Joe Tait

     The recent passing of Joe Tait at the age of 83 made me recall lots of memories of Cavaliers past, but the passing of the legendary play by play announcer also made me look forward to the future and a future that, as it usually does, is looking less and less like the past.

I wrote about Joe back in 2011, when Joe retired from calling the Cavaliers games, and those feelings hold up ten years later.

Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer was a long-time friend of Tait and co-wrote his autobiography in 2011.

Pluto wrote a recent article on a visit to Tait's home and his recent struggles with his health that I still have in the inbox for the next cleaning.

I knew that Tait was in ill health, but I didn't expect his passing to come so soon.

Joe Tait called every Cavalier season of their start in 1970 through his 2011 retirement with the exception of one season in Chicago and one season with New Jersey in the Ted Stepien years in the early 80s and while Austin Carr may be named "Mr.Cavalier", up until the Cavaliers drafted LeBron James in 2003, Joe Tait was the true star of the franchise.

More than just "the Voice of the Cavs", Tait also announced Indians games in the 70s and 80s among other sports, but it always came back to Cleveland to Richfield and then back to Cleveland again with the Cavaliers.

When Joe Tait started with the Cavaliers, the NBA in Cleveland was a radio game and evidence of that is in the Miracle of Richfield season of 1975-76.

The seven-game series win over the Washington Bullets that still stirs in the hearts of those over fifty did not have one game televised in Cleveland and the two surviving videos of that series were from the Coliseum and televised back to the Washington audience.

Therefore, Cavalier fans were either slammed into the Richfield Coliseum or they listened on the radio and the domain of Joe Tait.

And it was Joe Tait that helped me become a Cavalier fan.

Fast Forward to April 1976 and Game Two of the series against the Bullets.

My parents and I usually visited my relatives in Ohio once a year and we would leave on a Friday night after my dad returned home from his job.

On the way out, we were listening to that game on the radio.

I was mostly a college fan then and a casual NBA fan (I liked the ABA Kentucky Colonels), so at the beginning of the game, I was leaning towards the Bullets as the team I knew.

But as the game continued on the radio, I remember being overwhelmed by the excitement from the Cavaliers announcer.

It was legitimate excitement, not the manufactured kind that so many spout from the booth today (COUGH Gus Johnson COUGH) and when Bingo Smith hit a game-winning jumper to win game two, I was hooked on the Cleveland Cavaliers and much of that credit goes to Joe Tait.

I spent lots of time as a kid listening to Joe on the radio, but even more in the car driving around in the pre-internet days listening to Cavalier games after dark, when the AM signal from Cleveland would come in clearly.

In those days, that was about the only connection that someone in Maryland could have with a team I'm Cleveland- particularly a bad team such as the Cavaliers after Richfield until the late 80s.

Joe Tait still made rooting for bad teams fun.

His catchphrases still ring with me in everyday life.

Slamming garbage into the trash can brings a "WHAM! With the right hand!".

Shooting for the hamper, recycling bin, etc- "Three Ball-GOT IT!"

Tuning something in makes me think of "Cavaliers moving right to left on your radio dial"

The best radio basketball one-man show that I can remember listening to since he didn't use a color analyst, Joe Tait made basketball a radio sport and is the main reason that the Cavaliers connected with their fan base at a time when the NBA was lukewarm with fans.

I've missed Joe's work at the mic since his retirement and that's not a knock at all on the Cleveland radio announcers at all.

It's very similar to the New Jersey Devils situation on television with Steve Cangelosi replacing Mike "Doc" Emrick- fans get spoiled having the very best in the business calling their team's games and in any profession, it's very difficult to follow the best.

I don't think fans will ever have the connection with radio announcers that my generation has ever again.

The world has changed too much with far more options than strictly listening to games on the radio constantly, but to fans over fifty, it'll always be Joe Tait as the Voice of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Rest Well.