Legendary Harry Caray - by Don Zminda (Paperback)

About the Book

Harry Caray is one of the most famous and beloved sports broadcasters of all time, with a career that lasted over 50 years. This book is the first full-length biography of Caray since his death in 1998, featuring new information on his life and interviews with over 25 people w...

Book Synopsis

Harry Caray is one of the most famous and beloved sports broadcasters of all time, with a career that lasted over 50 years. This book is the first full-length biography of Caray since his death in 1998, featuring new information on his life and interviews with over 25 people who knew and worked with this broadcasting legend.

Review Quotes

Don Zminda has given us a biography worthy of the subject.... His fans will love this book.

Don Zminda's deep dive into Harry Caray's amazing life and broadcasting career is a must-read for baseball fans of every generation. Caray was intimately linked to no less than three big league franchises--the St. Louis Cardinals and both Chicago franchises, most notably the Cubs, with whom he became a national TV treasure. It's a wild and riotous ride with tons of laughs, iconic moments, and yes, beer.

Exhaustively researched and wonderfully written. . . . Some biographers hate their subjects; some adore them. Don Zminda does neither. He is not an advocate. Instead, to use a sports phrase, he is an umpire, calling Harry Caray's life as he saw it. But better than an umpire, Zminda is a fan, re-creating for readers baseball in the second half of the 20th century when the game changed substantially. The Legendary Harry Caray: Baseball's Greatest Salesman is a great baseball book. This fan is happy to include it in his baseball collection.

Harry Carabina, as he revealed on my nationally syndicated Talking Baseball television show (I had never met him before he walked into the studio), sure worked his way up from selling newspapers on the streets of St. Louis as a boy. You gotta love a guy who says, "I sing 'Take Me Out To the Ballgame' because it's the only song I know the words to."

Harry Caray springs to life, thanks to Don Zminda's meticulous research. Caray's artistry and his personal flaws are under Zminda's microscope, and the reader benefits from this rare analysis of one of broadcasting's most controversial characters.

Harry Caray was a larger-than-life personality in the broadcast booth and in his personal life. He made his early reputation as the St. Louis Cardinals' radio announcer but is most remembered for his years in Chicago, first with the White Sox and later with the Cubs, where he cemented his national profile through the WGN cable network. Zminda, veteran sports journalist and a Chicago native, is perfectly situated to track Caray's tumultuous tenure in the Windy City. As the voice of the White Sox, Caray could be hypercritical of players and management. He and his partner, Jimmy Piersall, while adored by listeners, burned more bridges than a retreating army. Once Caray moved to the Cubs, he became more of a "homer," building up the team rather than tearing it down, though the frustration in his voice was evident whenever he intoned his signature phrase, describing yet another Cub who "popped it up." Zminda draws on personal interviews and press accounts to vividly capture Caray's misadventures, both professionally and personally. Expect significant demand, especially in the Midwest, where Caray is still the standard by which all other baseball announcers are measured.

Harry Caray's life could be and should be the basis for a major motion picture. And when that happens, this is the book that should be used for the source material. It's an insightful, well-researched, at times hilarious and frank look at the man, the myth, the mistakes, the madness and the magnificence of this one-of-a-kind legend.

If I were asked what all-time baseball announcer most loved the pastime, I would almost surely answer Harry Caray, its irrepressible, incorrigible, unforgettable Falstaff behind the microphone. Don Zminda shows why, as was once said of Bill Veeck, Harry made of baseball a Carnival, "every day a Mardi Gras, and every fan a King."

The work Zminda puts into this is impressive and far exceeds anything done in a journalistic fashion on Caray's career -- this isn't something meant to make readers feel warm and fuzzy.

The Legendary Harry. . . portrays Caray as shrewd enough to recognize that broadcasting as a fan meant occasionally expressing a fan's frustrations. "I started ripping everybody in sight," he said of his early career. "It was a calculated thing to make people know you're there. And it worked."

There was no one in baseball quite like Harry Caray. And now, through Don's words, we get to know the storyteller, character, and brutally honest force of nature behind the seventh-inning stretch and Will Ferrell impression. It might be ... it could be ... it is a joy to read.

Zminda's book is not only a fine biography of a "larger than life" man, it's also a fascinating history of baseball and broadcasting in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. If you lived through those years like I did, the book will bring back many fond memories. If you didn't, the book is worth reading to understand how a man born in St. Louis and once tightly identified with the Cardinals wound up with a statue outside Wrigley Field.

Zminda's book on Harry Caray fully captures the bluster, color, and brilliance of baseball's raspy-throated clown prince.

About the Author

Don Zminda spent more than two decades with STATS LLC, first as director of publications and then director of research for STATS-supported sports broadcasts. He has written or edited over a dozen sports books, including Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and the SABR publication Go-Go to Glory: The 1959 Chicago White Sox. He has been a member of the Society for Baseball Research since 1979. A Chicago native, Zminda now resides in Los Angeles.