Harwell broadcast Orioles games through 1959. In the following year, he began his long association with the Detroit Tigers. He did play-by-play for the Tigers through the 2002 season with the exception of the years 1991-93 when the team’s then ownership replaced him. During the 1992 season, he worked for the California Angels. Although he broadcast other sports and nationally broadcast baseball games, he is most closely associated with Detroit.

Kaline said of Harwell, “He was the most revered and loved person in sports in the state of Michigan.” The Detroit baseball superstar described the qualities that made Harwell stand out as a broadcaster, “[The qualities are] the way he interacted with the fans, his knowledge, his love of baseball and the way he told stories. The one thing I think is missing today are broadcasters who can tell stories. He knew the game was first and ego didn’t get in the way.” The accomplished CBS newsman Bob Sceiffer, another of the evening’s honorees said it was special to get an award with Harwell, “He [Harwell] loved baseball and he loved people. He did his homework and always knew what he was talking about.” Scheiffer recalled listening to Harwell broadcast Tigers game when the station’s signal was strong at night and marveling at Harwell’s skill.

Even more important than Harwell’s skills as a broadcaster were his qualities as a special human being. Kaline remembered, “He was a person you could feel comfortable with. He was that way we everybody. He always had a smile. I’ve known him and celebrate the kind of man he was. We were lucky to have him. {His death] is like losing a parent.”

The game will be televised nationally by NBC at 8:00 PM ET.

The American Football League, which merged with the NFL in 1970 to become the American Football Conference, played its first season in 1960 with eight teams.  Two of those clubs were the Bills and the Houston Oilers — the forerunner of the Titans and the team that captured the AFL’s first championship.

The founding owners of the Bills and Titans in 1960 are still in command of those teams.

RALPH C. WILSON, JR. is the original owner of the Bills.  The Titans have been owned by K.S. (BUD) ADAMS, JR. since their inception.

The Titans will wear their Oilers uniforms of the early 1960s that were distinguished by the derrick logo on their blue helmets.  The team played in Houston from 1960-96 before moving to Tennessee.

Buffalo will wear its “throwback” uniforms that feature a simple red buffalo on a white helmet.

The NFL is planning to celebrate the 50th season of its AFL clubs in numerous ways this year.

The Hall of Fame Game will follow the induction of the Hall’s class of 2009 on Saturday, August 8 and cap a multi-day celebration known as the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival.

For more information, visit profootballhof.com.

The Bisons will hold an induction ceremony at Coca-Cola Field during the 2009 season (date TBD).

With the four new inductees, the Bisons now have 25 former players and managers in the International League Hall of Fame. The IL inducted six former Bisons last season as part of a historic class of 27 as the league revived its dormant Hall of Fame.

One of the Bisons early greats, Kisinger won 117 games with the team in seven seasons in Buffalo from 1904-1910. During that time, he also recorded an International League record 31 shutouts. In 1904, he went 24-11 to lead the Bisons to their first ever pennant. He also won 20+ games in 1905 and 1906 and threw a no-hitter on August 21, 1909 against Rochester. In 1987, Kisinger was elected to the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame.

In his nine-year International League career, Kisinger won 150 games in 315 appearances.

Demeter played one season in Buffalo but it was an All-Star campaign with the Bisons. In 1955, the third baseman hit .285 (147-516) and led the team with 17 home runs and 79RBI. He added 28 doubles and nine triples to his solid year in Buffalo. Demeter went on to play 11 seasons in the International League with Toronto, Rochester and Syracuse and hit 159 home runs in 1,395 games.

Demeter’s managerial career brought him back to Buffalo. He served as the Bisons manager in 1979 and 1980, their first two seasons after an eight-year absence from professional baseball. Demeter was 139-137 with the Double-A Bisons of the Eastern League.

Barrett spent one season in Buffalo, pitching in 28 games with a 5-1 record and a 3.60ERA with the Bisons in 1951. Prior to that, the righty went 16-3 in 1938 with Syracuse before retuning four years later to go 20-12 for the IL Champion Chiefs. As a National League pitcher, Barrett was 69-69 for Cincinnati, Boston and St. Louis from 1937-1949.

Knight played just six games with the Bisons during the 1899 season, the final six games of his career. From 1866-1899, Knight played for 10 teams and averaged .345 with 1,865 hits in 1,265 games in the International League.

Though the league has attempted, ardently, to eliminate fighting from the sport, pockets of fans and media have felt that in doing so, the NHL was stripping the sport of its essence.

For many, fighting is a necessary evil and one that helps maintain the game’s classic norms of passion, courage and grit. Without it, many contend, the game becomes more about scoring and less about teamwork and toughness.

“Hockey is the only one of the four major sports with confines [where] a player can’t run out of bounds to avoid a hit,” said Hall of Fame broadcaster Jiggs McDonald, who has called over 3,200 NHL games over 45 years. “Some of those hits, the ones of questionable intent, lead to fights… But the more obvious is that hockey is the only sport to equip every player with a weapon – if they were to chose to use it that way.”

In the late 1970s, the NHL had an influx of European players and the league underwent changes.

The European players, for the most part, were better skaters than the North Americans who had long dominated the league and, as a result, offensive production skyrocketed. However, with fighting being illegal in European leagues, incidents of dirty plays such as high-sticking, cross checking and tripping became more frequent. While most of the new players were reluctant to fight after committing the penalties, their North American teammates, who had grown accustomed to the league’s rough and tumble style, were more than willing to drop the gloves.

As the years went on, the frequency of questionable stick play increased, engulfing players of all backgrounds. The dirty plays, McDonald asserted, is the cause of the fighting and is what needs to be stopped, rather than the fighting itself.

But in spite of those beliefs, which are widespread, the league has continued to make it a goal to penalize fighting. In addition, the league has begun to call more penalties in an effort to produce as much offense as possible, because according to their studies, it’s what the fans want to see. That, McDonald believes, is a big mistake and one the league will pay for in the future.

“Fighting is the one thing that sets the sport apart and makes hockey unique,” he said. “If you watch two great fighters go toe to toe, you can’t help but get the feeling that it’s an art. These guys are extremely tough customers and they definitely serve a purpose out there. I’m not talking about the bench-clearing brawls, even though they are entertaining at times. I’m talking about the one-on-one fight. It changes the entire complexion of the game if done right; it gets an entire team and the fans going all at the same time.”

Knowing this, McDonald doesn’t really understand why the NHL would attempt to rob the game of one of it’s most entertaining elements.

“Over the years, the league has tried to take that element out of the game because they think the fans don’t like it. Well, they do. That was the thing that filled up buildings in Boston and Philadelphia,” he added. “You couldn’t buy a ticket back then to see the big bad Bruins or the Broad Street Bullies. Sure, they had players like Bobby Orr that the fans loved, but they also had players that were aggressive and would defend each other. That was what the fans came to see.”

Former NHL enforcer Bob Probert, who racked up 3,300 penalty minutes in a stellar 17-year career feels the same way. Despite scoring 163 goals and being a player who was quite capable of making it in the league without dropping the gloves, Probert is still infamous for the thrashings he has delivered on the ice. To him, fighting will always have a place in hockey, regardless of who’s playing and what the league tries to do to stop it.

“I think that fighting will always be a part of the game. It’s a part of the game that belongs there,” Probert, who scored 29 goals in the 1987-88 season, said. “It keeps players honest and keeps the cheap shots down. People think twice when they know someone will come after you if you get too physical.”

While McDonald and Probert accept and understand that fighting is a part of the game, Minnesota hockey writer Ross Bernstein dedicated a year of his life to finding out exactly why. In the process of interviewing dozens of players during the NHL lockout in 2005, he consistently came across the word “code.” It was during the writing of his book, “The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL,” that he began to understand what it was. The unspoken, unwritten rules that most hockey players abide by. “The Code,” as Bernstein put it in his book, is a system devised to protect talented players and ensure every player is responsible for their actions on the ice. While the majority of the athletes on the ice follow “The Code,” there are exceptions, which of course, lead to fisticuffs.

“It’s all about respect,” Bernstein said. “You have to always be accountable for your actions. When you decide to play like a jerk and hit people from behind or take liberties with someone and be disrespectful, you have to be held accountable. In hockey, there are serious consequences for actions like that. Hockey is very unique in the fact that it is allowed to police itself.”

The players doing the policing, known as enforcers, try to make sure that “The Code” isn’t broken. These are the players that have inspired the creation of websites like HockeyFights.com and HockeyFighters.com in recent years that attract thousands of fans every day. According to Bernstein, enforcers are often the most loved players on their teams. Some hockey enthusiasts believe enforcers play much of a role in their teams’ success, but Bernstein disagrees.

“Fighters, in my opinion, are like kickers and punters in the NFL,” he said. “They’re specialists and without them, you can’t win. Just like the kickers, they don’t get the same amount of respect, because they usually can’t skate as well as the other players. Nevertheless, they’re very important pieces to a championship team.”

However, while many have voiced their beliefs that there is indeed a place in the game for fighting, citing the nostalgia and history it has, Bernstein also believes that having enforcers to protect teammates makes the game safer.

“Many people don’t understand that in hockey, there are a series of checks and balances,” he said. “If you’re a player that likes to play dirty, your teammates won’t even want you around after a while. The way the code works is if someone isn’t held accountable for their actions and doesn’t ‘show up’ afterwards, his teammates won’t want him on the bench. As barbaric as it may seem, fighting cleans up the game.

“Where I live, the Minnesota Wild have Derek Boogaard as their enforcer. He’s 6-foot-7 and 270 pounds. He’s an animal. Without his presence, you wouldn’t see Marian Gaborik, Brian Rolston or Pavol Demitra scoring goals. If the opposition knows they can take liberties with those guys, they can’t win. Boogaard on your team gives them confidence and lets them get in front of the net and skate without fear of getting whacked.”

Probert too thinks things would be quite different on the ice if he and his fellow tough guys weren’t around in one way or another.

“There were times when players were going after Steve Yzerman and I had to go after them,” he said. “Sometimes though, there are just times when you look at someone the wrong way and you go at. There’s also the motivation factor, a big hit or a fight can definitely motivate your team and change the game. That’s what my job was.”

However, many of the leagues top tough guys like Chris Simon and Darren McCarty have had problems keeping up with some of the more talented players over the past few years, leading to an unusual amount of suspensions by the very people who were expected to police the game, many think their existence in the league may be running it’s course.

“What I think is happening is because of the new rule changes, a-la getting rid of the red line, the cutting down on obstructions and the salary cap, the way of the enforcer is slowly, but surely going the way of the dinosaur,” Bernstein said. “I don’t know if a Tony Twist would make it in today’s game. Even Tie Domi also retired very quietly. Guys like that are always the most popular players amongst their teammates, but they’re kind of a luxury that you can’t afford to keep.”

With the role of the enforcer changing and the league continuing to take steps to eliminate fighting from the game, Bernstein still doesn’t think fighting will stop altogether. Nevertheless, he feels a new kind of player will emerge and take its place.

“I think the agitators are the new wave,” Bernstein said. “In New York, you have a guy like Sean Avery. He’s a perfect example; he can play, he can hit, he’ll fight, he’ll turtle and he’ll draw penalties. He’s the new hybrid. He’s not a big lumbering Snuffaluffagus. He’s not going to take up space and come on the ice like a nuclear bomb when his buttons are pushed and beat the crap out of somebody. I think guys today have to take a regular shift and contribute, kill penalties and even be able to take a penalty shot at the end of a game if they had to.”

Although Bernstein is a fan of the rough stuff, he feels that the game will continue to have plenty of action even if the enforcers do become extinct.

“I like fighting and I think it serves a purpose, but I’m not a fan of gratuitous fighting you see when a team is down 5-1 and is trying to change the momentum of a meaningless game to sell tickets,” Bernstein said. “I like it when Jarome Ignila drops the gloves in the playoffs when it means something or when a player runs into a goaltender and you have to go. I love seeing the kind of emotion on the ice when you see two non-traditional fighters go.”

This type of responsibility, which forces hockey players to be accountable for their actions and for a select few to play peace keeper, is what Bernstein believes sets hockey apart from the rest of the sports world and preaches the ultimate team dichotomy and an end result that can’t be found anywhere else.

“Hockey is all about the team, sticking up for each other and growing a playoff beard,” he said. “You aren’t going to find that anywhere else.”

Despite the thoughts of people like Bernstein, McDonald wonders what will happen if the game continues to be censored the way it has been over the past five years.

“Referee Andy Van Hellemond was once quoted saying, ‘If we take fighting out of the game and the arenas are empty, how do we put them back in?” McDonald said. “I think a lot of cities are at the point where the game isn’t as entertaining as it used to be. If it’s not entertaining to the thousands in the arena and thousands more at home watching, it’s not entertaining. There were many nights at the end of my career when I was driving home where I wondered if it was just me, or was this sport really not entertaining any more?”