(Newser)
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Ernie Harwell, the only baseball broadcaster ever traded for a player, has died aged 92 after a long fight with cancer. The beloved sportscaster spent 55 years broadcasting major league games, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers. The transplanted Southerner, rated as one of the best baseball broadcasters of all time, became known as the voice of Detroit during his decades of doing play-by-play for the Tigers, the Detroit Free Press notes in a glowing tribute.
Harwell started out as a sportswriter aged 16 in 1934 and moved to sportscasting with the Atlanta Crackers. After a stint in the Marines during World War II, he ended up in the big leagues when the Brooklyn Dodgers acquired him from the Crackers for catcher Cliff Dapper. He moved to Detroit in 1960 and was still broadcasting the full 162-game schedule into his eighties. After learning he had just months to live, Harwell said death was just the next big adventure. "I’ve had so many great ones,” he said. “It’s been a terrific life.”
