So Long, Everybody

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The only thing that even comes close to watching a ball game at the park is listening to it on the radio. Sometimes, when the game's a stinker, the only thing that can save it is a good radio guy - but he'd better be real damn good. Skip Caray was best known for his TBS television work for the Braves, but he was also a natural talent for radio. For over 30 years, on nights when the Braves were nowhere near needing to bring out their closer, Skip Caray got the save for them on TBS - a network that unceremoniously dumped him last year.

The first time I heard his voice, I was mildly annoyed. He always sounded like a skunk had just wandered into the pressbox and he was trying to continue broadcasting in spite of the stench. Lots of fans haaaaaaaated his style. He lived his entire career being accused of riding on his dad's coattails. But he had a keen eye and an ability to paint a picture of the game and all that surrounded it for all of us who were stuck somewhere else. He was funny, and real, too.


Don Sutton is our guy now, but for years, he worked with Skip. Here's what he told The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

"He has a style of his own," Sutton said. "He's a man of his own."

When trying to put his relationship with Caray into words, he described the night in 1993 when during a game he found out that friend and former Dodger teammate Don Drysdale had died.

"Somebody slipped him the note in an inning I was doing that Don Drysdale had died," Sutton said. "At the end of the inning, he put his arm around me and said, 'I've got bad news. Your friend Don Drysdale has died.' He said, 'Why don't you take the rest of the night off, and let me handle this and call me and let me know you made it home OK.' "

The tears were welling by then.

"Did we have great times together?" Sutton went on. "Yes. Was he a curmudgeon? Yes. Could he be a pain in the butt? Yes. But did you love him at the end of the day? Yes. And are we going to miss him? You're darn right we are."

Here are a couple-four mis-quotes of my favorite off-the-cuff things Skip said into a microphone.

* He's going back, way back, all the way to the wall, and he makes the catch. Any farther back and he would have had to buy a ticket.

* It's a partial sellout. (Said on a night when the stadium had fewer than 6000 fans)

* That play went 1 - 4- 3, if you're keeping score at home ... if you're not, I don't blame you.

* You have our permission to turn off the TV and go to bed now … as long as you promise to patronize our sponsors.

* That one fouled-off into the right field seats. Caught by a young man who's in town visiting his uncle.


Here's one of his most famous moments, when the Braves won Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS. Enjoy it while you can. MLB will surely make YouTube take it down.






News outlets all seem to be obseesed with the fact that he was Harry Caray's son, but the thing he most had in common with his old man was that he did it all wrong until that was the right way to do it. All the news outlets also note that the cause of death is still undeclared, as if 68 years of hard living on the road were not enough evidence.



I hope and pray he’s not hurting anymore ... I hope and pray he’s sitting on a barstool somewhere with his dad (legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray) arguing about baseball, and his mom and his brother who he misses dearly. I hope he’s at peace. Because I know he wasn’t the last couple years. And he battled and fought and didn’t do a whole lot of complaining. - Chip Caray





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