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“GLAD TO BE ALIVE”
 
FEBRUARY 17, 1986—It started out as a routine day for me, but it certainly didn’t wind up that way.
 
I woke up at midmorning in our winter home in Palm Springs, California, and felt great. Every morning, my routine is the same. I walk to the store to buy the newspapers—the two from Los Angeles, the Times and Herald-Examiner, plus USA Today. In the afternoon, when the first airplane arrives from Chicago, I get the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, too. Fritzie Gauna, a friend of ours who keeps an eye on the house when we’re back in Chicago during the summer, goes to the Palm Springs Airport and picks up the two Chicago papers. You have to keep up with world events, you know.
 
Anyway, it’s about a three-mile round trip for me to the store and then back to the house. When I returned home that day, I rode my stationary bike for about seven miles, then did some exercises for my back, and went in the Jacuzzi for a little while. By the time I took care of that ritual, and read a little, it was time to head over to the Canyon Country Club, just down the road. Sometimes I walk. We’re right on the sixth fairway of the golf course, so it’s not much of a walk. About twelve holes long. Sometimes I walk. On this particular day, I drove over.
 
It was about four-thirty in the afternoon, past Budweiser time and headed toward happy hour. I went to the bar to order a scotch old-fashioned when one of the fellows nearby said another guy was needed in a gin game. I gladly joined in, and to make a long story short, I was doing pretty well. I was up about five hundred dollars when I suddenly realized I was having trouble picking up the cards with my right hand. I had no pain, and I didn’t feel dizzy, and I must have been pretty alert. As I said, I was up about five hundred dollars.
 
I got up from the table and went into the bathroom and threw some cold water on my face. Again, I felt no pain. Then I went back to the card game and lost a hand. At that point, Mel Green, a friend of mine, looked over and said, “You better stop, Harry. You should go on home right away.”
 
To my knowledge, I was talking all right and acting all right, but the other people there must have sized up that something was wrong. As I said, I drove to the club that day, but Mel wasn’t about to let me take the car back home. He drove me, and when I got there, I wasn’t alone. The paramedics were there, and so was a Dr. Burt Winston. I didn’t know him, but he was a member of the club. As I discovered later, the fellows I was playing cards with had called the 911 emergency number. They suspected something was wrong. Unfortunately, they were correct.
 
A stroke. I had had a stroke. Mel told my wife, Dutchie, when he got to the house that he was afraid I’d had a stroke, and he was exactly right. To this day, I haven’t felt any pain. To this day, I don’t really know what a stroke is. I do know that I went to Desert Hospital from my home in an ambulance and that I never lost consciousness. Dutchie’s theory is that those exercises I did every morning might have pulled me through. I was too heavy, 236 pounds, but in relatively good shape otherwise. Thank God. Thank God for a lot of things.
 
When I awakened the next morning in the hospital, Dutchie was there. So were my sons, Skip and Chris, who had flown in—Skip from Atlanta, Chris from St. Louis. Also there was Sylvia Stein, the wife of my good friend Ben from Chicago. She just happened to be staying with us at the house when I took ill.
 
Dr. Winston confirmed that I’d had a stroke, whatever that was. I realized, lying there in bed, that I couldn’t move my right arm or my right leg. I could talk, though. I thought I was coherent, but I wasn’t. I was talking, but apparently nobody could understand me. It was an eerie feeling. I always figured I’d drop dead at the ballpark someday, yelling, “Cubs Win! Cubs Win!” with my last breath. I certainly didn’t know what to make of this stroke business.
 
But I can honestly say that my first thought was, When can I get back to work? It was almost time for me to head to the Cubs’ spring-training headquarters in Mesa, Arizona. We’d be doing our first broadcast of the Cactus League exhibition games in a couple weeks, and that’s all that was on my mind. I don’t remember being scared and I don’t remember thinking to myself, Am I going to die? Of course, I did have my moments of depression, especially during the first week in the hospital, but that’s where the fans came to my rescue.
 
You know, in all my years of broadcasting major-league baseball—twenty-five seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, one with the Oakland Athletics, eleven with the Chicago White Sox, and since 1982 with the Cubs—there’s only been one real criticism of my style. I like to mention names of viewers and listeners or even fans in attendance during the ball game.
 
“Happy Birthday to So-and-So.” “Happy Anniversary to So-and-So.” That’s always been my way of acknowledging the fans, whether they’re actually there at the stadium that day or tuning in. It doesn’t take that much effort, and it certainly is harmless. Besides, you never know when you just might say something to someone to lift a person’s spirits.
 
When someone sends a note up to the booth and then I read it on the air, it can make that person a big man or big woman on campus that day. He or she goes back home and friends will say, “Hey, Harry Caray was talking about you during the ball game this afternoon.” In all my years, I never missed a pitch or a batter or an inning, so what’s wrong with saying something about Joe Blow? Particularly if Joe Blow happens to be a shut-in who might be feeling down and just lives for those broadcasts.
 
Well, lying there in Desert Hospital, I realized that the shoe was on the other foot. There I was, stuttering and stammering, and here came the mail. Boxes and boxes of letters and telegrams and cards. Flowers, everything. From people I knew, but mostly from complete strangers. I stopped counting at fifteen thousand. There was no way to answer those people personally, except to get back to work. I realized then that I’d been right all along, despite what the critics said. If I ever lacked the motivation to make it back to the booth, those get-well wishes from everywhere really spurred me on. I was determined to broadcast baseball again.
 
After about a week, I started working with a speech therapist, Dr. Helene Kalfuss, but I needed only three sessions. When you have a stroke, your tongue becomes weak, and it becomes hard for you to enunciate. But I was doing okay. The therapist gave me lists of tongue twisters. Then she would have me speak extemporaneously. When I finally left the hospital, after about a month, I talked into a tape recorder at home. When there was a ball game on TV, I’d turn down the sound and do a couple of mock innings to myself. It sounded strange to me, kind of dead because there was no crowd. But one day I sort of just went off on my own.…
 
“Here we are in Philadelphia … Cubs leading three-two in the eighth inning … man on first base …” And so on.
 
“That’s great,” said Dutchie, who was listening. “You’re back.”
 
Well, at least I was headed back to the ballpark. I had my first look at the 1987 Cubs right there in Palm Springs during the third week in March when they came through to play the California Angels. I went out to both games, and it was great to see everybody again. I shook a lot of hands and said a lot of hellos. At that point, I was feeling so much better that Dr. Winston said I probably could broadcast again on Opening Day in Wrigley Field, April 7.
 
I thought about it, but by that time, WGN, which televises the Cubs in Chicago, had lined up guest announcers for the first few weeks of the season to work with Steve Stone, my outstanding partner on Channel 9. Brent Musburger of CBS was scheduled for the first game, followed by movie stars like Bill Murray, syndicated columnist George Will, and professional broadcasters such as Bob Costas from NBC, Ernie Harwell from Detroit, Jack Buck from St. Louis, and Pat Summerall of CBS. A different personality from a different walk of life every day.
 
I didn’t want my streak of never having missed an inning in forty-four years to end, but WGN had made plans. Besides, there was my health to think about. I felt pretty good, but I figured if I took a little longer to get ready, then I’d be that much stronger when I did return. We decided that May 19 would be the day, the start of another Cubs’ home stand. Meanwhile, Jim Dowdle, the head of WGN, was kind enough to have a satellite dish installed at our house in Palm Springs so I could keep track of the Cubs.