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Friday, January 23, 2009
Pete Van Wieren will be impossible to replace
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A few days from now I get to crown Pete Van Wieren with an award the Atlanta Sports Council created in my name, and at the same time, honor Skip Caray in absentia. Let it be said from the outset, that it isn’t easy for me to write this without blushing. It’s a warm feeling to know that Gary Stokan, and his Council, feel safe enough to entrust that duty upon me, since I have no record in the stockade or with the Atlanta Police Department. No DUIs and all those other things that fester the lives of athletes, both professional and otherwise.
But, that’s not what I come before you today to talk about. It’s about Pete and Skip, but more about Pete since he is around to get the message. If you have ever lived in a small town and the closest you ever got to the metropolitan life was the radio, you get an idea of where I came from. My early acquaintance with major-league baseball was by the voices that came through that old Atwater Kent radio, with the speaker on top. Waite Hoyt came out of Cincinnati, some time delivering long soliloquies on baseball while the Reds sat out a rain delay. And Russ Hodges from Charlotte, delivering Washington Senators games as they came to him over a Western Union wire. (Ronald Reagan, then known as “Dutch,” did some of the same on Cubs games out of Des Moines, I’ve read. Never heard him. WHO had a weak signal in our parts.)
These were the kind of messengers I grew up with as I got to know major-league baseball and became addicted to the game. By the time I came upon Pete Van Wieren, I had been around myself and had seen some of the world and had come to know some of these idols of mine. Russ Hodges lived just down the street from me in Charlotte and would wave some times as he drove past on the way to his studio to do his thing. (Plink! Sound of a toy bat against a Coke bottle.) “It’s a double down the right-field line,” he’d say, reading from the Western Union ticker.
Pete was one of those who came into many a kid’s bedroom at night, almost stealthily delivering the Braves games across the South. Often, I was among his audience, nights I wasn’t at the ballpark myself, or when the Braves were on the road. On reason is, I’m a radio guy. Sometimes I try to watch the game on TV and get the voice by radio, but that’s a bummer. TV is about three seconds behind radio, and I already knew how the play came out. I turn off the TV. Who needs it?
I’ve got Van Wieren. I’ve said this several times before — never admitted it to Pete — that he has the perfect voice for baseball. He makes me feel that I’m right there beside him and he’s talking right in my ear. It’s a gentle voice. No whooping and yowling. It comes oozing through the speaker like honey out of a horn — and if that has the sound of exaggerated patronization, I apologize. But it’s true. There’s nobody smoother than Pete delivering the game from his seat to yours. But not any longer.
That’s the depressing part of it. Pete has retired. Now, that doesn’t mean he won’t be heard again. Remember how many times Ernie Johnson retired? And we still get a blip of him now and then. Officially, though, Pete is off the air. There may be some as good down the line, but none better, and none whose style rests better on my ears. It’s my honor to do him honor, such as it is. Bon voyage, old friend.
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