Lakeland, Fla. — En route Tuesday to some Tigers minor-league reporting at Lakeland, word arrived that Jim Price had died, at 81, following a health downturn.
So it seems right, if not providential, to be writing these words from the very radio booth at Marchant Stadium from which Price teamed with Ernie Harwell and Dan Dickerson in his decades-long role as a Tigers analyst.
For another important reason it seems appropriate to be sitting in Price’s chair. After all, he played on this very field — Publix Field at Marchant Stadium as it’s now known — that later Tuesday, on a near-100-degree night, was to host a Single-A game between the Lakeland Flying Tigers and Dunedin Blue Jays.
Player, first. Announcer, second.
Important sequencing there. For as much as Price stands as a generational baseball voice in Detroit, he was indeed a five-season (1967-71), big-league catcher for the Tigers. This was a man who caught Mickey Lolich and Denny McLain and John Hiller, even if he was a definitive back-up catcher to the great Bill Freehan.
This was a right-handed hitter with enough Pennsylvania-honed muscle to have homered in three consecutive games during the Tigers’ 1969 season.
He had street cred, loads of it, for what eventually became a long ride as a Detroit baseball broadcaster.
His years on the Tigers airwaves were the product of a man’s professional baseball savvy as well as a monument to his relationship with the Ilitch family.
Each was fundamental to Price’s amazing longevity and to his place in Tigers lore.
More: Tributes pour in for Tigers’ beloved broadcaster Jim Price
Consider that voice, for starters. “Great pipes,” as they say in the business. Resonant, clear, authoritative.
He was a natural recruit as the Tigers began their migration 30-plus years ago toward pay-per-view television (the old PASS network). His comfort level there, as a broadcaster and with the audience, cleared the way for him to team with Ernie Harwell once Harwell was brought back following an early ‘90s debacle that saw Harwell exiled and later restored.
Then, once Harwell decided to (permanently) retire, it was Price who co-piloted these past 24 years with Dan Dickerson as “Dan and Jim” became a fixture in the audience’s personal relationship with the Tigers.
Mike Ilitch, the Tigers late owner, was something of an architect there. He believed Price was worth keeping and even promoting.
Ilitch, as we know, had a thing for the “old” Tigers — particularly those heroes from Detroit’s 1968 world championship team. He believed they were baseball bedrock. He saw them as emblematic of all that was good and great and lustrous about a franchise flying under the flag of the Olde English D.
Price was from that exalted fraternity. Moreover, Ilitch liked him.
He took care of him, as well, tripling Price’s salary following the radio-booth commotion that had followed Harwell’s earlier exit and triumphant return. He also promised him a job “for life” in the Tigers booth.
Price was not to forget it. And, truth be told, the commitment was not — in recent years, anyway — always productive.
“Yellow hammer.”
“The art of pitching.”
“Buggy whip.”
“Late movement.”
Radio-booth trademarks can become shopworn, even derisive, if overdone. Price’s pet phrases became somewhat exhaustive, a kind of crutch, even. And, while his most ardent fans will quibble, Price had lapsed in these waning years deeply into repetitions and a form of verbal monotony that made him significantly less than the energized expert of yesteryear.
This undoubtedly made life difficult for Dickerson, although Dickerson never for a moment let on to any impatience with Price, even as Dickerson was forced into flying solo, as it were, with Price seemingly becoming more and more detached.
Dickerson, to his credit, had managed to team with any number of broadcast partners — including press-box reporters — as Price in these twilight years missed time, either because of health, or because he no longer traveled to road games.
This is not how a game broadcast is supposed to function. And good for the Tigers that this season they have done Dickerson and the audience a favor bringing aboard Bobby Scales and Cameron Maybin — and a most refreshing partner in Andy Dirks, the one-time Tigers outfielder who many of us failed to see during his playing days as a terrific future analyst.
Price, though, in his passing retains his place and prominence. He had the knack during his prime-time years to help build that most important of baseball words — intimacy — with the Tigers listeners.
He was reassuring, even soothing, alongside Harwell or Dickerson. He defined that trust and familiarity and Tigers pedigree Ilitch sought and worked to sustain.
He showed up. Every day. Every night. And not only to park behind a mic and throw on the headset for nine innings of baseball.
Price was versatile, as broadcasters must be. He could handle a pregame interview on the field with a visiting player, or sit with Jim Leyland for the skipper’s pregame show and make a conversation that had to sound fresh, 162 times a year, appealing to an audience that couldn’t abide having such chats mailed-in.
Price, to his credit, didn’t do that anymore than Harwell did it. Neither has Dickerson, for a nanosecond, ever insulted listeners by succumbing to the six-month season routine.
This, in part, is why it was helpful Tuesday night to be at a place where Price’s Tigers career was born.
Marchant Stadium was the venue where Price’s six-decade Tigers tenure began. TigerTown was the hatchery for a right-handed batter and catcher who showed manager Mayo Smith enough skill to win a precious roster spot on a team that, a year later, was headed for a world championship.
Never would that kid from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, then have imagined what a Tigers uniform would bring to his life. The years. The second career. The history he would chronicle, as a broadcaster, and the status he would know as a link between a hallowed big-league team and its followers.
Ah, but he did come to know and to appreciate, endlessly, his blessings within that Tigers broadcast booth. He exuded it. Always.
An owner had foreseen it, as well. An owner who trusted and who anointed an authentic Tigers player who was every bit the authentic Tigers broadcaster.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.