SAN FRANCISCO -- The Atlanta Braves were flying west Sunday night when they learned of broadcaster Skip Caray's sudden passing, and what a rough spell these past several weeks have been.
Yankees broadcaster Bobby Murcer lost his battle with cancer, Hall of Fame baseball writer Jerome Holtzman passed away in Chicago and, now, Caray.
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| Braves players observe a moment of silence for Skip Caray before the game. (AP) |
You didn't have to be in Atlanta to feel as if you were Caray's friend, either. All those years he spent broadcasting bad baseball teams on TBS before the Braves turned the corner and started winning, whether you were listening to him in Montana or in Michigan, his biting sarcasm, quick wit, folksy delivery and passion for the game were contagious.
"I grew up listening to him," Braves outfielder Jeff Francoeur said. "I've been in Atlanta my whole life. He was such the voice of Braves baseball on TBS for so long."
Caray, who was 68, worked as recently as Atlanta's last homestand, though he didn't come to the ballpark the last few games because he wasn't feeling well. He passed word to the Braves that he had bronchitis. Understated to the end.
"He was struggling," Francoeur said. "He was having a tough, tough time. But he wasn't going to miss being around the field."
Caray's passion for the game was instrumental in why he was so good, just as Holtzman's way of looking at things for decades while writing for the Chicago Tribune led to his inventing the statistic most of us take for granted today: the save.
It was Holtzman who came up with the idea, it became an official statistic in 1969, and if Holtzman had a dollar from every closer's contract who made money off of the save ever after. ...
I snuck a few days off in western Michigan after last month's All-Star Game, my wife, daughter and I meeting a handful of other close friends at a seaside resort -- OK, actually it was a small town on Lake Michigan -- for a few days of catching up. That's where I was when news of Holtzman's passing broke, and I made sure to pick up a Chicago Tribune the next day to read what they had to say about their in-house legend.
Somehow over the years, I never did get the chance to meet Caray. But when Cox says he was "a friend of everybody's", I immediately know what he's talking about. That's how Holtzman was in the writing business. He was from a different generation than I and worked in a different city, so it wasn't as if I became close to him.
But he was always thorough, friendly and approachable. And when he'd phone my hotel room looking for information on the Minnesota Twins when I'd come through Chicago covering them for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, boy, talk about making an inexperienced guy feel important.
Later, I would sit next to Jerome in the press box while covering an All-Star Game and a World Series, and I can't tell you how cool those nights were. Even if, long after the game, with the hour late and the clock racing toward deadline, he had this terribly unusual habit of humming while he typed.
