Where's Harry?: Steve Stone Remembers 25 Years with Harry Caray by Steve StoneMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a very difficult book to rate. I’ve been a Harry Caray fan for decades. I was born into a mildly St. Louis Cardinals-leaning household because of my Southern Illinois-born dad, but I grew up in Northern Illinois in an area where the local station was a member of the Cubs TV Network. I was a youth who rebelled when doing so didn’t have high costs, so I became a Cubs fan. And so I was introduced to Harry Caray, and found him a great voice of the fan. His disdain when a Cub hitter popped up a pitch with runners on expressed the same feelings I was having as a fan. I can still hear Harry’s voice saying “Pahhhpt it up” with disgust. So I was hoping to read some interesting anecdotes about Harry that I hadn’t heard.
Steve Stone brings the heat, er, these kinds of hilarious anecdotes of Harry representing the fan. And they are good. I found myself laughing quite often while reading this in doctors offices and coffee shops where laughing is unexpected and out of place. Steve goes beyond my expectations, by also analyzing Harry the media image expert. Behind the scenes, Stone relates that Harry focused a lot on putting on a good show. He did the work to make this happen. It is quite an interesting business bio, most all through first hand experiences by Stone. These kinds of stories burnished my regard for Caray.
But Stone began the book with many anecdotes where he repeats how much he liked and appreciated Caray, but then describes the ways that Haray was impossible to work with, was a control freak, ignored other people, said he’d do something then change his mind, that kind of thing. Stone keeps repeating that he loved and respected Harry, but by the stories he’s telling, you feel that he really felt quite the opposite. Stone compares his career with Caray to a marriage, with good and bad times. Through most of the book, it felt like Stone was a disrespected spouse getting even by “setting the story straight” after their spouse died. This gave me a lot to think about as a Caray and as a Stone fan (and as a husband, but let’s not talk about that). In the last few chapters of the book Stone had a very different voice. It was like that spouse reminiscing about the bad times realized that overall it wasn’t such a bad relationship. Stone ends the book with a very positive take on Caray, where when he says they had a good relationship, with respect, you felt that Stone meant it, unlike earlier in the book.
Overall, Stone provides a more complex take on Caray than I expected from a book with this goofy title. In some ways, Harry fell in my esteem as a broadcaster voice of the fan. But in the end, you see that he was just more complex than his image, and that’s what you should expect from any larger than life character. I wasn’t expecting a philosophical discourse on relationships. I really enjoyed this.
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