It was around 7 PM on a snowy night in South St. Louis, AKA Redneck World. Me and my friend were nursing a couple of highballs waiting for the nightly show to start. My buddy was a Southside native from Dago Hill, home of Berra and Garagiolla. "There's your hero"...I looked over and damn if it wasn't Harry Caray, my ultimate childhood hero. He continued, "He's probably here to meet a whore"
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I've run into many celebs in my time, but this was the first and only time I ever went up to speak. He could not have been more friendly. After maybe a minute he realized I was a real Cardinal fan and he really warmed to the conversation. He even offered to buy me a drink.
We were only talking for about 5 minutes when he looked over my shoulder, finished off his Bud and said "Well, gotta go. See 'ya Kid". I looked around and spotted a tall, beautiful light skinned Black woman in a full length white mink coat standing in the doorway. She looked like a million bucks. Couldn't have been older than 25. Harry must have been near 60. It was at the time he was working for the Sox.
"How did you know he was meeting a call girl?" My friend smiled and told me that everybody on the "Hill" knew what a Tomcat 'ol Harry was. I had heard he was fired because he was fucking Mr. Busch's wife. Later that was confirmed to me by a couple of retired Cardinals that used to visit the Restaurant where I worked. They told me they were sure who ratted him out to the old Beer Baron.
Man. I hated it when Jack Buck and Mike Shannon took over the booth. Never saw much in them.
