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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Missing Caray’s unmatchable personality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
At about that stage of that grand old hymnal salute, my voice can no longer hold firm. It breaks up and tears fill my eyes, as it did during the recessional at Skip Caray’s funeral. Skip has been gone from among us for several days, but his unmatchable personality still cloys to us. Undetachable. Somehow we are unwilling to let go. Many of us has taken a swing at bidding him farewell, and are not content with how we’ve done it.
It’s not that Skip was the sweet, lovable lap dog type. That, he wasn’t. What you saw and what you heard was what you got. Some broadcasters sit and plan special lines for plays that may come up. I could name some, but I won’t. Skip wasn’t one of them. What he saw triggered what he had to say, and we’ve read one after another of that this week. Spontaneous is the word.
He could be tough and critical, and he could be warm and gentle, and if there was anything that bored him, it was those call-in programs on radio. That was not Skip. He didn’t like to be curt and short, but there was something about that absurd format that turned him into the kind of growler. Mainly because so many of the callers simply called to listen to hear their own voice, and he knew it.
He would not have approved of his final rites at Cathedral of Christ the King. “Embarrassed,” was a term one of his close friends used. Sorry, Skip, but this was one time you weren’t calling the shots. This time, this town, these people, his friends, his admirers, and those who’ll be missing him so much were. Monsignor Kenny saw to it that this was a celebration of Skip’s life, and from some of his witty references indicated that he had known him as well as a lot of those who spent late nights, closed a few bars with him, and came to say their farewells.
It was a revelation to me that he had kept the line open to Rick Camp, the pitcher who fell from grace. Didn’t just send a card or two, but wrote letters and drove to the prison to visit him. That was something that gets you where your heart beats. And we wouldn’t have known if Rick hadn’t come to the cathedral to see his friend off, and tell Tom Stinson his story. Few of us knew of the little things in life that held Skip’s interest. The animals he befriended, feeding the birds. I feed the birds now and then, but because of my wife, and I still spill about as much on the ground as I get inside the feeder. (Squirrels? I beg forgiveness, but I am not their friend.)
When he took himself off the road games this season, that was the signal that this might be his last. Most of us were in denial, and carried on as we usually did, though we could see that his time was getting shorter by the day. The saddest of fates was, we never got to say a proper goodbye. He was the bridge between Harry and Chip, from father to son, and we have that Caray to carry on this family tradition. And not to be forgotten, Josh.
Now I’ve said it.
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art.
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