Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 352
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-5381-1294-6 • Hardback • April 2019 • $42.00 • (£35.00)
978-1-5381-5907-1 • Paperback • December 2021 • $20.00 • (£14.99)
Don Zminda spent more than two decades with STATS LLC, first as director of publications and then director of research for STATS-supported sports broadcasts. He has written or edited over a dozen sports books, including Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and the SABR publication Go-Go to Glory: The 1959 Chicago White Sox. He has been a member of the Society for Baseball Research since 1979. A Chicago native, Zminda now resides in Los Angeles.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: The Man Who Wasn’t There
2: Early Days
3: Voice of the Cardinals
4: Changing Times
5: New Partners
6: KMOX
7: Up and Downs
8: Glory Days
9: End of an Era
10: Siberia
11: New Man in Town
12: South Side Blues
13: A Tumultuous Year
14: Harry, Jimmy, and Bill
15: Demolition
16: Eddie and Jerry and Harry and Jimmy
17: Harry Heads North
18: Superstar of the Superstation
19: Stroke and Recovery
20: The Mayor of Rush Street
21: North Side versus South Side
22: Slips, Strikes, and Controversies
23: Last Call
24: A Long Goodbye
25: Epilogue: Harry Caray’s Lasting Impact
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Don Zminda has given us a biography worthy of the subject.... His fans will love this book.
— Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine
Harry Caray was a larger-than-life personality in the broadcast booth and in his personal life. He made his early reputation as the St. Louis Cardinals’ radio announcer but is most remembered for his years in Chicago, first with the White Sox and later with the Cubs, where he cemented his national profile through the WGN cable network. Zminda, veteran sports journalist and a Chicago native, is perfectly situated to track Caray’s tumultuous tenure in the Windy City. As the voice of the White Sox, Caray could be hypercritical of players and management. He and his partner, Jimmy Piersall, while adored by listeners, burned more bridges than a retreating army. Once Caray moved to the Cubs, he became more of a “homer,” building up the team rather than tearing it down, though the frustration in his voice was evident whenever he intoned his signature phrase, describing yet another Cub who “popped it up.” Zminda draws on personal interviews and press accounts to vividly capture Caray’s misadventures, both professionally and personally. Expect significant demand, especially in the Midwest, where Caray is still the standard by which all other baseball announcers are measured.— Booklist
Exhaustively researched and wonderfully written. . . . Some biographers hate their subjects; some adore them. Don Zminda does neither. He is not an advocate. Instead, to use a sports phrase, he is an umpire, calling Harry Caray’s life as he saw it. But better than an umpire, Zminda is a fan, re-creating for readers baseball in the second half of the 20th century when the game changed substantially. The Legendary Harry Caray: Baseball’s Greatest Salesman is a great baseball book. This fan is happy to include it in his baseball collection.— Illinois Times
The Legendary Harry. . . portrays Caray as shrewd enough to recognize that broadcasting as a fan meant occasionally expressing a fan’s frustrations. “I started ripping everybody in sight,” he said of his early career. “It was a calculated thing to make people know you’re there. And it worked.”— Literary Review Of Canada
Zminda’s book is not only a fine biography of a “larger than life” man, it’s also a fascinating history of baseball and broadcasting in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. If you lived through those years like I did, the book will bring back many fond memories. If you didn’t, the book is worth reading to understand how a man born in St. Louis and once tightly identified with the Cardinals wound up with a statue outside Wrigley Field.— Bleed Cubbie Blue
The work Zminda puts into this is impressive and far exceeds anything done in a journalistic fashion on Caray’s career — this isn’t something meant to make readers feel warm and fuzzy.— Tom Hoffarth's "The Drill"
Harry Caray springs to life, thanks to Don Zminda’s meticulous research. Caray’s artistry and his personal flaws are under Zminda’s microscope, and the reader benefits from this rare analysis of one of broadcasting’s most controversial characters.— Bill Brown, veteran MLB broadcaster
Zminda’s book on Harry Caray fully captures the bluster, color, and brilliance of baseball’s raspy-throated clown prince.— Chris Erskine, columnist, Los Angeles Times
Don Zminda’s deep dive into Harry Caray’s amazing life and broadcasting career is a must-read for baseball fans of every generation. Caray was intimately linked to no less than three big league franchises—the St. Louis Cardinals and both Chicago franchises, most notably the Cubs, with whom he became a national TV treasure. It’s a wild and riotous ride with tons of laughs, iconic moments, and yes, beer.— Len Kasper, play-by-play announcer, Chicago Cubs
If I were asked what all-time baseball announcer most loved the pastime, I would almost surely answer Harry Caray, its irrepressible, incorrigible, unforgettable Falstaff behind the microphone. Don Zminda shows why, as was once said of Bill Veeck, Harry made of baseball a Carnival, “every day a Mardi Gras, and every fan a King."— Curt Smith, author, Voices of The Game: The Acclaimed Chronicle of Baseball Radio and Television Broadcasting
Harry Carabina, as he revealed on my nationally syndicated Talking Baseball television show (I had never met him before he walked into the studio), sure worked his way up from selling newspapers on the streets of St. Louis as a boy. You gotta love a guy who says, “I sing ‘Take Me Out To the Ballgame’ because it’s the only song I know the words to.”— Ed Randall, host of “Ed Randall’s Talking Baseball” on WFAN Sports Radio and “Remember When” on SiriusXM
Harry Caray’s life could be and should be the basis for a major motion picture. And when that happens, this is the book that should be used for the source material. It’s an insightful, well-researched, at times hilarious and frank look at the man, the myth, the mistakes, the madness and the magnificence of this one-of-a-kind legend.— Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times and WGN radio
There was no one in baseball quite like Harry Caray. And now, through Don’s words, we get to know the storyteller, character, and brutally honest force of nature behind the seventh-inning stretch and Will Ferrell impression. It might be … it could be … it is a joy to read.— Joe Posnanski, national columnist, The Athletic
• Long-listed, CASEY Award: Best Baseball Book of the Year (Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, 2019)