Gabe Whisnant: We'll miss ya Skip Caray (8/4)

Growing up, I learned a lot about baseball primarily from my father and a number of good coaches in Cleveland County.
What I didn't learn from them, I picked up from radio and television announcers. We didn't have cable until I my 6th grade year, so I listened to a lot of Braves games on the radio - in the car and at home. Atlanta announcers Skip (Caray), Pete (Van Wieren) and Ernie (Johnson) essentially became part of my family in the summer.
The Braves and their many fans lost a legendary part of that family Sunday when Skip died in his sleep. Caray, the son of legendary Cardinals and Cubs announcer Harry Caray and the father of current TBS announcer Chip Caray, covered Braves games on the radio and TV for three-plus decades.
No doubt, Skip knew the game but he also made it fun with his witty and sarcastic quips. He also had the unique voice, often imitated, that made him stand out. Needless to say, Braves nation and all of baseball will miss Skip the rest of this season and beyond.

It's tough to find video to go along with the audio of his call of Francisco Cabrera's game-winning hit in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS against Pittsburgh, which sent the Braves to the World Series. Here's audio of that legendary call. Oddly enough, my desktop background on my computer over the last several weeks has been of Sid Bream's slide at home plate on this play. This call will always give me goosebumps and I admit it brought a tear today.

http://www.bayblitz.com/WEB%20GIFS%201/The%20Slide%20-%20NLCS%20-%201992%20-%20Atlanta%20Braves.mp3

Braves fans will also remember this one from the 1995 World Series ...

"Mark gets the sign, the wind and the pitch here it is... swung, fly ball deep left center, Grissom on the run... Yes! Yes! Yes! The Atlanta Braves have given you a championship! Listen to this crowd! A mob scene on the field. Wohlers gets 'em one, two, three. A couple of fans rushing on the field. The Atlanta Braves have brought the first championship to Atlanta!"

A great quote from Van Wieren from a recent story by Carroll Rogers' of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
"But behind the humor there was an honesty and a commitment to telling it like he believed it to be that never, ever varied," Van Wieren said. "If he didn't like it that a game was two minutes late getting started, everybody knew about it. If he had an opinion on a player, he said it. And he had a way of saying it that was sometimes humorous. The way he could take a bad ball game, in some of those bad years especially, and turn it into a fun broadcast, whether it was by talking about something in the game or whether it was talking about something that didn't have anything to do with the game, maybe it was a movie that was coming up after the game or maybe it was a restaurant that he'd gone to. It could have been anything. He was just a very entertaining broadcaster and a very good one. The game was still the most important thing, but if game was decided by the fourth or fifth inning, people would still watch the rest of the game just to hear what he had to say about things. That's a very, very unique ability."
Full story here with quotes from Braves' players and coaches ...
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/sports/braves/stories/2008/08/03/reaction_skip_caray_dies.html