The N&R’s Allen Johnson mourns the loss of Braves boradcaster Skip Caray. So do I, as one who can remember the days when the only baseball games on TV were the Game of the Week on NBC and the Braves on TBS.

With that in mind, I consider Caray a pioneer in the cable era in which we now live. Yet I found it interesting that his long career stretched way back to another era:

His first job after earning a journalism degree from the University of Missouri was calling the games of the Tulsa Oilers minor-league baseball team. The station didn’t send him to road games, so Caray would recreate the action on the air from pitch-by-pitch details provided by a Western Union ticker tape. To simulate the sound of bat meeting ball, he’d tap a piece of balsa wood with a pencil.