Rozner: Steve Stone remembers Ed Farmer
• Last in a series
One booth, two pitchers and just enough oxygen to go around.
As long as they weren't in Denver.
When Steve Stone joined the White Sox radio booth just before the 2008 season - after Chris Singleton left in early March for ESPN - some wondered if a partnership with Ed Farmer would work.
"I understand why some people would say that, but they happen to be wrong," Farmer said while sitting in the visitor's radio booth on Opening Day 2008 in Cleveland. "My job is to do the play-by-play, and his job is to jump in and analyze the play. It's going to be a conversation about baseball that I think White Sox fans are really going to like."
They did.
Sure, both ex-players could talk for hours and never lacked for opinions and analysis, but with so much in common it wasn't a surprise that the pairing was brilliant.
Stone, after all, had spent time in a booth with the likes of Howard Cosell, Al Michaels, Keith Jackson, Don Drysdale and Bob Uecker. And, oh yeah, 15 years with that Harry Caray guy.
It's not as if he couldn't adjust to a new partner.
"We settled in and for that one year we were together it was great," Stone remembers now. "We became very good friends. We played golf together a lot.
"Ed was one of those guys who had a wide reach like no one I've ever known. He knew people everywhere. He got us on golf courses I wouldn't even dream about."
Farmer died at the age of 70 two weeks ago, leaving behind millions of fans, including Stone, who moved into the White Sox TV booth after a year with Farmer. It also happened to be a highly-entertaining 2008 season.
"We ate every meal together on the road and it was a nice year," Stone said. "I thought as the season went along the broadcast got better and better.
"I tried to help him. I had worked on a lot of different broadcasts with a lot of different broadcasters. I tried to give him the benefit of my experience in the field."
Stone then laughed and said, "I would tell him things and he would disregard all of them. It worked out well."
Their time on the air was similar to what it was off, as they discussed anything and everything, two erudite men with a lot on their minds.
"Ed was a smart guy and when he wanted to learn about something he learned it backward and forward, from top to bottom," Stone said. "One of his great strengths was he read so much about medicine that after awhile he thought he was a doctor.
"I would say, 'Ed, you know that any doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.' But he'd go to see a doctor and then leave the doctor because he thought he knew more.
"We would laugh so hard about that."
But Farmer did have serious medical issues hardly anyone ever knew about.
That did not keep him from his job.
"Ed was a very, very tough man," Stone said. "You marveled at what he was able to contend with, year after year. He went through things that would have sent people home for a year, and he worked through it for decades.
"Last year, his legs were so swollen. He had so much edema that I don't know how he made it as long as he did."
It finally got the best of him on the road when a member of the White Sox traveling party called Jerry Reinsdorf and told the chairman what was happening.
"He wasn't walking when he got off the bus anymore and they would get him a cart to take him everywhere. It was really tough for him," Stone said. "Jerry being Jerry, he immediately sent a plane for him and they flew Ed back to Chicago, and then back to Los Angeles.
"It was just really difficult. He had taken anti-rejection drugs (after his kidney transplant in January 1991) for so long that I think it started to get to him. He had heart issues and it wasn't as efficient anymore, not pumping enough blood.
"He was really struggling."
So when Stone got the horrible news that Farmer had died, he thought back to how trying it had been for the beloved Sox broadcaster.
"I saw what he went through," Stone said. "He lost his mom and dad young, and for Ed to make it to 70 is a testament to how incredibly tough he was.
"He really battled his way the last 10 years, at one point taking 56 pills a day to be able to combat the organ rejection. That's one of the things a transplant patient has to deal with.
"To his credit, not a whole lot of people knew more about the process than he did. He wanted to teach the doctors at Harvard.
"It's tough for all of us, but especially the White Sox fans who listened to Ed and appreciated his love for the game.
"They're going to miss him. We all will."