At face value the passing of Harry Kalas is in no way related to the upcoming MLB Draft, but there is no way I could ignore the passing of the man who is as much a reason for this site existing as anybody else in my life. I originally fell in love with baseball for two simple reasons, reasons that are typical of many fans of the sport who grew up in the Delaware Valley – family and Harry Kalas. My family’s love of the game helped me fall in love with baseball in the first place, but I stayed a fan through the lean years of the mid-90s because of Kalas; he made every game worth listening to and helped turn my love of the game into full-fledged obsession.

I was at Game 5 last season when the Phillies won the World Series, so I missed HK’s call of the last out. The days following the win were such a blur that I didn’t get a chance to sit down and listen to that final call until finally hearing it by accident on the radio in the car. At that point I had no choice but to pull over and just take a minute to reflect on how the call I waited my whole life to hear, the call that I had played in my head hundreds of thousands of times over the years, the call that only I knew only one person in the world could possibly voice, had somehow been even better than I could have ever imagined. Even though I was in South Philadelphia on October 29th, 2008 to witness Eric Hinske wiff on a picture perfect Brad Lidge slider with my own two eyes, it wasn’t real until HK told me so.

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