Amid a cloud of rumor and innuendo, Anheuser-Busch effectively fired Harry Caray as their St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster on October 9, 1969.
Caray, a St. Louis native who attended Webster Groves High School, had been the Cardinals’ play-by-play man even longer than Anheuser-Busch had owned the team, dating back to 1945, when Griesedieck Brothers brewery sponsored both Cardinals and Browns broadcasts. Known for his catch phrases – “Holy cow!” and “It could be, it might be, it is – a home run!” – Caray was immensely popular.
The previous year, Caray had suffered a life-threatening accident when he was struck by an automobile on November 4, 1968, near the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel. To assist his longtime friend, Anheuser-Busch president Gussie Busch provided accommodations for Carey in St. Petersburg, where he spent the next 3 ½ months recovering. When the Cardinals resumed broadcasts for the 1969 season, Caray was with the team, delighting the fans on opening day when he discarded his crutches and demonstrated that he could walk under his own power.
However, that season proved to be his final year broadcasting the Cardinals. In August, Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince confirmed that he had been offered a “five-year, six-figure” offer to join the St. Louis broadcast team. The Pittsburgh Press reported that the offer came amidst rumors that Caray’s days in St. Louis were numbered due to a personal conflict with Busch.[1]
Prince said the offer had come in July when the Pirates were in St. Louis for a series.
“KMOX-CBS Inc. has offered me a good job,” Prince said, “but there has never been one mention of my doing the Cardinal games. I wouldn’t play second fiddle to Caray … I wouldn’t quit a job where I’m No. 1 for one where I’d be No. 2 or No. 3.”[2]
After his firing, Caray pointed to those reports as a possible trial balloon by the brewery to measure how fans would react if he were replaced.[3]
On October 9, Anheuser-Busch advertising director Donald Hamel informed Caray that after 25 years, his contract would not be renewed for 1970. Instead, Jack Buck would become the new voice of the Cardinals.[4] In a statement to the press, Anheuser-Busch president August A. Busch Jr. said the decision was based on the recommendation of the company’s marketing department.
“We have been very glad to have had Harry Caray as a member of our broadcasting team since 1954, and we can assure our fans that we will do everything possible to make the Cardinal broadcasts of the future both interesting and enjoyable,” he said.[5]
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted George W. Couch of Anheuser-Busch’s advertising department, who said, “We felt Caray would not fit into our 1970 program. I think the announcement speaks for itself.”[6]
Caray, who described himself as “bruised” and “hurt” by the decision, fiercely objected to the brewery’s stance that he had been fired for marketing purposes, noting that Anheuser-Busch beer sales had increased from 200,000 cases per year to 3 million since he had begun promoting the brewery’s beer on broadcasts.
“I want to know why I was fired,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of rumors involving personal things.”[7]
The rumors he alluded to accused Caray of an affair with Susan Busch, the wife of Gussie’s son, August Busch III. As William Knoedelseder described in Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America’s King of Beer:
In 1968, a rumor began making the rounds in Anheuser-Busch social circles that Susie Busch, wife to August, was having an affair with Harry Caray. It was a jaw-dropping, juicy tidbit that practically demanded retelling.
Aside from the age difference (she was 29, he was 51) and the fact that both were married, Caray was the longtime voice of the Cardinals and one of her father-in-law’s best buddies. That he and Susie would be an item seemed weirdly incestuous. The pair could not have been less discreet when they were seen dining together at St. Louis’s only four-star restaurant, Tony’s, just a few blocks from Busch Stadium, visibly under the influence and so physically affectionate that owner Vince Bommarito had to instruct his whispering waitstaff to stop staring at them.
But it was hard not to. The sight of the florid, cartoon-faced sportscaster cavorting with the stunning young wife of August Busch III was not something a working-class St. Louisan ever expected to see, or would likely forget.[8]
Busch III and Susan divorced in 1969. Both Caray and Susan denied the affair.
“For the first time I am in a position to discuss it openly, for the parties are now divorced,” Caray said that December. “Mrs. August Busch III is to my knowledge the finest of ladies, and she also happens to be a true friend of mine. She visited me daily while I was in the hospital, partly in the line of duty as a volunteer nurse and the rest out of unhappiness and loneliness. The young lady now divorced was a constant companion for a long time of my wife’s and a dear friend of mine. I hope she is still a good friend of mine, and I have now and have always had nothing but friendly affection and respect for her. If this is having an affair, then our society is becoming sick.”[9]
In a 1995 interview, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jerry Berger asked Susan if she and Caray had been “an item.”
“We were a friendship item, but not a romance item by any means,” she said. “Harry was married to Marion, and Harry and I used to play gin rummy. I could have made a phone call to Harry, easily, because Harry and August and I and Marion used to get together and play cards. But as far as a romance item, no.”[10]
Berger then asked why she believed the rumors had begun.
“I think people do this because we both had a name and we might have been seen out, having dinner, which was probably a situation, yes, I did join Harry for dinner,” Susan said. “August traveled a lot and I joined a lot of friends for dinner, as I still do to this day. And people would see us and I guess decided to go for the romance.”[11]
Caray also faced more mundane rumors that he was about to join Ed Vogel, a former Anheuser-Busch executive who had left the company in 1968, in the distribution of a rival beer in Florida. Caray said he went to Gussie Busch to alleviate any fears the elder Busch may have regarding those stories.
“I said, ‘Gussie, I am not here because of these many stories about me not being back with the Cardinals, but there are two things I want you to know,’” Caray recalled. “‘If you ever believed the truth before in your life, you must believe this because it is the truth.’”
According to Caray’s telling, Busch then said, “I must confess I had heard it and believed it, and I am glad you came out here to tell me.”[12]
Nonetheless, Caray was fired shortly thereafter. Shortly after the announcement, a group calling itself the Harry Caray Fan Club protested outside of Busch Stadium. A petition seeking Caray’s reinstatement also started in Jefferson City.
“Out here in the boondocks, Harry Caray IS the Cardinals to many of us,” read a portion of the petition. “He makes the names in the lineup dance with reality, and the quivering faith or haunting doubt that goes into the outcome of every game, every play, gives new reality and lasting emotion to all of us who love the Cardinals.”[13]
In November, Anheuser-Busch announced that Jim Woods, a native of Missouri who had spent the 11 previous seasons broadcasting Pirates games, would be beside Buck in the broadcast booth.[14] Buck indicated that he and Caray remained on good terms.
“We always were and still are,” he said. “I always wanted to be No. 1 but not at the expense of Harry or anyone else.”[15]
The following month, Oakland Athletics owner Charles O. Finley announced that he had hired Caray to join the A’s broadcast team.
“Any time people in baseball can put color into the game, we should do it,” Finley said. “I’m doing it with Harry Caray, who I consider the finest baseball announcer in the country.”[16]
At the announcement, Caray said he hadn’t spoken to Gussie Busch since he was fired.
“He can’t look me in the eye,” Caray said. “I think the old man’s son had a big hand in letting me go. I was a great friend of his father.”[17]
Caray spent just one season in Oakland before returning to the Midwest with the Chicago White Sox. Caray stayed in the South Side broadcast booth from 1971 through 1981, then was hired by the Chicago Cubs for the 1982 season. Caray remained in the Cubs’ broadcast booth until he passed away in February 1998.
Caray left not only a legacy of Caray’s son Skip followed in his father’s footsteps, broadcasting games for the Atlanta Braves from 1976 until his passing in 2008. Chip Caray, Skip’s son and Harry’s grandson, made the profession a family tradition. Chip was hired to work alongside Harry as a Cubs broadcaster for the 1998 season, but ended up taking his grandfather’s place following Harry’s passing. In 2005, Chip began broadcasting Braves games, and in 2023 he was named the new play-by-play announcer for the Cardinals, the position his grandfather held 54 years earlier.
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[1] “Cards Make Big Offer To Prince,” Pittsburgh Press, August 19, 1969.
[2] “Cards Make Big Offer To Prince,” Pittsburgh Press, August 19, 1969.
[3] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[4] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[5] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[6] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[7] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[8] William Knoedelseder (2012), Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America’s King of Beer, HarperCollins, Pages 106-107.
[9] “Harry Caray tells his side of the story,” Mattoon (Ill.) Journal Gazette, December 9, 1969.
[10] Jerry Berger, “Near Beer,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 13, 1995.
[11] Jerry Berger, “Near Beer,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 13, 1995.
[12] “Harry Caray tells his side of the story,” Mattoon (Ill.) Journal Gazette, December 9, 1969.
[13] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[14] “Pirates’ Woods To Announce Cards’ Games,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 6, 1969.
[15] “Caray Hunting Job After Dismissal,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1969.
[16] Ed Levitt, “The Ham In Harry,” Oakland Tribune, January 20, 1970.
[17] Ed Levitt, “The Ham In Harry,” Oakland Tribune, January 20, 1970.