If Skip Caray's stature can be measured by how friends, colleagues and fans felt about the longtime Atlanta Braves broadcaster, baseball lost a truly great one when Caray passed away Sunday at the age of 68. "It's just a sad thing," Reds broadcaster and Baseball Hall of Famer Marty Brennaman said. "I think he was one of the truly unique baseball broadcasters in the history of the game."

Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton, today a Nationals broadcaster, recalled Caray with fondness.

"Skip was one of my tutors and mentors," Sutton said. "I went from being a ballplayer to a broadcaster. I don't think it could've been any better to have landed with Ernie Johnson Sr., Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren.

 

Each of them taught me something. Skip helped developed the foundation for what I am as a broadcaster. He was a great friend.

 

"My family went through some trying times with my daughter's premature birth and my cancer. There wouldn't be a day that went by where he wouldn't say, 'You don't have to come up and drive. I'll come get you. Stay at our house. At least come out and eat. We have an apartment over the garage. You and Mary don't have to be driving back and forth.' We were 30 miles apart.

 

"He could be a curmudgeon on the air and he could be a pain in the butt, but he was the generous, lovable uncle that you never wanted to see leave. He was generous, moreso than anybody will ever know."

Brewers radio voice Bob Uecker said he was a little worried when Caray did not work the Brewers-Braves series at Turner Field over the weekend.

"He was a great broadcaster and a real good guy," Uecker said. "He had a sense of humor but it was dry, real dry. He never made himself obvious. I just remember him as a friend and a guy who loved his job."

 

Caray, the son of longtime Cardinals, Athletics, White Sox and Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray and father of broadcaster Chip Caray, made his own niche with a style that was as entertaining as it was informative.

His voice was known to millions of fans and not just in the South, thanks to station TBS, which made Braves games available nationwide for many years.

Uecker's broadcast partner, Jim Powell, grew up near Atlanta idolizing Caray. "You grow up listening to 'your guy' and it's like he becomes larger than life," Powell said. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have become a sportscaster if not for Skip Caray. Ernie Johnson, Pete Van Wieren and Skip Caray, those were my guys, but I really loved Skip because I was a big Atlanta Hawks fan and he was phenomenal on those games, too.

 

Skip, out of all of them, always seemed to be having the most fun of anyone in sportscasting."