Well-known sports announcer Harry Caray didn’t spill his soul in his diary, but he did record a 288-day
drinking spree in 1972, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Grant DePorter, CEO of the legendary sportscaster's chain of restaurants, reportedly inherited eight of Caray's diaries, amongst other belongings including memorabilia, after he died in 1998. The businessman recently gave Sun-Times writer Neil Steinberg a look at the journals.
"I should say right away that this is not a Dear Kitty, pour-out-your-heart, frank-assessment-of-my-friends kind of diary. Old Harry was not big on introspection, as he was the first to admit," Steinberg wrote.
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Instead, the colorful sports announcer, who worked for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago White Sox, and the Cubs, carefully tracked his bar tabs.
On the first day of 1972, the Sun-Times said, Caray reportedly hit up four different bars, tallying a total of $39.22, back when a six-pack was just more than a dollar.
Almost as noteworthy as the amount of drinking was the list of people Caray drank with. According to Steinberg, Caray hit the bottle with big sports names like Dave Condon, a Chicago Tribune sports columnist, and Joe Pepitone, a Yankees player traded to the Cubs.
"These guys did nothing but go out and have a few cocktails," one bar owner, Jimmy Rittenberg, told Steinberg. Caray reportedly visited his establishment, Faces, 14 times in 1972. "I don’t know how they did it. They were 20, 30 years older than me and I couldn’t keep up with them."
Steinberg’s humorous article has gone viral, and the diary entries have been
picked up by numerous media outlets, including ESPN.
"We have fresh, documented evidence explaining the great contradiction of Harry Caray’s career," the network's Keith Olbermann commented on the careful track of bar tabs. "He was one of the great and most beloved figures in sports media history despite not being much of a nuts and bolts announcer and not often being anything of a journalist. The explanation is simple. Harry bought drinks for everybody. I don’t mean this metaphorically."
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