Steve Klauke, who called games for the Salt Lake Bees for decades, was hit and killed while walking in Sandy this week. Tribune columnist Gordon Monson pays tribute to Klauke's legacy as the voice of baseball in Utah.
Steve Klauke gives the play-by-play of the Salt Lake Bee's baseball game, on Thursday, June 1, 2023.Talk about the perfect match of what a man loves and what he does, this was it.— three jarring words I never imagined I’d write in my own lifetime — on Tuesday morning at the age of 69 by way of an auto-pedestrian accident in Sandy the night before shocked the heart, mind, soul and especially the ears of anyone who ever heard him on the mic during a game.
The foundational ingredient of that mix, what came across clear with every Klauke breath, was his encyclopedic knowledge of Babe Ruth’s game. He knew darn near everything about it. How do I know this? Because I put Klauke to the test, the Bobby Wine test. Who’s Bobby Wine? Exactly. He said he wanted to “express” games in a manner that allowed listeners to beam images of what was happening on the field up on the big screens in their brains, to make minor league players, those on their way to stardom and those whose dreams would die in the bushes, more than just names that would pass in the night.
“He gave me the best advice I ever got,” said Klauke. “He said, ‘No matter how bad a day you’re having, never bring it on the air, because listeners are tuning in to escape their own problems.’”
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