Sid Hartman: Carneal earned respect with no-nonsense style

Nobody in the Twins organization was closer to the late Herb Carneal than Tom Mee, who has worked for the team from the day it moved here in 1961 from Washington, D.C. -- first as public relations director and now as the official scorekeeper.

Carneal, the voice of the Twins for 45 years, died Sunday morning of heart failure.

Mee had spoken to Carneal on Saturday morning.

"He told me he was not that excited to see me because he just felt his voice and condition wasn't strong enough," Mee said. "He said he'd wait until he felt his voice was stronger and then he'd come back [to the broadcast booth]. I guess it was more than his voice that wasn't operating up to par, but it's too bad -- great guy."

Mee said that Carneal seemed confident he would be back in the booth this year, but he had said that for now, " 'I just don't think I can give the job what I need to give it, and I don't want to give them a less than total effort.' "

Mee recalled how the brewery that was sponsoring the games in Baltimore gave up the broadcasts in 1962, prompting Bob Wolff to join Madison Square Garden's sports broadcasts and do NBC's baseball game of the week and Carneal to join Ray Scott and Halsey Hall in Twins broadcasts.

"He was straight arrow," Mee said of Carneal. "You could rely on him to the utmost. He would always come through for you."

Longtime Baltimore and Detroit baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell was Carneal's mentor, Mee said. "They were with Baltimore in the mid-'50s, and he kind of broke Herb in, and Herb really thought the world of Ernie."

As a broadcaster, Mee said Carneal didn't didn't give you a lot of fluff, kept listeners focused on the game and he followed the ball.

I had a good relationship with Carneal, and over the years we often had lunch or dinner together at the Metrodome where media people are fed. We were good friends.

Carneal was not the type to whom you could tell a lot of stories. But he got a lot of laughs from Hall, a real character and longtime broadcasting partner.

Carneal once recalled one of the zanier incidents: "We had a doubleheader in Chicago one Sunday. In the second game, I had the first half of the play-by-play. The booth was kind of small, so when we got to the middle of the game I moved into the main press box to make room for [broadcaster Merle Harmon].

"A couple of innings later I look over, and it looks like there is smoke coming out of the booth. I hear this commotion and run over there, and here are Merle and Halsey trying to stomp out this fire. There was all this ticker tape with the scores of the other games on the floor, and Halsey had flicked some of his cigar ashes on that ticker tape and set it on fire. He had a sport coat on the back of his chair, and about half of that was burned up."

When Hall returned home, he was given an asbestos coat by 3M.

There were other laughs in the booth on Bat Day when the fans would bounce the bats on the steel floor at Metropolitan Stadium, convincing Hall that the radio booth was going to collapse. Carneal had to scream to describe the game while Hall went out of his mind.

Hall gave Carneal, and many of us, a lot of laughs.

One reason the players respected Carneal is that none of their girlfriends or wives who listened to the broadcast would ever hear Carneal criticize a player. He would tell what happened and let the radio listeners decide on their own.

Hoiberg picks Florida

Fred Hoiberg, assistant general manager for the Timberwolves, has seen both the Florida and Ohio State men's basketball teams play several times this year, along with watching the teams on television.

Hoiberg likes Florida to beat Ohio State tonight for the NCAA title.

"I like Florida for the fact that they just have that experience from winning last year," Hoiberg said. "They're playing with so much confidence right now. All five of those guys are back -- that's, I think, going to be the overwhelming factor.

"They just had a little bit of a slide earlier in the season. I watched a game down in Gainseville -- they played Alabama and Alabama got off to a 22-4 start. Florida didn't even look like they wanted to play. But they did a great job getting things back."

Florida regained its form in the SEC tournament, he said.

"I was down in Atlanta watching that, and they really started clicking again," he said. "They got that teamwork, they got the ball movement back and they started playing hard again and you could really tell in the SEC championship run that they won down there in Atlanta that they were back on track."

You want my opinion? Florida will beat Ohio State by at least 15 points.

Jottings

Alex Daniels came to the Gophers football team as a highly rated recruit from Columbus, Ohio, was switched from linebacker to running back last season and was so discouraged about his future with the Gophers that he was going to transfer. Now, new Gophers coach Tim Brewster said, Daniels has found a home as a defensive end. "I certainly believe that he can be one of the top pass-rushing defensive ends in the country; he's got that kind of ability, and the most important thing is that Alex Daniels is buying into our concept of snap-to-whistle effort," Brewster said. "And if he does that with his talent, he's going to be an outstanding player for us, and I'm really, really excited about the progress Alex is making. Most of it, more than anything, is mental, just understanding that he's no longer going to be a guy without a home. He's got a home. He's going to be a pass-rushing defensive end."

Ex-Gopher Dusty Rychart sparked the Brisbane Bullets in their first championship in two decades in Australia's National Basketball League. Rychart then rejoined the North Adelaide Rockets of the Central Australian Basketball League and was named the player of the week after scoring 22 points and 30 points in his first two games. ... Another ex-Gopher, Kris Humphries, played more than 20 minutes in back-to-back games with the division-leading Toronto Raptors. He scored six points and picked up 10 rebounds in the first game and then had six points and seven rebounds in the second game. ... Troy Bell, the former Holy Angels basketball star who tried boxing and is now back to basketball, has averaged 21 points per game in the past six games for the Austin (Texas) Toros of the National Basketball Development League.

Sid Hartman can be heard weekdays on WCCO AM-830 at 6:40, 7:40 and 8:40 a.m. and on Podcast twice a week at www.startribune.com/sidcast. shartman@startribune.com