Oct 22 2008
The Professor leaves the mike: Van Wieren retires from Braves’ broadcast booth
By Bud L. Ellis
braves.today.com
ATLANTA — Skip and Pete. Pete and Skip. One without the other is like peanut butter without jelly.
And so, even though the Atlanta Braves ended their 2008 season nearly a month ago, this lost season doesn’t stop.
Tuesday’s news that Pete Van Wieren is retiring after 33 years of calling Braves baseball was a jolt, but not all that surprising when you consider everything that’s happened to this franchise this season.
More importantly, outside of the framework of the most difficult year the Braves have experienced in, oh, maybe forever, the fact Van Wieren had contemplated leaving the booth for the past couple of years, coupled with the fact longtime broadcast partner Skip Caray died in August, makes the news easier to understand.
Everybody wants to walk away on their own terms. Pete certainly deserved to do that. The baseball schedule is hell on having a family life, and after calling Braves baseball for parts of four decades, Pete’s earned the right to say enough is enough.
With that said, it just won’t be the same tuning into the Braves next season without hearing Pete and Skip.
Van Wieren and Caray joined the Braves at the same time, broadcasting together starting in 1976. Skip served the role of the funny, loud, sarcastic – and sometimes, annoying – uncle, quick with a quip that might or might not have something to do with the action on the field.
Pete was the balance, the Professor – a nickname so richly earned and deserved – the man who knew all the stats, knew who was playing well and who wasn’t, and who delivered the goods with the smoothest delivery of any baseball broadcaster I’ve ever heard.
The past two years, I’ve listened to the Braves’ spring training webcasts, and Pete was at the mike for those games, whetting my appetite for the approaching season. When emotion slipped into his voice, you knew something monumental was happening. Skip’s calls of the Braves’ stunning pennant-winning comeback in the 1992 NLCS and the World Series clincher in 1995 will echo around this franchise for all of eternity, but Pete was behind the mike on the first Saturday in October in 1991, when the Braves clinched the NL West and launched their Worst-to-First ship into the postseason.
Still, it’s a sad day for Braves fans, and for fans of sports in Georgia. We lost Skip in August. The legendary voice of the Georgia Bulldogs, Larry Munson – who broadcast the Braves during their first season in Atlanta in 1966 – retired in September. Now, Pete’s stepped away.
The Braves will never sound the same again.
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