Skip Caray: Death of a Baseball Icon

This blog is about logistics and I try to stay on topic, but I love baseball. In particular, as an Atlantan, I have always loved the Braves. Today was a very sad day with the unexpected death of Atlanta Braves legendary announcer Skip Caray.  Friends, this loss hurts.

As a kid I remember listening to Braves games on the radio.  First with Milo Hamilton in the late 60's and early 70's, later to go on to the Houston Astros. Hamilton announced the famous 715th home run of Henry Aaron in 1974. I was at that game with my Dad and brother. Interestingly, I later went to high school with Hank Aaron's sons, Henry and Larry.  Both were great athletes.

In 1976 Caray came to Atlanta to announce games with the Atlanta Hawks basketball team.  He subsequently joined the Braves announcing team for WTBS, the Super Station, who would make the Braves "America's team" through nationwide cable broadcasts. In those days, you only had WOR, WGN and TBS as the big independent cable TV stations. That made the Yankees, Braves and Cubs big teams for national cable audiences.   With Satellites, it also put the Braves on TV in Latin America, which would also serve them well later in signing Latin American players like Andruw Jones.

Skip Caray came from good genes.  His father, Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray, was an icon on his own. Later Skips kids Josh and Chip, took up the microphone as well in the Braves organization and elsewhere.  The thing about Skip, at least in the early days,  was that he was a major league party boy. He caroused his way to legend in the 70's and 80's in Atlanta. That is, until his liver started to fail him in the 1990's and he stopped drinking. Unfortunately the toll on his health was already under way. 

As a sales rep in the 1980's and 90's I spent a lot of time in my car driving around the south. I came to love the Braves and the voices that brought their games to me as I drove around in late September in places like Muscle Shoals, Alabama and eastern Tennessee.   I loved Caray's pregame show. I think Skip himself hated it.  Some Gomer from Sandersville or Conyers or wherever, would call in and ask the most inane questions. 

Lets just say Skip Caray didn't suffer fools well. A kid asking about the infield fly rule, or a middle aged woman asking about Tom Glavine's hang nail were both likely to be met with derision or at the minimum a sarcastic wit. Caray's intellect and his tongue were directly connected, sometimes to his detriment. 

The fact that Skip had a periodic hangover didn't always help that connection.  Nevertheless, the pregame show became very entertaining because you KNEW that when some fool dialed in a dumb remark, Skip was going to go "off".   Believe me, when you are half way home on a long drive,this stuff takes on a baseball version of Jerry Springer.   Later Pete Van Wieren would take over the pregame show.  Pete was much more politically adept at handling fans loving, but stupid questions.

For pretty much all of my youth, the Braves were losers. Bad losers. Awful losers. To be their announcer made you (de facto) also a loser.  For the longest time in the mid 80's, Skips voice reminded me of losing.  Soon, I thought he was a loser.  I hated the guy. Then in 1991, something magical happened. Some young pitchers showed up, named Smoltz, Glavine and (poison) Avery as well as some new leadership with a third baseman named Terry Pendleton. My family was in the middle of relocating from Charlotte to Atlanta that summer.  I specifically recall turning on a Braves game in Charlotte just to see what the Atlanta Losers were doing.  I was going to reconnect before moving and figured I better know how bad the Braves were... Holy SHIT! I was surprised, something was different. These guys were actually good.

On moving back to ATL, not only did I get into the Braves, but I also started collecting baseball cards. (much to my wife's disagreement.) Suddenly, the Braves were cool.  They were winners.  They had discovered the magical key to the chemistry of winning. The Bravos went on to the World Series that year only to lose to the Minnesota Twins in Game 7. What happened from there was 14 years of at least divisional championship as well as the 1995 World Series championship.  Throw in some gold gloves, and a few Cy Youngs when a fellow named Maddux joined the rotation.

Skip Caray and a broadcast team of Pete Van Wieren, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson were the backbone of that decade and a half.  I love all those guys.  Corporate schmucks may rearrange the broadcast teams, but we fans know who the real voices of the Braves brand are.

Skip Caray died in his sleep and is survived by his wife Paula and his children, who continue the Caray baseball announcing tradition.  Skip will be missed by his family as well as his baseball team, fans and anybody who knows anything about baseball. 

I only have one thing to add on the life of Skip Caray.  Listen to THIS.   It still gives me a major adrenalin rush. I believe it is one of the greatest moments ever in MLB history.

Nuff said.

Eric

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Comments

[Dan]

Great piece. Me, I grew up listening to (and loving) Harry on WGN.

[eric]

An update to this post is that Skip Caray didnt die in his sleep as originally posted, though he did die at his home.

It seems Skip was outside in his backyard filling his bird feeder when he collapsed. He was discovered by his wife Paula.

[Cheyenne Miranda]

Growing up in the South, there was only the Braves on our local cable (we weren't much interested in yankees - their TV station or Baseball team...)and our love for baseball came at the bats and gloves of the (then) hapless Braves as our role models.

I remember what fun Skip had with Pascqual Perez's I-285 journey, driving countless loops around the Atlanta perimeter, almost missing his evening start because he couldn't find Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.

tonight we'll all raise a glass to the Skipper. Thanks for the post EJ.