Born To The Booth

"This is 1954, now, and sons were beginning to rebel against their fathers. I knew if I pushed Skip, who was in high school at the time, he wouldn't go into the business. So I set this thing up with Robert Hyland, the general manager of KMOX. We created a high school sports show for Saturdays from 5:15 to 5:30 p.m. Then Bob called Skip to ask him if he knew anybody at Webster Groves High who might be able to do something like that. Skip gave him a few names, but Bob knocked each one down for one reason or another. Finally, he said, 'Skip, would you mind doing the show this Saturday?'

"Skip did a splendid job, of course, and I called him right after the show to congratulate him. Then all my friends called him. On Monday, Bob Hyland called, but instead of praising Skip—this is still all my idea—he asked Skip if he could think of anyone else who might want to do the show. When Skip said he couldn't, Bob said, 'Well, I have some contacts over at Kirkwood High.' Kirkwood being the archrival to Webster Groves, that was too much for Skip. He said, 'Mr. Hyland, did you hear my show? Did you like it?'

"And that's how I planted the broadcast bug in Skip. And now he's got Chip, and I'm the happiest man in the world."

After graduating from the University of Missouri, Skip did play-by-play for the Tulsa Oilers of the Texas League and then went on to Atlanta, which was home to the Cardinals' Triple A affiliate, the Crackers. When the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, Skip auditioned for their play-by-play job—and didn't get it. He ended up going back to St. Louis, where he did St. Louis University basketball games with Jack Buck, Harry's baseball partner, and University of Missouri football games with Harry. Skip also did the last year of the St. Louis Hawks. When they moved to Atlanta in 1968, Skip went with them, eager to get out of Harry's shadow. Ted Turner, who owned the Braves as well as the Hawks, asked Skip to add the baseball games to his schedule in 1976, and he has been doing them ever since.

In this family history the apple fell as far away from the tree as Atlanta is from St. Louis. While Harry is raucous, coarse and over the top, Harry II is droll, witty and under the table. (Once, toward the end of a sloppy Brave tilt, Skip told TBS viewers, "It's only fitting that a Jerry Lewis movie follows this game.") But the two Carays do have one thing in common.

"My dad always told me to be honest on the air," says Skip. "And that's the one thing I've tried to impart to Chip."

Skip didn't particularly want Chip to be a sportscaster; he wanted him to be a lawyer. "When I was 18, I had pretty much made up my mind," says Chip, who went to the University of Georgia. "In fact, I made it up the night that Bob Watson hit a big homer for the Braves off Steve Howe in 1983. That night, they replayed my dad's call of the homer on the news, and it gave me goose bumps. I thought to myself, I want to do that someday."

Harry III paid his dues in Panama City, Fla., and Greensboro, N.C., before the Orlando Magic hired him in 1989 to do its play-by-play. "He's going to be the best of us," says Harry. "He's got Skip's sense of humor and my personality. And fortunately, he's much better looking than either one of us."

Chip has also done a number of Brave games with his father. "We work very well together," says Skip. "I've been with Pete Van Wieren for 17 years, and every once in a while we step on one another's lines. But Chip and I never interrupt each other. And it didn't happen with Harry when we did Missouri football games. Funny thing, isn't it?"

The three Carays have worked the same game just once: Braves versus Cubs, Wrigley Field, May 13, 1991. They were together on camera for a brief lead-in to TBS's telecast that day, and the exchange showed the Carays' honesty, humor and professionalism: