Pete Van Wieren obit

Longtime Braves broadcaster Pete Van Wieren dead at 69 after battle with cancer

 

He was not on the list.

Legendary Atlanta Braves broadcaster Pete Van Wieren died Saturday morning after a long battle with cancer, the team confirmed. He was 69.

Van Wieren worked for the Braves from 1976-2008, alongside fellow legends of the booth Skip Caray and Ernie Johnson Sr., on both Superstation TBS and on radio. He also called games with current broadcasters Don Sutton and Joe Simpson through the Braves' glory years of the 1990s, and later with Skip's son, Chip Caray.

"He was a great friend, colleague and mentor," Chip Caray told MLB.com. "He was a true professional and a tremendous man. I learned more from Pete about broadcasting than I did from anybody else. I will always be grateful for the time we shared together."

Van Wieren, a native of Rochester, New York, joined the Braves broadcasting team just as former owner Ted Turner was beginning to broadcast the WTBS signal on cable systems throughout the country. The Braves were perennial losers in the mid-1970s and most of the 1980s, but TBS' ubiquity on television led to the nickname "America's Team."

Nicknamed "The Professor," Van Wieren's encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and its history played well off the bombastic and irreverent Caray. The two worked together until Caray died Aug. 3, 2008.

Van Wieren retired following the 2008 season. Johnson retired in 1999 and died in 2011.

Van Wieren was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, but co-authored a book entitled "Of Mikes and Men: A Lifetime of Braves Baseball." He emceed the 40th anniversary of Hank Aaron's 715th home run in April, but his illness kept him from attending last weekend's Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies for Braves manager Bobby Cox and players Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Van Wieren is survived by his wife of 50 years, Elaine, two sons and three grandchildren.

Van Wieren was born in Rochester, New York and attended Cornell University, where he started his broadcast career by substituting for the regular broadcaster of the Cornell basketball game, who had gotten into a car accident. Van Wieren left Cornell before the start of his junior year, and eventually landed a couple of radio job in Northern Virginia. In 1966, he moved to Binghamton, New York for his first baseball broadcasting job, where he revived game broadcasts for the AA minor league Binghamton Triplets after they had been off the air for several years. He served as the Triplets' play-by-play broadcaster for two seasons before the team folded, at both WNBF and WINR. Van Wieren moved in 1972 to work in Toledo, Ohio for WDHO-TV, but returned to play-by-play broadcasting for the AAA Tidewater Tides in 1974.

According to Van Wieren himself, on the September 17, 2007, Atlanta Braves Radio Network broadcast, he worked for the Washington Post in the 1960s. He did not say what his position was at the paper, only that he met Shirley Povich while he was there.

Along with Caray, Van Wieren was inducted into the Atlanta Braves Hall of Fame in 2004, joining an impressive list in Braves history that already included Hank Aaron, Lew Burdette, Del Crandall, Tommy Holmes, Ernie Johnson Sr., Eddie Mathews, Phil Niekro, Dale Murphy, Kid Nichols, Ted Turner, Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn.