“I’m just a guy who wants to see his name every day in the lineup.

“Baseball was a love and obsession of mine.”

— Legendary Baltimore

Orioles third baseman

Brooks Robinson

There are voices in life that will always be remembered. In my life, one of those voices was a local one: That of Joe Iaconis.

When I think of Yankee baseball my thoughts take on the voice of Phil Rizzuto. When I think of Mets baseball my thoughts take on the voice of Ralph Kiner. The Yankees were on Channel 6 when I was kid, and the Mets were on Channel 4. And when I think of baseball while growing up here in Geneva, my thoughts take on the voice of Joe Iaconis. As far as I’m concerned, Joe is the Phil Rizzuto-Ralph Kiner of Geneva baseball.

As the dedicated voice of Shuron Park, Joe called the spectators to rise for the “Star-Spangled Banner,” made the essential announcements throughout the game and, most notably of all, his was the voice that informed the stadium who was coming up to the plate to hit. Every time I heard my name I felt like Mantle, Maris, or Mays (or my personal favorite, Yaz), and it’s Joe’s iconic voice that is forever associated with all of that. If it’s not somehow enshrined in a museum somewhere, the world is a lesser place for it. At least in the world of baseball, which I believe to be the official sport of Heaven.

Joe’s voice is distinctive, sharing ordinary information filled with a heightened sense of reverence and prestige. Joe’s tenor — the firm, gentlemanly tone of his voice — turned my teenage angst into a feeling of superstardom; when he called your name as you approached the plate, coming through that ancient microphone, up in that ancient, non-air-conditioned wooden press box, you could feel a sense of pride and determination rising up from the depths of your adolescent soul.

The press box was a small, maybe 15-by-25-foot open air rectangular cubicle without even a thin pane of glass separating it from the sacred interior of Shuron Park where family, friends, and fans sat in the long gray wooden bleachers with long gray cracks running from one end to the other, to watch us play the great American pastime. If the sun was setting, everyone in the press box, as well as the players in the batter’s box, had to deal with its gilded glare. It was an impartial challenge to the game.

Whenever I was up in the box, foul balls careening straight back from the plate made me hit the deck. Not Joe. He was more than just calm as a cucumber; he was calm as a hanging curveball at the moment it’s about to break … calm as the space between innings when thoughts turned from baseball to hot dogs and a Coke. Pleasant. Pleasurable. It was obvious that he loved doing what he was doing. He made it look, and sound, so easy.

I watched Ken Burns’ documentary “BASEBALL” twice. Parts of it more than just twice. News anchor John Chancellor had the perfect voice as narrator. But if there was ever a documentary about baseball in Geneva produced back in the day, the voice of Joe Iaconis would have to do the narration. Without Joe’s voice it wouldn’t be right, would not, could not, be the same.

In the same spirit that Brooks Robinson said, “I’m just a guy who wants to see his name every day in the lineup. Baseball was a love and obsession of mine,” I’m just a guy who wants to play the game of baseball in Heaven with Joe Iaconis calling the divine play-by-play up there in the great baseball park in the sky. Where every game is extra innings through eternity. I imagine it’s safe to say that, for Joe, baseball was a love, if not an obsession, of his too.

And as we’ve reached the bottom-of-the-ninth of this column, I suppose someone needs to pay tribute to those iconic, time-honored, sacred words:

“PLL-AAA-YY… BALL!”

Dan Hennessy is a retired teacher, certificated Holocaust educator, and author of the book “Remembrance and Repentance: The Call to Remember and Memorialize the Holocaust.” His love of history is inspired by intensive study of the Holocaust, the events that led up to it, and how the passage of time plays such a forceful role in all of our lives. Contact him at danielhennessy111@gmail.com.