R.I.P. Harry Kalas

(Philadelphia Phillies photo)

Legendary Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas died Monday. He was 73.

"We lost our voice today," team president David Montgomery said.

I first heard Harry do play-by-play in 1963, when he was the radio voice of the old Hawai'i Islanders AAA team in the Pacific Coast League. He'd been stationed in the Islands and never left. Back in those days, they couldn't afford to do live broadcasts of away games, so Harry re-created them in the studio in Honolulu. He often joked that if he wanted to get out of work early he'd speed up the pitch count.

When Harry left the Islands to go to the Mainland, his replacement was a young pup named Al Michaels. The Islanders team eventually moved to the Mainland as well, and is now the AAA farm team of the Colorado Rockies.

Of course, Harry was also the second voice of NFL Films, and more recently also did ads for Campbell's Chunky Soup. The past few years he also did play-by-play for Animal Planet's "Puppy Bowl", which that channel ran head to head against the "real" Super Bowl.

And his final bow-he got to call the final out of the 2008 World Series victory by the Phillies.

Aloha Harry.