My latest Chicago Tribune column focuses on tonight’s new documentary: Hawk: The Colorful Life of Ken Harrelson. You can access here via my Twitter feed.
The White Sox announcer truly has led a remarkable life, hanging with a who’s-who of sports and beyond. He tells tales about Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jack Nicklaus, Vince Lombardi, Rocky Marciano, Howard Cosell and more. And those are only the stories that made it into the film.
From the column:
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For one, maybe two generations, Ken Harrelson is known strictly as the voice of the White Sox, the team’s most passionate fan behind the microphone.
Yet there is much, much more to “Hawk.” He was a flamboyant, trend-setting player during a time of great change for baseball in the 1960s. He hung with everyone and anyone in sports and beyond. Heck, Harrelson says he was with Joe Namath the night before Super Bowl III.
And it wasn’t just baseball. Harrelson was a good enough golfer to qualify for the 1972 British Open at Muirfield. Naturally, it was Jack Nicklaus who persuaded him to make the trip to Scotland.
It’s all there in “Hawk: The Colorful Life of Ken Harrelson.” The documentary debuts at 6 p.m. Thursday on MLB Network.
Harrelson said he was flattered that MLB Network wanted to do a film about him.
“They asked me some questions that I hadn’t been asked in years about things that I hadn’t thought about in years,” Harrelson said. “It was really interesting. They brought some things out of me that I just hadn’t thought about.”
Narrator Bob Costas sets the stage early on.
“Baseball has had its share of characters, but few are as colorful and more enduring than Ken ‘Hawk’ Harrelson,” Costas said.
The portion about Harrelson’s broadcasting style will be familiar territory to Chicago baseball fans. Costas jokes, “Above all, (Harrelson is) an objective, down-the-middle broadcaster.”
Yet the heart of the documentary is Harrelson telling one story after another about his experiences in and out of the game. MLB Network interviewed him in the Sox broadcast booth and at his home, where he was wearing a Blackhawks cap.
“I wasn’t interested in doing a five-minute piece on him,” producer Bruce Cornblatt said. “He’s an incredible storyteller. The details are so engaging. We just wanted to turn on the camera and let it go.”