Skip Caray, 1939-2008

As I was on vacation last week and unable to dedicate any amount of time to blogging, a few words on the passing of Skip Caray.

As an Orlando native who grew up in the '70s, my team was the Atlanta Braves. This was pre-Rays, pre-Marlins, pre-anything resembling a professional sports franchise in my home state other than the Dolphins and the Bucs (who joined the NFL when I was five years old). The Braves, as we all know, were catapulted to the rank of 'America's Team' when Ted Turner had this wacky idea to broadcast their games nationwide via satellite -- a concept that Caray himself called "nuts" when Turner proposed it for the '77 season.

Most of us remember great sports announcers in pairs, and I cannot think of Skip Caray without also thinking of Pete Van Wieren. No offense to the inimitable Ernie Johnson Sr., but it was Van Wieren's pleasant tones that stuck in my head. Interestingly enough, the Braves were my first exposure to the concept of the two-man play-by-play booth, wherein two equally competent play-by-play men would split the call by innings, trading seats, as it were, from PXP to analysis and back. That's much, much harder to do than it sounds. In fact, as I recall, Skip, Ernie, and Pete used to switch back and forth from radio to television in those days (again, during the same game), which is completely unheard of now. That, friends, is serious talent.

(Aside: that is also how I got my first live play-by-play experience. When I moved back to Orlando after graduation in 1993, I was introduced to Andrew Monaco, who was the radio play-by-play voice of the Orlando Cubs (Southern League, AA) and a former Magic employee. Andrew invited me into the booth at Tinker Field several times, using me -- a former high school and college baseball player -- as his 'analyst,' mostly because he was bored out of his mind. One night, without any warning, he pulled a Skip 'n Ernie on me, saying into his live microphone: "Cubs lead it 2-0 over the Birmingham Barons here at Tinker Field. Now, with the play-by-play call for the next three innings, here's Whit Watson." And with that, he took off his headset, folded his arms, sat back in his chair, and stared straight out towards the field with a hint of a smile. A simple act that merely changed the course of my career. I've probably never thanked him enough for that.)

One of Andrew's favorite shticks during those long, quiet, sleepy Southern League games was reading the "out-of-town scoreboard" -- in his case, scores from the Japanese League. You had to be there. With a totally straight face, he would update his Orlando audience on the Seibu Lions versus the Tokyo Giants. It was really, really funny. Skip was funny, too, but in a different way -- a scathing, sarcastic, very subtle way.

He had to be funny, too, because the Braves were God-awful back then. My father took me "up to Atlanta" several times to catch Braves' homestands during those summers, and we pretty much had Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to ourselves. Even when they were good -- during the Dale Murphy - Bob Horner - Chris Chambliss years -- they maintained the feel of a local club. Different era and all that.

There are three things that stick with me about watching the Braves during my childhood. The first is the stadium itself, the old "Launching Pad," set in a less-than scenic neighborhood and utterly bland; but it was my first Major League ballpark, and that was enough.

The second thing I remember is my great-aunt Sarah, who lived with my uncle Lou in an historic neighborhood close to downtown Atlanta. Every night for the entire summer, Sarah would pull on her Braves cap, fix herself some dinner, and camp out in the living room to watch her Braves. She spoke to the television as if speaking to her own children, a quirk that cracked me up to no end. We made sure to take Aunt Sarah with us to at least one or two Braves games when we came up for our annual visits; the look on her face when she entered the stadium was not unlike my own. Aunt Sarah is still kicking, by the way, although much of her memory has faded.

The third part of my Braves childhood, of course, was Skip. That nasal delivery was beyond distinctive; it WAS the Braves, at least, as far as I was concerned.

The best Skip Caray call that I can remember is one that has no doubt been mentioned countless times elsewhere -- Francisco Cabrera's pinch-hit RBI single to score Sid Bream and win the 1992 National League Championship Series. I was a senior in college at Cornell, with a final exam the next morning, so I shut myself in my room and listened to the game on the radio, with Skip's call. When Bream came chugging home to deliver the pennant -- on two surgically-repaired knees, no less -- I sprinted down the hallway of my fraternity house to watch the replay on television. I'm pretty sure I was whooping at the time.

Want to know what made Skip unique? His call of that play was terrific, no doubt, but a few moments before Cabrera swung, Skip pretty much predicted it.

"There's a huge gap in left-center field," I remember him saying just before the fateful pitch. "If he hits it there, we can dance in the streets."

That level of attention to detail -- that ability to see the whole field, the whole game -- is what made Skip a special announcer. I think about that call all the time. Honestly. When I do a football game, or a basketball game, I spend as much time and energy watching what's happening away from the ball as I do watching the play. I'd like to think I learned that from Skip Caray's call in 1992. I can tell you with certainty that I listened to that call about a dozen times in my capacity as sports director at Cornell's WVBR-FM, and it never got old.

It's become cliche' to suggest that announcers like Skip are a thing of the past, but I submit the opposite: the team announcers who truly resonate with audiences today are precisely like Skip. Critical when they need to be, supportive when deserved, funny when the game demands some levity. Human. People like us, but with a much better view of the game. They make us feel like we're a part of it, like we matter. Even Skip's most famously caustic late-game remark from those dog days -- "you have our permission to turn off the TV and go walk the dog, as long as you promise to patronize our sponsors" -- is inclusive. He KNEW the game was a stinker, and respected his audience enough to realize that they could see it, too. There are a lot of announcers in our business -- too many, probably -- who believe that they are the reason we watch. They're not.

We're there to see the game, and the announcer is supposed to facilitate. That's what I liked about Skip. He wasn't the show, and he knew it. In fact, he seemed to revel in it. For that, I thank him.

May he rest in peace.