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Kalas got to live his dream [The Philadelphia Inquirer](Philadelphia Inquirer (PA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Apr. 13--This story was first published on Jul 28, 2002 NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Carol Drendel recalled the long-ago date when a young Harry Kalas, his blond crew-cut Brylcreemed to a perfect ridge in front, took her to a drive-in movie in his father's Packard. "He just sat there the whole night," she said, "and pretended he was announcing a baseball game. " Her husband, Gib Drendel, remembered the hard-of-hearing world history teacher at Naperville Community High School in Kalas' junior year. "In that class, to entertain everyone, Harry used to cup his hands around his mouth and pretend to be announcing a Washington Senators game," Drendel said. "He'd go, 'Here's the 3-2 pitch from Cam-il-o Pas-cual. ' " A half-century ago, Naperville was a small town. Many of its 7,000 residents worked at Kroehler Manufacturing Co.'s massive furniture factory and lived on quiet, tree-shaded streets, some of which ran near the wide banks of the DuPage River. It was, looking back anyway, a kind of malt-shop Valhalla. "During the 1950s," reads a town history written in 1981, "Centennial Beach, the YMCA, summer band concerts with ice cream socials were Naperville's prime public recreational offerings. " Few would have believed that by 2002 its population would be swollen to 133,000. Fewer still could have envisioned the disappearance of the surrounding dairy farms and forests as Naperville transformed itself from Main Street to Main Line, becoming a yuppie haven for Chicago commuters. But no one who knew him back then would be the least bit surprised that Harry Kalas became a legendary baseball broadcaster. "Harry got to live out his dream," said Gib Drendel, a family-law attorney in nearby Batavia. "How many people can say that? " His deep-voiced destiny was so clear to the rest of the 109 seniors in 1954 that someone at the high school's yearbook, the Arrowhead, placed these prophetic words alongside the photo of the blond kid with the impish smirk: "Harry Kalas . . . Future Sports Announcer. " "Harry loved baseball, and he had this big loud voice," said classmate Gene Drendel, Gib's cousin, a retired school administrator who still lives here. "We all knew he was going to be announcing sports somewhere someday. We just assumed it would probably be in Chicago. " In the days leading up to Kalas' induction today into the broadcasters' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, longtime residents here recalled fondly the tow-headed teenager whom, because of his diminutive stature through most of high school, they called "Pots. " The friendliness, tearful sentimentality and broadcasting gifts that are Kalas' hallmarks were born here in this Ozzie and Harriet community, nearly 30 miles west of Chicago. Harry Kalas at 66, in fact, is not much different from "Pots" Kalas at 16, say his Naperville acquaintances, right down to his fondness for a postgame cocktail and a cigarette. "He has stayed the same through the years," said Jeanine Warnell, a retired Naperville Community teacher who introduced Kalas to public speaking in her sophomore English class. "He was just one of those students I've never forgotten. I'm so proud of him. " Kalas was described as a bright and good-natured boy who swam with friends in the local limestone quarries, consumed square scoops of ice cream and drank "Green Rivers" (lime juice and soda water) at a riverside drive-in called Prince's Castle, watched Western movies at the Naper Theater downtown, and starred -- in drag -- in his senior class play. He also was the son of a preacher, though as those same friends point out, that hardly qualified him as an angel. One look at Kalas' yearbook photos reveal that this 1950s teenager must have admired James Dean as well as Dizzy Dean. His blue jeans were rolled up roguishly at the bottom. He wore a defiant crew cut and had a mischievous grin. Like many of his classmates, he smoked at the soda shops and ice-cream parlors, snuck a couple of beers on weekends, and loved to play poker in the basement of Gene Drendel's Washington Street house during school lunch breaks. "Harry was . . . well, Harry was a real fun-loving guy," said Gib Drendel. "Still is, from what I understand. I'll always remember the night we sat in a car outside his house and made bets on whether or not he would be able to walk into his house without falling down. He fell flat on his face short of the door. "But he wasn't a bad kid. He was a wonderfully friendly person and had absolutely no pretense about him. " At school, where his more-serious older brother, Jim, had been president of the Class of 1951, Kalas was a student council officer as a freshman -- helping to plan the "Shamrock Shuffle" St. Patrick's Day Dance -- a member of the journalism club, a backup linebacker on the football team, and, with his prematurely booming voice, a fixture in the class plays. "I can still see him in that long black dress as the lead in Charlie's Aunt his senior year," said Warnell, who directed those plays. "He was just marvelous in the part. And so funny. " In class, he was a somewhat indifferent student whose passion, from a very early age, was clear: sports. "Harry loved sports. He knew all the different sports and all the different announcers," Gene Drendel said. And from the day his father took him to old Comiskey Park to see a White Sox-Senators game, and Washington star Mickey Vernon escorted him into the dugout, baseball headed the list. Alone in the handsome brick corner home the Kalases occupied at 153 N. Julian St., young Harry would occupy himself for hours playing Ethan Allen's All-Star Baseball, a board game in which the outcome of a player's at-bat is determined by the spin of a dial. Not surprisingly, Kalas soon began to announce those games. Friends say that, even then, he sounded professional. He had inherited his father's deep, pulpit voice. Harry H. Kalas was a Methodist minister. He moved his wife and two young sons here from Chicago's North Side during World War II to teach in the seminary affiliated with North Central College, a church-run school just a few blocks from Kalas' boyhood home. "All the cliches you hear about the minister's son, they were all true in Harry's case," Gib Drendel said. "Harry liked to have a good time. " Kalas was a backup linebacker on coach C. Weston Spencer's team, which won 12 games over his junior and senior seasons. "He was a heck of a basketball player, too," said Gib Drendel. "He grew real late, so he was always too small for the varsity. But I remember that he led the intramural league in scoring. " After graduating from Naperville Community in 1954, Kalas went to Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, another Methodist-run institution. There, early in the first semester, a blind speech professor heard Kalas' voice in class and was struck by its resonance. "He said to Harry, 'Son, you've got to become an announcer,' " recalled Gib Drendel, who along with two other Naperville graduates attended Cornell with Kalas. But Kalas chafed under that church-related colllege's strict discipline, and -- apparently with some encouragement from Cornell officials -- transferred to the University of Iowa. There, he began to broadcast the games of several Hawkeyes teams and was smitten. Drafted into the Army after graduation, he was lucky enough to be stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Hearing that Bill Whaley, a onetime Pacific Coast League pitcher, owned the South Pacific cocktail lounge downtown, Kalas went there one night for some beer and baseball conversation. It was a life-changing night. Whaley told Kalas that big-league broadcaster Buddy Blattner was due at the bar in a few hours. Blattner told the young private that the Sacramento Solons of the PCL would be moving to Honolulu that year. Kalas applied for the broadcaster's job and got it, submitting a tape from a Minnesota-Iowa game. And since the season started in April and he wasn't due to be discharged until July, he convinced the Army to grant him an early dismissal. He announced Hawaii's games for several years on KGO-AM, recreating road games from wire-service accounts. And then, in 1965, he landed a job with the Houston Astros. Six years later, he and Veterans Stadium debuted in Philadelphia. The former has held up considerably better than the latter. "It's been quite a career when you look at it," Gene Drendel said. "All those years of minor-league and major-league baseball. All those years in Philadelphia. All those commercials and NFL Films things he does. It's amazing. "And to think he started out right here in Naperville. " ------ Contact Frank Fitzpatrick at 215-854-5068 or [email protected]. |