Harry Caray

It has been known that, he was sacked from the announcer’s job for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1969, due to his affair with the daughter-in-law of August A. Busch, Jr, the owner of Cardinals.

He married Dorothy with whom he had three children. Later, he tied the nuptial knot with Marian with whom he had two children. On May 19, 1975, he married Delores “Dutchie”.

On February 14, 1998, while dining with his family, he suffered a heart attack that damaged his brain. After several days, he breathed his last.

Born as Harry Christopher Carabina, Harry Caray was the son of Italian father and Romanian mother. He lost his father when he was barely two years old and his mother when he was eight. After the death of her mother, he started living with his aunt.

For a brief period, he played baseball at the semi-pro level. As a baseball player, his remarkable performance earned him an athletic scholarship from the University of Alabama. But he did not accept this scholarship.

Instead, he was planning to join the St. Louis Cardinals, a baseball team in St. Louis, Missouri. Unfortunately, he failed to fulfil his plan to become a professional baseball player.

For a short time, he worked as a sales correspondent, which brought him the opportunity to watch baseball matches. While listening to baseball match commentary on the radio, he felt about the lack of liveliness of radio broadcasting.

He wrote a letter to Merle Jones, the general manager of KMOX, a radio station in St. Louis. Through this letter, he expressed his personal opinion about baseball broadcast.

With the recommendation of Merle, he started working as an announcer at WJOL in Joliet, Illinois. Later, he joined WKZO in Kalamazoo, Michigan as a sports editor and news director in association with Paul Harvey, a well known radio broadcaster.

In 1945, he took the responsibility of a broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals on KMOX-TV and Radio. It was during this time that he changed his surname to Caray . As a broadcaster of St. Louis Cardinals, he broadcast the World Series of 1964, 1967 and 1968 on NBC.

After serving for twenty five years for the St. Louis Cardinals, he was dismissed from his job in 1969. After that, he worked as the broadcaster for the Oakland Athletics for one season.

This successful baseball broadcaster took great pride in working with his son Skip Caray and grandson Chip Caray in the same broadcast booth during a baseball match on May 13, 1991.