Herb Carneal

MINNEAPOLIS — Hall of Fame broadcaster Herb Carneal, whose smooth baritone narrated Minnesota Twins games for the past 45 seasons, died this morning of congestive heart failure, the team announced.

Carneal, 83, was part of the club's radio play-by-play team for all but the first year of the team's existence in Minnesota.

"Herb Carneal's voice was the signature element of Twins baseball for multiple generations of fans," said club president Dave St. Peter, a longtime friend of Carneal's. "Clearly, he was one of the most beloved figures in Minnesota sports history."

A native of Richmond, Va., whose first radio job was right out of high school, Carneal called Athletics and Phillies games in Philadelphia and Orioles games in Baltimore before coming to Minnesota in 1962 — a year after the Washington Senators moved west to become the Twins.

Carneal was given the Ford C. Frick Award and a spot in the broadcaster's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1996.

With his fluid, understated style and southern drawl, Carneal's voice became synonymous with broadcasts on WCCO-AM and affiliates on the team's radio network throughout the Upper Midwest.

"He is the absolute consummate pro of broadcasting," his longtime partner, John Gordon, said in an interview last summer. "He works very hard. He does all of his homework. He's never been a guy that's been real flashy. He just kind of slips into the seat and says, 'Hi,everybody.'"

Opening each game with that signature greeting, Carneal was a master of baseball minutiae who could easily recall old facts and statistics well into his 80s — when his duties had been drastically cut back.

"He's forgotten more about baseball than most of us have ever known," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire once said. "He's a very special person."

Carneal's wife Kathy died in 2000. He stopped traveling with the team in 1998, scaled back further in 2003 and last year was limited to the first three innings of weekend and weekday afternoon home games. He was scheduled for similar spot duty on the air this season, but a series of health problems had put that duty in doubt.

Needing a walker to get around the Metrodome and his vocal chords clearly weakened, Carneal sat in the media dining room and smiled before the 2006 home opener — still eager to get behind the mike.

"As long as I can do the job the way it should be done," he said then.

In a 2003 interview with The Associated Press, Carneal spoke warmly about the way he was able to connect listeners throughout the region to the team — whether they were sitting on their porches, driving in their cars or cooking dinner in the kitchen.

"Sometimes I say, 'What's an old man like me doing here announcing a kid's game?'" he said then. "But I'll get a letter from someone saying how much they look forward to hearing the games on the air. That's one of the things that makes me keep going."

His favorite call came in 1987, when the Twins won their first World Series. Sixteen years later, in that interview, he mimicked his original narration — without hesitation — of the final play of a Game 7 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

"Willie McGee hits a little bouncer down to Gaetti, there's the throw to Hrbek ... and the Twins are world champions! The Twins are world champions!"

Carneal dabbled in football, but after announcing some Triple-A games in Springfield, Mass., and then several seasons of major league broadcasts he knew he really wanted to do baseball, a passion that was instilled during his youth.

"Baseball was kind of No. 1 to football and basketball," he said. "Most of the kids that I hung around with, we all liked baseball. We just liked to play. It was something we all seemed to enjoy."

Garrison Keillor, another radio man whose voice made him a Minnesota icon, once wrote a tune for one of his Prairie Home Companion shows that was titled "Porch Song." In that whimsy, folksy tribute to summer's simple pleasures, Keillor included this stanza:

"Just give me two pillows and a bottle of beer. And the Twins game on radio next to my ear. Some hark to the sound of the loon or the teal. But I love the voice of Herb Carneal."