HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

*

What: “Ernie Harwell: My 60 Years in Baseball”

Author: Tom Keegan

Publisher: Triumph Books, Chicago

Price: $34.95

In writing this authorized biography of legendary baseball announcer Ernie Harwell, author Tom Keegan, baseball columnist for the New York Post, interviewed dozens of people.

For one interview he had to go to a correctional facility in Pennsylvania, where Denny McLain is serving an eight-year sentence for, among other things, theft from a pension fund.

“How can you write a book about Ernie Harwell?” asked baseball’s last 30-game winner. “He’s never done anything bad in his life. What can you say about Saint Ernie? ... It’s nice to know somebody who nobody says anything bad about.”

McLain won 31 games as a pitcher for the 1968 World Series champion Detroit Tigers.

In the book’s foreword, another star on that team, Al Kaline, writes, “I’m going to try to find somebody who doesn’t like Ernie Harwell. I hope I live long enough to do that because that means I’ll never die.”

Keegan proves a book about a true gentleman doesn’t have to be boring. This 290-page book is captivating from start to finish, and not just because it’s about a famous baseball announcer.

Harwell is known as a great storyteller, and the story he and others tell of his life is a good one.

The book’s first chapter is titled “A Gentleman Wronged,” taken from a Page 1 headline in the Detroit Free-Press. Harwell was fired by the Tigers after the 1991 season. The Detroit News called it “the most flagrant public relations disaster in the history of sports.”

It would be akin to the Dodgers firing Vin Scully.

Harwell, who had been the voice of the Tigers since 1960, was brought back for the 1993 season, under new Tiger ownership. Now 84, he announced during spring training that this season would be his last.