Ten Years Gone

Ten years ago today, something terrible happened. Many of us lost a very, very good friend. Though chances are we never met him, we felt as if we knew him better than most of our friends. 162 times or so out of the year we spent a few hours a day with him and instead of crying, he made us laugh.

Harry Caray died ten years ago today. The thing about Harry was, and still is, that no one is ever made fun of so much, in a way of tribute. Harry was without a doubt the funniest man to announce a baseball game, or any event for that matter, and probably didn't know it. Probably because of the beer.

But anyway, we all have memories of Harry. My favorite which I have spoken of before was his need to tell the world that, "Sosa spelled backwards, is Asos."

It doesn't matter who you are, who you root for or where you live, if you think of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," chances are you think of one guy singing it, and that's Harry.

Cubs fans have pretty much had miserable lives. We are the most loyal fans in all of sports. There are fair-weather White Sox fans who turn up, and White Sox fans that become Cubs fans when the northsiders make the playoffs, but there are more true Cubs fans than any other group of fans in America. We don't win. We know we aren't, but we try to believe. And Harry made everything a lot better. He made our misery easier to take with comedy. I mean, his grandson Chip could have been the worst thing to ever happen to the franchise. Harry took our minds away from the misery. And we are all here to tell the tale.

Some of you probably thought that today's title was going to go straight into the first ever Led Zeppelin post. Though it could have, and writing about Led Zeppelin every day wouldn't be too tough, take a second today to think about the one guy that you remember growing up with...whether it's Harry, Jack Brickhouse, Jack Buck or whoever it may be. But when you do, you'll realize something pretty special...that he wasn't just a guy you listened to while listening to your favorite team...he was your friend.