Roy Halladay RIP

[el-pietro]

I'm 35 so not exactly a kid but I think by the profile of this board I would be considered young. I never saw Ashburn play, nor have I heard him broadcast, other than in highlights and I wouldn't recognise him if I heard him.

I don't have the same connection to Harry that you would have, though I can appreciate how brilliant he was from my limited experience. I had never seen a baseball game before 2006, and in 2007 and 2008 I was following the results mostly after the fact with almost no live games other than a few illegal streams (broke college kid who only had internet access during the day when on campus), so really I only had 2006 with Harry. I do miss him by comparison with what is there today.
The 2009 post season was the first time I got MLB TV, and then I was really following closely in 2010 and 11, I remember watching the perfect game after the fact but saw the No Hitter live, which due to time zones has always been difficult.
One of my biggest Phillies regrets is I never got to see Roy pitch in person. He was injured when I visited in 2013.

[rpmcmurphy]

Two passings come to my mind - two that hit me every bit as hard as losing a parent or other family member. Two that I still grieve for when I think about them.

Richie. Harry.

How I wish I could turn on the radio and welcome these two gentlemen back into our kitchen.

Sometimes I watch a few innings of old games on the ClassicPhillies TV YouTube channel in order to relive some of those feelings.

[zambonir]

They will both always loom large. I was actually at Shea the night Richie died (the famous Kevin Jordan foul balls AB). And Harry was a gut punch, but at least he got '08.

[flyers19rw]

Whitey was an outlier as a player and later as a color man on broadcasts. As a player, he played CF in an era of sluggers at that position- Mays, Snider, et al. He never had that power. His glove and speed were tremendous but, in the field, his arm was barely adequate. As a result he often was overlooked for AS credit; especially while playing for some mediocre Phillies teams in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
When he went behind the mic, his laid back approach was not the norm for color men. Most color guys were too talkative and lacked substance when discussing the game. He was able to blend with HK in a way that was rare for a broadcast crew. For us Phillies listeners, he was a gem. His insights and feel for the game gave us something that almost every other broadcast crew in the game lacked. Perhaps, unfortunately, Whitey and Harry were too good. Their successors have paled badly in comparison.

[zambonir]

I always think of Richie as being Johnny Carson. Two white-haired Nebraska boys with bone-dry humor and hidden depths you eventually got to see.

And yeah, nobody can live up. But also the game and sports in general and broadcasting has changed so much that to even have a long-lasting duo like that is increasingly rare. People change jobs, and teams like to use bigger crews who alternate between radio and TV.

I also reckon a large part of our memories, and love of (and grief over) Whitey and Harry is that they lived in our bedrooms and car radios in a way that Frantzke never could or will, and even no player does.

And even if Tom McCarthy was better, he's lacked a really good (and consistent) partner.

I think the Mets team is very good. I wish we had one ex-player who was as sharp as Darling, and I like Hernandez too. Matt Stairs might have been that guy but it didn't work out. Always kind of liked Mitch Williams on Comcast too but he obviously made his own bed there.

And I actually kind of like Jim Jackson, he has a good tone, and is excitable but not too much so. I may just be predisposed to him from hockey.

[flyers19rw]

In the mid sixties, I headed off to Wisconsin to go to school. As a result, I was stuck listening to Cubs games. The best part of that was the broadcasts of Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau. At that time, I thought that it was a shame that the Phillies didn’t have a better broadcast team to make the games more exciting. By Saam was solid at reporting a game but, to me, lacked the pizazz to light up the games.
Then Harry and Richie came along and the Phillies broadcasts went to a level never seen before with the Phillies. They educated you about the game and made you want to see and hear what they were bringing into your living room.
An aside, a friend of mine pitched for Yale when Darling was there. He told me that Darling understood the game like no one else he had ever met and was able to convey that to his teammates so that Yale could win games that they had no business winning. It’s no surprise to him that Darling is as good of an announcer as he is. He knows the game and can articulate it for the fans. He’s probably the best in today’s business. BTW, he’d make a heck of a pitching coach but probably wouldn’t take job.

[Dirk41]

Inside Roy Halladay's struggle with pain, addiction

[kmc1019]

Great piece in The Athletic today on the long string of transactions involved in the Phillies ultimately landing Roy Halladay:

How the Phillies landed Roy Halladay: A 13-year transaction...

[andyb]

Looks like ESPN has a 30 for 30 doc coming out this week on Roy also. Assume it is tied to that article.

[Dirk41]

There just seems to be something off here and it's really difficult to pinpoint what it is.

[zambonir]

I don't know that anything is off. Addiction and depression are a bitch. He's hardly the first athlete to struggle with that, or to have a complicated family dynamic. My hat remains off to Brandy for being so open about it. A lot of families would continue to sweep it under the rug, and a lot of teams/agents would also want it that way to preserve whatever business value a more heroic image had. Cynically, you could say that this narrative of recovery and tragedy now is their business, but I don't see it that way. It's fairly typical for families who have lost someone to a disease to devote their lives to raising awareness about that disease.

[zambonir]

Sounds like it is going to be pretty compelling.

That includes... Kyle Kendrick, whose locker was next to Halladay’s in Philadelphia. It was Kendrick who described an incident with a teammate confronting Halladay about his drug use, and who noticed a change in his friend in 2013.

“You try to talk to him and you feel like he wasn’t there,” Kendrick said.

At this point, Halladay was two years removed from winning the Cy Young and three years removed from throwing his perfect game and his postseason no-hitter, which remains one of two in MLB history.

What fans didn’t know was that a back injury in 2011 led to Halladay obtaining prescription opioids. His back injury was so bad, Brandy says, that Roy shrunk three inches. That led to shoulder surgery, which led to more dependence on painkillers.

When he went to rehab following the 2013 season, someone snuck a phone in and recognized him as Roy Halladay, the famous baseball player, and that was enough for him to leave early. He didn’t want people to find out he wasn’t perfect after all.

https://sports.yahoo.com/roy-halladay-documentary-shows-aces-addiction-mental-health-troubles-in-hopes-others-might-seek-help-195733434.html

[Dirk41]

Absolutely. It just seems like a shallow dive into either of those subjects. Did his faith have anything to do with the repression of his feelings and behavior? The care by the Phillies seems terrible here, too. Those days where he was just melting on the mound must have just been excruciating. Sad all around

[donaldorc]

Recently I watched Ken Burns’ epic video series on baseball. I remember being shocked when Sandy Koufax left the game at age 31, I had seen him pitch a no-hitter at Connie Mack and he was unbelievably good. On the video, Koufax said he left the game because of the pain and the amount of drugs he had to take to sustain his dominance. He decided it wasn’t worth sacrificing everything else, family, health, a normal life, for a game.

[California_Dreamin]

Just as a FWIW Dept. comment...I went to the game in Los Angeles on July 17,2012 when Halladay was returning to action after nearly two months rehabbing a sore shoulder. Now as a historical backdrop moment, this was when he had pitched fairly effectively during the early part of 2012 though there were already rumors that something wasn't right with him. Then he had the horrendous start in St. Louis in late May and was shut down for almost two months.

Anyways, I went to the game he returned in Los Angeles and he went 5 innings, allowing 2 runs in a no decision. However, what I remember distinctly was how profusely he was sweating, it was so discernible. It was a fairly warm evening but nothing extraordinary and no player on either team was sweating like he was, he was dripping with sweat that night.

Now after reading about what he was going through that might explain it. Probably one of the most glaring examples of the demons that even the most skilled of athletes go through in professional sports.

[andyb]

I remember that game too. Stuff was really not there but he just gutted his way through it.

Reminded me a bit of Pedro Martinez in relief in the playoffs years ago. Scherzer in his post-injury WS start last year too. We sometimes take for granted how hard it is to compete for these guys when they are only at 80%.

[PiedmontPhilly]

After viewing the documentary, I went back and took a look at some pictures I had taken of him in 2013 before a spring training start. I was standing right above the bullpen where he was warming up.

He was sweating profusely just through the warmup. I included the first and last pictures I took of him warming up. You can see the difference in his cap. He only lasted one inning in this game and was removed.