Voices of the Braves: My Top 7 List

Updated June 17, 2021: As a diehard Atlanta Braves fan since the day my Uncle John took me to my first game (July 14, 1966, Astros, over the Braves, 6-5, not that I remember much about it), I’ve been connected to the announcers as much as the players. In the early years it was mostly on radio. A local TV station carried a 20-game Braves package each year. But the Saturday NBC “Game of the Week” was usually Yankees-Red Sox. (My, how nothing has changed.) Now of course, games are everywhere, and the cable networks are kind enough to beam the Bravos into our homes when the overlords at Fox and ESPN are not carrying said Yankees and friends.

So here’s my tribute to the best of the Braves announcers of the Atlanta era, to my ears anyway. In my opinion, there have been more than five, but not quite ten.  So I’m going with seven. As Casey Kasem would say, on with the countdown!

7. DON SUTTON (1945-2021): He played in LA with the Dodgers for many years, and was a media darling for good reason. Self-deprecating, charming, quick with a quip. The first time I interviewed him was post-game in Atlanta, around 1980, after he’d given up a long home run.  “What was the pitch?” he was asked.  “A hanging fast ball” was his reply.  He was a comfortable radio companion on a warm summer night, and got better with age. He and Jim Powell made an outstanding radio team.

6. JON “BOOG” SCIAMBI: The one that got away. Man, I miss this guy. From 2007-09, he and Joe Simpson had a chemistry that was thoroughly enjoyable. Simpson was never better, and “Boog” gets much of the credit. With a near-perfect voice, sharp sense of humor, deep knowledge of baseball and obvious big-time potential, we should have known the Braves couldn’t keep him for long. ESPN came calling, and Sciambi moved up to the national scene. We were lucky to have him for three years.

5. JOE SIMPSON: He started in the early 90s, as a soft-spoken rookie fresh from the playing field. It took a while to establish his own style, working in the shadow of the Ernie-Pete-Skip dynasty.  As he got older, he became more candid and blunt, and often seemed downright grouchy in the TV booth with Chip Caray. Now in the radio booth only, he has softened his tone, and sharpened his play-by-play skills.

4. JIM POWELL: In the late 2000s, the Braves broadcasting team took a double whammy: the death of Skip Caray and the retirement of Pete Van Wieren. Talk about big shoes to fill. Thankfully Georgia native Jim Powell was lured away from the Milwaukee Brewers to join the Braves. He’s got it all: the Braves background, the Bob Uecker-influenced lightness, the voice, and the wit. He genuinely respected Don Sutton, and subtly made his partner a better broadcaster.  Satellite radio has made it possible to compare our radio broadcasters with all the others.  There’s no doubt, Powell is among the elite. Sadly, and without explanation, Braves radio network management has demoted Powell, who is rarely heard these days. Powell’s frequent absence from the airwaves is a huge loss for listeners.

3. SKIP CARAY (1939-2008): No one could make a bad game, being played by a bad team, more entertaining. For most of the 1980s, this is how Skip Caray earned his living. Lopsided routs gave Skip ample opportunity to riff on cartoons, B-movies, food and drink. By the way, he knew baseball inside and out. There is one dark spot on his resume’: his pre-game radio call-in show. He seemed irritated by the callers, the people who made his job possible.  Most days, his disdain for them was impossible to conceal. Their questions were “beneath” him. It wasn’t Skip’s finest hour. That came in 1991 when Sid Bream slid into home plate, ending the Braves seemingly endless run of bad baseball. Skip’s enthusiasm was real, and contagious, and his one-liners are unforgettable. He, along with his partners Pete Van Wieren and Ernie Johnson Sr. should be in the broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

2. PETE VAN WIEREN (1944-2014): His knowledge, talent, and longevity puts him near the top of the list. There were no signature play calls, no self-promotion, or catch-phrases that makes one think of Pete. But that lack of ego, especially alongside the acerbic Caray, was a breath of fresh air. The Professor’s pre-game “Diamond Notes” was the pre-internet roundup of everything we needed to know about MLB. Pete provided the stats and facts you couldn’t find elsewhere. One post-retirement moment stands out: he visited the broadcast booth the year after he retired, and was asked to do a little play-by-play. He modestly declined, sort of a “been there, done that” moment. I can’t think of another sportscaster who would have turned down a chance to ham it up one more time. Pete was comfortable with his legacy, and so am I.  Thank you for 33 great years of Braves baseball, Pete.

1. ERNIE JOHNSON SR. (1924-2011) : He’ll probably never get into the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster, and that’s a shame. His accomplishments are underrated. The onetime Braves reliever, never a star, was a middle-inning guy for a few years in Milwaukee. He was an odd choice for the radio team. He didn’t have the ideal voice, or the broadcasting background. By the time the team moved to Atlanta, he was the #3 guy, behind Milo Hamilton and Larry Munson, two show horses battling over the microphone. By comparison Ernie was a timid-sounding guy who could barely be heard over the crowd. His modest Vermont upbringing, and slight Swedish accent combined to give him the tone of a small-town pastor. He did much of his work behind the scenes, recruiting local radio affiliates, eventually building the massive Braves Radio Network that thrives to this day. When Ted Turner bought the team in 1975, beaming the games nationally on his cable superstation, Ernie grew into a lead role. His folksiness and gee-whiz likability meshed well with the no-frills Van Wieren and the prickly Caray. He was the more approachable part of the 3-headed “Voice of the Braves.” Having suffered through many losing seasons, no one was more thrilled when the Braves became America’s team in the 1990s, due in part to TV exposure, but also a string of pennants. As game-winning home runs and Cy Young pitching performances became commonplace, Ernie’s once-soft voice became louder and more buoyant. “Drilled! Back toward that wall! It’s outta here! Braves win!” So did the fans, with Ernie Johnson at the microphone.