Skip never missed a beat

ATLANTA – He was laid to rest on an off day, about right for a man who broadcast in the neighborhood of 5,000 ballgames. And while he couldn’t call his own funeral, Skip Caray almost certainly would have approved, except for all the people wearing neckties, which he loathed.

Still, the service didn’t run too long, it wasn’t interrupted by a rain delay, nobody did the wave, and there were plenty of funny stories from his old partners, Pete Van Wieren and Ernie Johnson Sr.

Best of all, his beloved Atlanta Braves were there to see him at the end – Chipper Jones was a pallbearer, John Smoltz and John Schuerholz spoke, and front pews were filled with manager Bobby Cox, his coaches and Braves players past and present, Phil Niekro, Otis Nixon and Rick Camp paying their respects with Tom Glavine and Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann.

And no one was allowed to make Caray something in death he wasn’t in life.

“I’m sure,” Monsignor Tom Kenny told a packed congregation at the Cathedral of Christ the King on Monday afternoon, “that Skip Caray would not want to be canonized. So stay tuned and don’t turn off your sets.”

Caray, who broadcast Braves games for 33 years, was buried a day before what would have been his 69th birthday, and 10 years after his father, Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Caray, died suddenly. In each of the last four seasons, Skip shared the Braves broadcast booth with his son, Chip. He also made a trip to Rome, Ga., so he could broadcast a minor-league game with his son Josh, also a broadcaster.

Harry Caray – “Holy Cow!” – was a legend. Harry Christopher “Skip” Caray Jr. emerged from his father’s shadow because Ted Turner had the crazy idea 30 years ago to use a satellite signal to turn his TV property into something called a super station, and put Braves games on cable, not just in the South, but nationally.

Scoff if you must at the selling of the Braves as “America’s Team,” but the fact is, for great numbers of fans across the country, their nightly fill of baseball came courtesy of Skip Caray.

What did they hear?

“Skip’s philosophy was very simple,” said Van Wieren, his partner of 33 years, who became known as “The Professor” because he was the keeper of the record book. “Tell the truth, and have some fun.”

The station would get loads of audition tapes, Van Wieren said, from kids hoping to one day be sitting behind a mike. “We had a lot of them trying to sound like Vin Scully, like Al Michaels,” he said. “We never received a single one trying to sound like Skip.”

His voice may have lacked silk, but there was no telling what might come out of Skip’s mouth, especially during those long lean years when the Braves were awful and Skip felt obliged to take notice. Skip could stir hearts, souls and minds with the best of them, said Schuerholz, the general manager and architect of Braves teams that won 14 consecutive division titles and who became close friends with Caray.

“But I’m also reminded of caustic, acerbic, offensive and ticked off,” Schuerholz said. “He had all the tools in the toolbox.”

Joe Strauss, who covers baseball for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch but was in Atlanta during the era in which the Braves went from worst to first, tells the story of how Turner came to Caray complaining, “You’re killing us.”

“No,’’ Caray shot back. “Your team is killing me. They’re terrible.” Rather than recoiling at the gall, Turner said, “You know, you’re right.”

Players can be a thin-skinned lot, and there were times, Smoltz said, when he’d be back in the clubhouse bristling at Caray’s cutting remarks. Yet Caray had a way of criticizing players, Smoltz said, that left their dignity intact. Like when Cox decided to play lumbering first baseman Ryan Klesko in left field.

“Skip coined the phrase, ‘Ryan’s running the right routes, we just can’t get the ball to him,” Smoltz said, smiling at the memory.

Over countless hot summer nights, Caray, who never lost the radio man’s knack of connecting with one listener at a time, as if he was sharing the same back porch, delivered smiles by the bushel. A foul ball would land in the stands, Caray would pretend to identify the hometown of the fan who caught it.

“He’d say, ‘A fan from Visalia just caught that one,’ ” said Ernie Johnson Sr., whose son, Ernie Jr., has become a fixture on NBA telecasts. “People would actually call up and ask, ‘How did Skip know?’ “

He loved jokes, especially the raunchy ones, and sought a way to work them into a broadcast, partner Van Wieren resisting all the way. Skip’s solution? Tell the punch lines, which by themselves were harmless, on the air, and let those who knew the entire joke howl at home.

His favorite foil was his producer of many years, Glenn Diamond.

“Skip was all about truth and honesty,” Diamond said Monday afternoon, standing outside the church. “He didn’t care whose feathers he would ruffle.

“He’d like to ask me on the air, ‘Glenn, what’s coming up after the game’ – we’d have a one-sided conversation, with him repeating to the audience what I was saying.

“Tonight, we have a movie, Skip, called ‘Encino Man.’ He said, ‘Encino Man?’ He goes, ‘All right, fans, tonight is an ESPN SportsCenter night.’ I don’t think the executives at TBS were too excited about that. But the fans, they loved him.”

Caray once gave an interview in which he said he had never gotten over the guilt of divorcing his first wife when his children were young (Chip was 5). It hurt even more, he said, because it reminded him of the pain of his own childhood, when his father and mother split.

But there would be healing. In 1991, three generations of Carays – Harry, Skip and Chip – worked a Cubs-Braves game together. “And, in these last years, working with Chip, you could just see them looking at each other with that pride,” Diamond said. “They had a special bond that enriched both of their lives, and watching them enriched mine.”

The last years were brutal on Skip Caray physically. Being his doctor, said Charlie Wickliffe, was like being watch officer on the Titanic. Diabetes set in 15 years ago. Then there was atrial fibrillation that required him to go on blood thinners, liver failure, kidney failure, the implanting of a pacemaker. He almost died last October. But for Skip, Wickcliffe said, it never stopped being full speed ahead.

“He said to me, ‘When I die, you’re going to have to step up in front of all those people and explain what happened.’

What happened, Wickcliffe said, “was that great, generous, wonderful heart gave out.”

Skip Caray was home when he died eight days ago, on that “Sunday dreadful Sunday,” as Wickcliffe called it. Skip’s wife, Paula, found him in the backyard.

“In his hand,” Wickcliffe said, “was a bucket of birdseed. He was filling his bird feeders.

“There is a small pleasure in knowing,” he said, “that in his last moments, as he went from this place to the next place, Skip was thinking of his lovely birds.”