Hello ... and goodbye

I wanted to launch this Web journal on a more upbeat note, but the death of Braves announcer Skip Caray is one of those passages I just can't let -- well, pass.

Probably the two most legendary Skip moments were ones I didn't hear -- at least not live, although I've heard them in promos and ads and retrospectives ever since. There was the Francisco Cabrera single to win Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series against the Pirates; I watched that one from about five rows behind the Pirates' dugout at the old Atlanta Stadium. (add the "Fulton County" part yourself, if you absolutely must be that anal about it.)

But all the way home, the car radio kept me pumped up with repeated replays of "Here comes Bream! Here's the throw to the plate! He is . . . SAFE! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!"

The other, of course, was the Braves' one and only ascent to the mountaintop, when Marquis Grissom squeezed Carlos Baerga's fly to left center to nail down Tom Glavine's pitching masterpiece and the 1995 World Series. I was in the center field bleachers for that one, but it was Skip and, I believe, Joe Simpson who echoed a back-and-forth "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" to radio listeners who were either ecstatic Braves fans or casual dial surfers who must have thought they had picked up a really bad Meg Ryan impersonation.

My favorite Skip moment was neither of those. This must have been the late '70s or maybe 1980, when Skip (and, in fairness to his memory, quite a few others) still sported polyester on-air wear and a bad white-guy 'fro. The Braves -- a truly wretched franchise in those days -- were at Wrigley Field, and a young Dale Murphy had hit a grand slam to help beat the Cubs.

Skip was doing (or rather, trying to do) one of those on-field postgame TV interviews with Murphy, and a Chicago heckler was giving Caray pure hell. He was barking out drunken insults about Skip's jacket, his hair, his team, whatever incoherent flotsam drifted across his sodden brain . . . and Murphy was laughing so hard he was about to blow a gasket. Skip tried to soldier on -- pausing every few seconds for a "Yeah, yeah, OK, buddy, I hear ya!" to the heckler, which only made Murphy laugh harder; Caray was reduced finally to a desperate and futile plea of "Could ya help me out here, Murph?"

I honestly don't remember whether they finished the interview or not; I was laughing so hard that the station had gone to an old movie by the time I recovered.

Skip Caray's wasn't the kind of personality you do treacly eulogies about. He wasn't a warm and fuzzy guy, at least not outside his inner circle, and his edgy style sometimes did a header over the edge. As a call-in show host he was a snarling disaster; Skip was one of the few people who could suffer fools with even less patience than I can -- and his standards for what constituted a fool were, from all indications, pretty inclusive.

People who knew him (and I never did, although I've have loved to meet him) say he had a softer side and a bigger heart than he let on or got credit for, and I take their word for it. I understand he and his wife Paula adopted disabled animals that were too much trouble for most people to bother with.

This much I know: In what is clearly a lost Braves season, the silencing of the voice that has defined my summer nights for more than 30 years is easily most devastating loss of all.