Remembering the Legacy of a Braves Icon, Gone but Never Forgotten in Our Heart

Here rests Pete Van Wieren, called “The Professor,” one-third of one of baseball’s most renowned broadcast booths. During the Atlanta Braves’ time on TBS, he shared the voice of the team alongside Ernie Johnson Sr. and Skip Caray. From 1976 until 2008, Van Wieren called Braves games on television and radio.

Peter Dirk Van Wieren was born on October 7, 1944, in Rochester, New York. His father, Howard, was said to have been killed in World War II, but he later discovered that Howard had abandoned his family before his son was born. The two never met, and Van Wieren later found that Howard died in 1971, practically homeless, in Manhattan. Van Wieren and his mother, Ruth, lived in Greece, New York, with her parents. Grandfather Wilbur was a mechanic, and Ruth Van Wieren worked as a secretary in a lawyer’s office, according to the 1950 U.S. Census.

Van Wieren attended Cornell University after graduating from Charlotte High School in Rochester in 1961. His start in broadcasting came about by accident – literally. Van Wieren was covering a baseball game for the school newspaper when the play-by-play announcer was involved in an automobile accident. An engineer from the school’s radio station approached the press box for assistance. Van Wieren was with Harry Dorish, a former pitcher who was working as a scout for the Boston Red Sox at the time. “Go ahead,” Dorish said Van Wieren. “It’s easier than writing.” When the young reporter stepped in, he discovered a new professional path. Van Wieren departed Cornell after his junior year to pursue a career in broadcasting, according to his obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He kept his day job at the Washington Post and went to night school to study broadcasting. He married his wife Elaine in 1964, and they were together till his death. Jon and Steve were the couple’s two kids.

Van Wieren’s first employment was as a high school football broadcaster for the Fauquier Falcons. “I learned to enunciate very quickly,” he subsequently remarked about the team’s moniker. By 1967, Van Wieren was working as a mid-afternoon DJ and the voice of the WINR Ski Scene on WINR Radio in Binghamton, New York. He was calling games for the Binghamton Triplets and working as a sportscaster for WINR-TV News by the next year. He got a taste of calling baseball, football, and basketball games, as well as bowling tournaments, as he acquired expertise; he even emceed a ski fashion show. After the organization declined to renew Bob Gamere’s contract after the 1970 season, he became a finalist for the high-profile post of New York Yankees broadcaster. He and Don Criqui were both mentioned as possible candidates for the role, which eventually went to the recently retired All-Star Bill White.

“I ordered myself to relax, have a couple of beers, and then sat down to watch a late movie,” Van Wieren recalled of the painful wait for the Yankees to call. “The title of the picture was ‘The Kid from Cleveland.’ I’d never heard of it. ‘Hi, I’m Mike Norris, the baseball announcer for the 1947 Cleveland Indians,’ said the opening line.

“I tried to enjoy it,” he explained.

Van Wieren joined the Tidewater Mets minor-league baseball team and the Tidewater Sharks hockey team after stops in Virginia and Ohio. Marty Brenneman left to work for the Cincinnati Reds, and he took his place. The Atlanta Braves announced in late 1975 that they would develop a new broadcasting team. Ernie Johnson, a former Braves reliever turned executive, had been in charge of broadcasting since the team relocated from Milwaukee to Atlanta in 1966. He also hired Skip Caray, the son of Harry Caray, who had previously worked as a broadcaster for the Atlanta Crackers minor league team and the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association. Van Wieren joined the Braves as a fresh face in the Atlanta market.

“My dad was the director of broadcasting at the time, listening to tapes he was getting from people all over the country,” Ernie Johnson Jr., a notable broadcaster in his own right, remarked in 2014. “I recall him telling me, ‘There’s this kid in Tidewater who’s pretty good.'” ‘I believe he is the one.’ “How about my father’s keen instincts?”

Van Wieren began his time with the Braves at the age of 31. One of his first assignments with the crew was to compete in an ostrich race alongside Turner and the other broadcasters, who were all dressed in horse jockey silks. It was not the best start to a career, but the new broadcast crew persevered. At the time, the Braves broadcast network included 60 radio stations throughout the Southeast, as well as 25 television stations that carried approximately 50 games per year. That was one of the most extensive networks among major-league teams. Thanks to Braves owner Ted Turner, it was set to grow significantly.

Turner had enormous intentions to become one of the country’s most powerful media moguls, but he also had some difficulties controlling the Braves. Van Wieren, for example, was appointed traveling secretary in 1976 after Donald Davidson either resigned or was sacked, depending on who you asked. Davidson, who claimed he was sacked, has been with the Braves since the team’s days in Boston. Turner, who stated that Davidson resigned, believed Van Wieren could manage the position despite his lack of expertise. “We’ve got two announcers, and they aren’t on the air long, so they have time for details,” Turner told reporters.

Van Wieren was named a featured broadcaster for The Baseball Network, a collaboration between Major League Baseball, ABC, and NBC. The network was harshly chastised, most notably for regionalizing simultaneous playoff games. On the plus side, Van Wieren and analyst Larry Dierker were able to broadcast the first three games of the Braves-Rockies NL Division Series in 1995. It was Van Wieren’s first opportunity to do a television broadcast of a Braves playoffs game; he had previously done radio work for Braves playoff games. The Braves won that series 3 games to 1, and they went on to sweep the Reds in the NLCS and Cleveland in the World Series to claim their lone championship.

Van Wieren celebrated his silver anniversary with the Braves in 2000 and was obliged to weigh in on a heated issue involving Braves reliever John Rocker. Throughout his career, Rocker courted controversy with harsh remarks and behavior, but when he got into a fight with a photographer on a West Coast road trip, Van Wieren ripped him during a Braves broadcast. It was an out-of-character occurrence for the broadcaster, but it was vital.

“It was a very upsetting time on the club, and everybody was tiptoeing around it,” said Van Wieren. “Perhaps you couldn’t say anything as a manager or a player, but I felt I could.” I was bothered that we had the biggest story of the baseball season thus far [a 15-game winning streak] and you had to turn to page three of the paper to find out about it. The emphasis needed to return to where it belonged: on-field performance.”

At least, Braves pitcher Tom Glavine seemed to enjoy it. “He doesn’t criticize players much, if at all.” This is not his style. “However, when he does, it means something,” he explained.

Van Wieren’s final years with the Braves were turbulent, as ownership shifted. Turner, for all his flaws, knew what Braves fans wanted and fought hard to provide it. TBS’s parent company, AOL Time Warner, wanted to make Braves broadcasts more of a “national” event, such to those seen on ESPN or Fox. As a result, Van Wieren and Caray were relegated to radio and the regional Turner South network for 36 broadcast games in 2003, dramatically lowering their audience. For the TBS broadcasts, Sutton and Simpson were the prominent voices.

Caray expressed his displeasure, referring to the move as a demotion. Van Wieren was more conciliatory, claiming that TBS, Turner South, and the Braves radio network were all owned by the same company. “The people in charge of the station have the authority to make whatever decisions they want.” “And so we go,” he said.

The trouble was, despite Time Warner’s efforts to make the games feel like a national broadcast, the games were all Braves games, and fans throughout the country who had become accustomed to hearing Caray and Van Wieren lead the calls were furious. The clamor was so intense that network management succumbed after less than a year and brought the beloved team back to TBS that summer.

In terms of ratings, the experiment was a flop, demonstrating how a national organization may be entirely tone-deaf when it comes to detecting the likes and dislikes of a localized audience. The error was swiftly fixed, but Van Weiren did not forget. Van Wieren stated when he was inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame in 2005, “I have worked for 11 different executive producers over the years.” I’d want to thank ten of them.”

Caray was also inducted into the Hall of Fame at the same time. It was only natural that they would be honored in the same way after being hired at the same time 29 years before.

Change happened swiftly. The Braves’ postseason streak ended in 2005 with an NLDS loss, while the 2006 team finished with a 79-83 record. Chip Caray joined his father Skip in the Braves broadcast booth to broadcast games. After 18 years on the job, Don Sutton was let go from the broadcast crew in October 2006. The Braves’ franchise was sold to Liberty Media, severing the team’s relationship with TBS. The 2007 games were broadcast on TBS and a couple of regional networks, with Chip Caray, Simpson, and Jon Sciambi serving as prominent broadcasters. Van Wieren was shifted to radio solely, while Caray was primarily his radio partner, with only a few games on TV with his son. There was no mid-season change of heart this time. The new-look TBS games effectively ended the famed core group.

Skip Caray died on August 3, 2008, after suffering from a year of ill health. Van Wieren announced his departure from the booth just a few months later. He said the decision had nothing to do with the loss of his broadcasting colleague. “Losing Skip was certainly a tough thing, but that didn’t affect my decision,” Van Wieren added. “If anything, it solidified my decision.” I didn’t want to continue working till I couldn’t anymore.

“It’s something [wife] Elaine and I have been planning for the last 45 years, getting to that day when we were both in good health and able to do some of the things we wanted to do but were unable to do because of the restrictions of the baseball schedule,” he said at the time of his retirement announcement. almost 33 seasons, he called almost 5,500 Braves games, plus enough postseason games to qualify for a 34th.

The Turner Field radio booth was named after Van Wieren by the Braves, and a familiar face was there to inaugurate it under its new name in 2009. Don Sutton was recalled to work the radio program with Jim Powell. In 2010, Van Wieren published his autobiography, Of Mikes and Men, which detailed his life and work.

Pete Van Wieren was diagnosed with lymphoma not long after retiring. On August 2, 2014, he died at the age of 69. After Caray died in 2008 and Johnson died in 2011, he was the sole living member of the Braves’ famed booth. Van Wieren is buried in a mausoleum in Roswell’s Green Lawn Cemetery, just a few feet apart from his broadcast colleague Ernie Johnson.

One remarkable element of the Braves’ great broadcast team is that not a single one of them has ever received the Ford C. Frick Award, which is given annually to a broadcaster by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Van Wieren was nominated for the award in 2014, but he was defeated by Eric Nadal of the Texas Rangers. Because only one award is given out each year, there is a significant backlog of deserving names who have not been honored, but it’s odd that one of the most prominent and listened-to broadcast teams in baseball history is not represented in Cooperstown. Johnson has been nominated for the 2023 Frick Award, so that could change shortly. Caray and Van Wieren are also looking forward to their chances.