'Superstation's' Van Wieren dies at age 69
ATLANTA — Pete Van Wieren, the bespectacled broadcaster who was part of the landmark team that carried Atlanta Braves games throughout the nation on Ted Turner’s “SuperStation,” died Saturday after a battle with cancer, the team said. He was 69.
Affectionately known as “The Professor” for his encyclopedic knowledge of the game, Van Wieren spent 33 years with the Braves before retiring in 2008, shortly after the death of his longtime partner Skip Caray.
“The Atlanta Braves are deeply saddened by the passing of Pete Van Wieren,” the team said in a statement. “He was such a large and important part of our organization. We and all of our fans across Braves country fondly remember his soothing voice calling our games for 33 years.”
A native of Rochester, N.Y., Van Wieren had been calling games for the Triple-A Tidewater Tides when the Braves hired him before the 1976 season to join a new three-man broadcast team with Caray and Ernie Johnson.
The trio would soon become known to baseball fans around the nation thanks to Turner, the team’s brash owner, who began beaming games via satellite on a once-obscure Atlanta television station. While the team didn’t have much success through the 1970s and ’80s, Johnson, Caray and Van Wieren were the faces and voices of the game in areas that didn’t have their own local broadcasts.
With his thick glasses and thinning hair, Van Wieren didn’t fit the TV mold. But his smooth voice and ability to come up with obscure statistics in the pre-Internet era paired especially well with Caray, who was known for his and irreverent retorts. They were inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame in 2004, joining their friend Johnson. He died in 2011.
