Two of a kind: Uecker to sit in with Harrelson on White Sox TV broadcast
Sunday home games for the Chicago White Sox this season are a paradox.
Watching the rebuilding Sox on the field, it often seems like time is standing still while waiting for prospects like Eloy Jimenez, Michael Kopech, Luis Robert and Dane Dunning to arrive.
Up in the TV broadcast booth, where Ken "Hawk" Harrelson is working only Sunday games at Guaranteed Rate Field, time seems to whiz by.
In his 33rd - and final - season broadcasting White Sox games, the 76-year-old Harrelson is going to have special guests on Sundays throughout the season.
Longtime partner Tom "Wimpy" Paciorek sat in with Harrelson for a May 6 game, and former Red Sox teammate Carl Yastrzemski called in during a May 20 game.
In the third and fourth inning of Sunday's game against the Brewers, legendary Milwaukee broadcaster Bob Uecker is scheduled to join Harrelson.
"We've been friends for a long, long time, even going back to our playing days," Uecker said. "As a matter of fact, he's the first guy who told me I should be a broadcaster when he saw me play. He's been here a long, long time.
"He's a favorite of a lot of fans. He's a baseball guy. I think it's hard for Kenny to walk away, to leave this, and to leave Jerry (Reinsdorf) and the White Sox organization."
Harrelson has gradually been reducing his schedule the last few years, and he's wrapping up his marathon career with Sunday games along with the Sept. 21-23 home series against the Cubs.
A.J. Pierzynski, Paul Konerko, Frank Thomas and Mark Buehrle are other potential guests to broadcast Sunday games with Harrelson.
Uecker is still going strong at age 84, even though he's had 11 major surgeries, including one to repair a bite from a poisonous brown recluse spider last year.
While the Milwaukee native mainly calls Brewers home games in his 48th year as a broadcaster, Uecker also works about 20 road games a year and he's happy to be in town for the White Sox series.
Before cutting back to mainly Sunday home games, Harrelson limited his schedule to Sox road games.
"I understand completely why he is leaving," Uecker said. "He's been around a long, long time. I think he's doing the right thing to spend time with his family and his kids and grandkids. He's done enough. He's done a lot of great work. I've been on his bandwagon for the Hall of Fame for the last couple of votings. But he'll get there."
Uecker was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2011.
"I think he will," Uecker said of Harrelson making it to Cooperstown. "I'm going to vote for him again this year. He's a longtime friend. I used to sit up there with him and Don Drysdale when Donny was working here. We've been friends a long time, played golf a couple of times. He's a good man."