One year ago today, Harry Kalas died in the booth an hour before a game between the Phillies and Nationals.

I was on my way to class at the University of Pittsburgh when I heard the news. It’s a rare thing for me to cry when I’m not alone, but I was unsuccessfully fighting off tears for the rest of the day. I’ve been fortunate enough that no family members who were particularly close to me have died in my lifetime, but the pain I felt at his loss was what I imagine it would be like. If you grew up listening to Harry call games every summer, as many of us did, you know exactly what I mean. We all knew he was getting on in years, and he’d started to slip just the slightest bit in his work. Little things, like mistaking a strike for a ball. Stumbling over a routine call. Not quite bringing the same energy that he had in years past. Still, nobody was ready to see him go.

Going to school a few hundred miles away, I rarely had the chance to enjoy his broadcasts over the last few years of his life. When he passed, I was only a few weeks away from graduating and returning to my parents’ house for the summer, while I tried to figure just what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life. After the shock and the tears wore off, I kept coming back to a single thought: I wish I could have heard him call just one more game.

I was lucky enough to meet him in 2004. I was working at a hotel which hosted the Delco Times sports banquet, and he was at one of my tables. I tried to be professional, to be courteous, to let him eat his dinner in peace, and above all, to not screw anything up. The entire staff gravitated to him throughout the evening, eager for a chance to have a brief exchange with a legend. It would have been perfectly understandable if he had gotten a little annoyed.

He did not. He was warm and jovial with every person who interacted with him that night, be they fellow guests or hotel employees. I’ve been treated like a lower specimen by many normal people before, but not by Harry. He actively engaged me in conversation, and it wasn’t long before I got past being intimidated by my proximity to the voice of the Phillies and managed to not make a fool of myself.

There are hundreds of stories just like mine, of regular folks who met one of the greatest broadcasters in the history of sports, and came away with nothing but fond memories of a true gentleman.

Harry may not be calling games anymore. The team may not be wearing the black, circular HK patch in his honor this season. But generations of Phillies faithful will always hold him close to their hearts.

Harry Kalas, you were the man.

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