Harry Heilmann - Life After Baseball and The Hall of Fame

Life After Baseball and The Hall of Fame

From 1934 to 1950, Heilmann worked as a play-by-play announcer during Tigers radio broadcasts on WXYZ. For his first eight years, he was part of an unusual broadcasting deal. While Heilmann's broadcasts anchored a radio network that stretched across Michigan, Ty Tyson aired a separate broadcast on WWJ that targeted Metro Detroit. The competing broadcasts merged in 1942. He was popular as a broadcaster for his humor, knowledge of the game, and story-telling talent, and his broadcasts were heard throughout Michigan as the Tigers won pennants in 1934, 1935, 1940 and 1945. Although Heilmann became ill with lung cancer in March 1950, he managed to return to the broadcast booth at Briggs Stadium to broadcast a few innings of the 1950 season. During the summer of 1950, former teammate Ty Cobb launched a campaign to elect Heilmann to the Baseball Hall of Fame before he succumbed to cancer. Despite Cobb’s campaign, Heilmann fell short in the 1951 Hall of Fame voting, after being named on 67.7 percent of the ballots.

Heilmann died on July 9, 1951 – two days before the All Star Game was played in Detroit. Shortly after Heilmann’s death Time magazine published an article on Cobb’s campaign for his former teammate. “Recently, hearing that Heilmann was seriously ill, Cobb wrote to several of his baseball-writer friends, urging them not to bypass Harry in this year's selections. Last week, New York Times Columnist Arthur Daley printed part of Cobb's letter, agreed that Heilmann's election was long overdue. The appeal came too late. At last week's All-Star game in Detroit, 50,000 fans stood and observed a moment of silence. The day before, Harry Heilmann, 56, had died of cancer in Detroit.” Heilmann was elected to the Hall of Fame along with Paul Waner, six months later in January 1952, after being named on 87 percent of the ballots.

In 1999, Heilmann ranked No. 54 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.