Herb Carneal, 83; voice of the Minnesota Twins

Hall of Fame broadcaster Herb Carneal, whose smooth baritone narrated Minnesota Twins games for the last 45 seasons, died Sunday morning of congestive heart failure. He was 83.

Carneal was part of the club’s radio play-by-play team for all but the first year of the team’s existence in Minnesota.

“To hear that voice was magic,” said Kent Hrbek, who listened to Twins games growing up in suburban Bloomington and later played 13 seasons for the team before retiring in 1994. “When I was a kid, it meant school was almost out and spring was coming.”

Carneal, a native of Richmond, Va., got his first radio job right out of high school. He called Athletics and Phillies games in Philadelphia and Orioles games in Baltimore before moving to Minnesota in 1962, a year after the Washington Senators moved to the Twin Cities and became the Twins.

“Herb Carneal’s voice was the signature element of Twins baseball for multiple generations of fans,” said club president Dave St. Peter, a longtime friend of Carneal. “Clearly, he was one of the most beloved figures in Minnesota sports history.”

Carneal was given the Ford C. Frick Award for major contributions to baseball broadcasting by the Hall of Fame in 1996.

With his fluid, understated style and southern drawl, Carneal became synonymous with broadcasts on WCCO-AM and affiliates on the team’s radio network throughout the Upper Midwest.

“He is the absolute consummate pro of broadcasting,” his longtime partner, John Gordon, said in an interview last summer. “He works very hard. He does all of his homework. He’s never been a guy that’s been real flashy. He just kind of slips into the seat and says ‘Hi, everybody.’ ”

Opening each game with that signature greeting, Carneal was a master of baseball minutiae who could easily recall old facts and statistics well into his 80s, when his duties had been drastically cut back.

Garrison Keillor, another radio man whose voice made him a Minnesota icon, once wrote a tune for one of his Prairie Home Companion shows that was titled “Porch Song.” In that whimsical, folksy tribute to summer’s simple pleasures, Keillor included this stanza:

“Just give me two pillows and a bottle of beer. And the Twins game on radio next to my ear. Some hark to the sound of the loon or the teal. But I love the voice of Herb Carneal.”

Carneal’s wife, Kathy, died in 2000. He stopped traveling with the team in 1998, scaled back further in 2003 and last year was limited to the first three innings of weekend and weekday afternoon home games.

He was scheduled for similar spot duty on the air this season, but a series of health problems had put that duty in doubt.