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WASHINGTON -- Popular long-time Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas has died at Nationals Park today, the team confirmed. He was 73.Kalas, also known for his voiceover work with NFL Films, was in his 39th season with the Phillies.
According to The Associated Press, team president David Montogomery said Kalas was found in the team's broadcast booth by the Phillies director of broadcasting at about 12:30 PM and taken to a local hospital.
"He was an all-time great person and to lose him ... is just shocking," Nationals assistant general manager Bob Boone said. Boone played for the Phillies from 1972-81 and helped lift the club to its first world championship in 1980.
"Harry had been such a class person and had so many friends around baseball," he said. "The baseball world is going to miss [him] tremendously."
It has been a tragic start to the baseball season, with Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart killed last week in a car crash.
"Well I think all of us know that we'll try to do the best we can," Phillies third-base coach Sam Perlozzo said. "I don't think it's gonna get out of our heads. I don't think that's gonna happen, at least not for a while. So, I think we'll all pull for each other and help each other out and try to get through it."
"Major League Baseball has lost one of the great voices of our generation," said commissioner Bud Selig in a statement. "Baseball announcers have a special bond with their audience, and Harry represented the best of baseball not only to the fans of the Phillies, but to fans everywhere."
The Nationals held a moment of silence before today's game against the Phillies.
In 2002, Kalas was given the Ford C. Frick Award and inducted into the broadcasters' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Kalas began his broadcasting career in Hawaii while serving in the Army. He joined the Houston Astros' announcing team in 1965 and moved to the Phillies in 1971. He also broadcast NFL games for the Westwood One radio network.
Phillies fans were so upset they could not listen to Kalas during the 1980 World Series because of national broadcast exclusivity that the rules were changed the following year.
"He was one of us when we won the World Series," said Boone. "We knew that his team was the Phillies. He was a Philly guy."
Kalas was named Pennsylvania Sportscaster of the Year 18 times. At the time of this death he was sixth in tenure among major-league broadcasters, after Vin Scully (1950), Milo Hamilton (1953), Jaime Jarrin (1959), Jerry Coleman (1960) and Ralph Kiner (1962).
FanHouse's Andrew Johnson contributed to this report.
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