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.

Baseball's Unwritten Rules

Following the above hit by Toronto's Colby Rasmus, Texas pitcher Colby Lewis lashed out.  He claimed in an interview with MLB.com that it is unethical to bunt against the shift.  Unless I'm mistaken, the point of the shift is for infielders to gain an advantage by playing three of them on one side of the infield, and the point of batting is to get on base.  The idea that one part of the batter vs pitcher battle should not use all of their tools is absurd.  It's like asking a pitcher not to use a pitch because it's just to hard to lay off of in that situation.  Give me a break.

Don't want to be bunted against?  Field your position better.  Honestly this wasn't a spectacular bunt, had the third baseman been playing in his normal position who would've been expected to field that bunt?  The pitcher, Colby Lewis.

Atlanta Braves' Dan Uggla released!

It's about time.  I know he has a huge contract that the team will have to keep paying, and I don't care.  The team has been hamstrung by working with a 24-man roster for most of the season due to the front office's unwillingness to take this step.  This is a guy that in 3+ seasons with the Braves has batted .209/.317.391 with 79 HR and 225 RBI, oh and 535 Strikeouts.  That's worth league minimum, not the $12 million they've been paying him.  Aside from a couple of stretches in the first season and a half he was here the entire debacle has been hard to watch.  If you really think about last season it's amazing that the Braves won 96 games with both Uggla and BJ Upton in the lineup consistently.  Here's to hoping for some positive developments going forward.

I remember hearing a few years ago that none of the New York Mets outfield was the highest paid outfielder on their payroll, that that distinction belonged to Bobby Bonilla.  He hadn't been an active ball player for years, but had agreed to a deferment on what was owed to him, spreading a large sum out over time to give the team some financial flexibility.  In a perfect world Dan Uggla would realize that this was a business decision, accept it for that and come to terms with a similar arrangement.  Hopefullly he doesn't harbor so much animosity that this is an impossiblilty.