His What Hurt?

Technically, Ken “Hawk” Harrelson didn’t get elected to Cooperstown.  No, the Hall of Fame selected Harrelson to receive the 2020 Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting.  But close enough.

I’m 80/20 on Harrelson as an announcer, 80 percent despise vs. 20 percent tolerate; after all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  Or maybe I’m just a little bit brainwashed.  After listening to Hawkisms for 30-plus seasons, I’ve had “you can put it on the board, yes!”; “that’s a can of corn”; “go foul”; and whatnot burned into my consciousness.  And Harrelson did come up with “The Big Hurt,” a perfect nickname for Frank Thomas.

My big problem with Harrelson is how he sucked up to power, the way a dry sponge sucks up water, only more so.  Whatever Bud Selig did as MLB commissioner or Jerry Reinsdorf did as owner of the Sox was just fine by the Hawk.  No, I take that back.  The Hawk probably wishes Reinsdorf had never hired him in 1986 as Sox GM.

It should be interesting to see if Harrelson says anything in his acceptance speech about the late Marvin Miller, former head of the players’ association who also be going into Cooperstown next summer.  Hawk on occasion would say during broadcasts how players came up to him before the strike in 1994 to ask him what they should do.  Don Fehr had replaced Miller by then, and, if dislike travels backward, Harrelson had no more use for Miller than he did Fehr.

But there is one reason for all Sox fans to rejoice at the Hawk winning his Frick—the ever-smug Pat Hughes, radio voice of the Cubs, was denied the honor.  Wait till next year, Pat, or more.