Q&A: Pete Van Wieren and “Of Mikes and Men”

Pete Van Wieren started reading The Sporting News in the first grade, combing through stories by the New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young, he says, while other children were reading “Dick and Jane.” Van Wieren, 65, thought he would be a sportswriter too, until fate turned him another direction quicker than a double play.

He ended up in the broadcast booth, not the writer’s side of the press box, and spent 33 years calling Braves games for radio and television. An 11-time winner of Georgia sportscaster of the year, Van Wieren tells his story in “Of Mikes and Men,” written with former Atlanta Journal-Constitution sportswriter Jack Wilkinson. The story includes how Van Wieren never found his father, his favorite ballparks and how the Braves tried to shuffle the broadcast team in 2003 with disastrous results.

Q: How did you get your start in the business?

A: I was covering a baseball game for the Cornell (University) Daily Sun and a panicky engineer rushes into the press box saying his announcer had not shown up for the game. It was five minutes before the game and Harry Dorish, a scout for the Milwaukee Braves, elbowed me and said, "Go ahead, give it a try. You might like it." Once I had done that game, I knew that's what I wanted to do.

Q: What was your favorite call into the microphone?

A: It would have been the clinching of the division in 1991, that Saturday against Houston, because it was so unexpected that season. That day our game had ended and the Dodgers were still playing and they were in the 9th inning and they put the game on the center field scoreboard and the team gathered around the mound to watch with the fans in the stands. When the final out was made in the Giants-Dodgers game, the fans saw the team react on the field and I said over the air, "Let the celebration begin."

Q: What was it like working with Skip Caray and then suddenly without him?

A: Skip's philosophy was to tell the truth and have some fun. Besides telling the story of the game, it has to be done in an entertaining way. We were a great match. The one constant we both had was the determination that the most important thing going on was the game. Walking into the booth at Turner Field the first game back at home after he died really hit me hard. He wasn't there and never would be again. That was hard to deal with. It was like losing a family member.

Q: What should someone getting into sports broadcasting understand first?

A: That you don't work for the team or the station; you work for the listener and the viewer. Be accurate, be credible, be prepared. I tried to work by the three "C's." Credibility, communication and commitment.

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