Pete Van Wieren dies at age 69

Pete Van Wieren lost his battle with cancer today.  He will be sorely missed by every longtime Atlanta Braves fan.  He began his career as a Braves announcer in 1976, alongside Skip Caray and Ernie Johnson.  Van Wieren would go on to call games for the Braves until 2008.

While I enjoy the amount of information that gets passed along by modern sports announcers, there will always be a part of me that loved the spontaneity of those older broadcasts.  The personalities were bigger and shined through in every utterance.  I think back to the stories those men told during rain delays and blowouts and realize, at that point I wasn't listening for the game, I was listening for the tales that these lifetime baseball men could bring to life.  Stories that, by virtue of my age, were of a bygone era in baseball, one where larger-than-life men had the best nicknames, and played the game 'the right way,' which seemed like a noble thing to do in my child's mind.

Ernie Johnson Sr. retired in 1999, I don't remember as much of his personality as I do the other two gentlemen.  Skip Caray was sarcasm personified, just my kind of guy.  Van Wieren was the perfect counterpoint to that, smooth and respectful, he seemed to know everything about the game.  They worked well together because they were all so different.

Thinking back through all my time as an Atlanta Braves fan, I've realized something.  Those men and their voices were in a way the voices of my childhood.  Whether they were just calling the game, or Skip was muttering biting insults at an umpire's missed call, or Pete was regaling us with a story about the old timers and the way they did things; those were the things that made me love the game.  Baseball is a game of history, and they were the men that showed my eight year old self how rich that history was.

I come by this revelation only now, sadly, following the latest loss in the Braves family.  Sure, as Atlanta Braves fans we've seen players and managers come and go, free agency and retirement are constantly altering the face of the team.  When these men stopped calling the games, that was the true end of an era.