As Harry Caray as my witness..

May Harry Caray beat me with a thousand lashes of Budweiser cans should I ever criticize the Bubba'ed and the Gummed one again.

His speech was excellent and clearly not written by him. Here are some of the highlights (and this will totally bore you to tears unless you have any conception of the Chicago Cubs in the late 80's and 1990's.

That's what I loved most about the game, how a ground out to second with a man on second and nobody out was a great thing.

But Harry [Caray], who was a huge supporter of mine, used to say how nice it is that a guy who can hit 40 homers or steal 50 bases drive in a hundred runs is the best bunter on the team.

There was Shawon Dunston and Mark Grace, and together we were a double play combination for ten years. Shawon Dunston,
who knew three weeks in advance if we were facing Nolan Ryan and
always had a hamstring pull playing the day before. Mark Grace,
who made sure Shawon knew he was supposed to get every popup
from foul line to foul line on the infield. (<---best line of the speech!)

Dawson, the Hawk. No player in baseball history worked harder, suffered more or did it better than Andre Dawson. (YES!)

It reminds me of the guy walking down the beach. He finds
a bottle, pops the cork and a genie comes out to grant him one
wish. The guy says my wish is for peace between the Israelis
and Palestinians. Here's a map of the Middle East. Genie takes
the map, studies it for hours and hours. Finally gives it back
to the guy and says, is there anything else you want to wish
for? This is impossible. The guy says well, I always wanted to
see the cubs in a World Series. The genie looks at him, reaches
out and says, let me have another look at that map.


And by the way, for what it's worth, Ron Santo just gained one more vote
from the veteran's committee.