DETROIT TIGERS LONGTIME ANNOUNCER HARWELL DEAD AT 92

Veteran baseball announcer Ernie Harwell — the Detroit Tigers’s “Voice of Summer” — has died of cancer at the age of 92. In his column in the Detroit Free Press, writer Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Have a Little Faith) said: “And so the time comes to write the piece you never want to write. The one you build for over a career and must punch out in a matter of hours. So unfair, it seems. But then, what can I tell you about William Earnest Harwell that you don’t already know? Normally, when a sports hero dies, those of us on the inside can share the unique perspective of ‘a person who knew him.’ But everybody knew Ernie. If you heard him, you knew him. If you met him, you knew him. He was that rare thing, a man the same on the front side and the back. … Gone now. But not forgotten. Never forgotten. You don’t forget your angels. And I’m sure Ernie is one of them right now, up there, because he was always one down here.”