Baseball Isn’t Boring
Pitch and Moan: Chip Caray Dives Into Family Legacy And The State Of Broadcasting
09 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is Chip Caray's connection to his famous broadcasting family?
He is one of the most recognizable voices in baseball and part of a famous broadcasting family. Chip Carey, welcome to the show. Pleasure to have you.
Thank you. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year to you. I'm seeing you're out in Florida as a Chicagoan. I'm a little jealous. As you can imagine, you're in the short sleeves. I'm here in the long sleeves. I'm a little jealous.
Yes, sunny and 74 on the 8th of January. It's a little bit tough to beat, but we're enjoying every bit of it. And we'll take this kind of weather once the summer heat arrives in St. Louis when the corn sweat starts in just a few months.
The corn sweat. I like that. And that is very, very true. I got to say, you know, all the times I've been to St. Louis, all the times I've sat out at Bush Stadium, that is one of the hottest places on earth in the summer. It really is.
Yeah, we do have, shall we say... all four seasons. Um, you know, we get the 90 plus degrees and 98% humidity. We get the snow and we get the ice. Uh, we have about two and a half weeks of beautiful spring, two and a half weeks of beautiful fall.
And then in the wintertime, we get the schizophrenic weather where it's 72 on one day and 42 or 22, uh, the next, which means everybody's got the colds and the flu and the gray skies like, so, uh, that's why I live in Florida. The weather's a little bit more consistent in the wintertime. And, uh, As you said, St. Louis, yeah, it's going to be hot, so be ready.
Well, when I was out there this summer, this past summer, I was there for the Cubs-Cardinals series, coincidentally. And it was, I think, 102 degrees. If you remember that series, it was one of the hottest weeks in St. Louis history. So I was basking out there. I was basking. It was hot.
Yeah, well, it's a tough town, man. You've got to come ready to play.
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Chapter 2: How did Chip Caray realize he wanted to be a broadcaster?
So that opportunity slipped away from us and left kind of a Not kind of, but left a very big, open, unclosed circle in our family. Not just the broadcasting side of it, but I don't know what my dad's favorite color was. I don't know how he met my grandmother. I don't know what his favorite food as a kid was.
I don't know what his thoughts were in seeing Stan Musial play virtually every game of his major league career. All of those things are things that I wish I had answers to and wish I had exposure to. I got some of that with my dad, which closed a very, very important circle for me. And as I'm sure we'll talk about later, I've got two sons that are doing this too.
And the fact that they've followed in my footsteps is awfully rewarding and I'm excited for their future as well.
And we definitely will get into that because I got the chance to meet one of your sons. I think it was Stephanette in Orlando, was it? Yes. And, you know, they're both getting involved in the business, which is an incredible thing. I mean, the fact that the Carrie name is going to live on in some form in this industry is a very big deal. So that's awesome.
Now, you mentioned your grandfather, you mentioned your father, Skip Carey. Skip this year was up for the Ford Frick Award. It went to Joe Buck, as we know. You have some history with Joe Buck, which we'll get into a little bit as well. But how would it make you feel seeing your father get that honor?
It would be an amazing honor, but I say that with a caveat. I'm disappointed in the way that so many guys in our industry are forced to wait so long. The industry has exploded in a way that I don't think any of us could have imagined. This is not the 1930s where you have eight teams in each league and you have one radio announcer. You have multiple TV outlets.
You have multiple cable network outlets, multiple national outlets, and multiple talented people who have given their heart and soul to Major League Baseball that deserve recognition. And it's not for me to say who should or shouldn't be in, but I will say this. My dad would probably be the first guy to say, if I'm gone, what's the point? And I agree with that.
You know, the whole point of being recognized as a Hall of Famer is to be able to enjoy that icing on the cake, that cherry on top of the sundae. And he's not here. He's been gone for a long time now. And he would also say that his success is because he's the sum of the talent of the people around him. My dad would not want to go into the Hall of Fame without Pete Van Wuren and Ernie Johnson.
Those two were his partners, by and large, in the early days in Atlanta. And Pete Van Wuren would have said the same thing. Ernie Johnson would have said the same thing. It's like Dwayne Kuyper and Mike Krukow. They're Hall of Fame announcers. Putting one in without the other makes absolutely no sense. So that's my soapbox.
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Chapter 3: What was the impact of super stations on baseball broadcasting?
I do. Yeah, I text him and call him. We text, we communicate via text an awful lot a couple of times, you know, during the year in the offseason, once every couple of months, just to make sure he's still on the green side of the grass. But yeah, he was a great friend. And, you know, that's the most important thing, right? We talk all the time about baseball partners.
There have been a lot of partnerships in baseball where outside the booth, guys don't speak. They don't socialize. They don't spend any time together. I've really been lucky no matter where I've been, be it Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago, now St. Louis, that the people I work with are not just excellent broadcasters. They're great people. They're fun to be around.
I consider them dear friends, and I would trust my family with them. And I think that's the secret sauce of what makes a broadcast successful is it's not just knowing the game. It's not just being able to work with somebody.
It's being able to stand, and I use that with quotation marks around it, being around them as a surrogate member of your family for six months because you're away from your real family, because that's what the job entails. And I've really, really been lucky that starting with Steve Stone and my father,
great friends in Atlanta, my dad, Jeff Rancourt, and so many others, Chicago with Steve and Seattle with Dave Niehaus, and now in St. Louis with Brad Thompson and Mark Sweeney, that they're not just coworkers, they're friends. And I think that's the magic. I think that's what makes the difference between
just a booth and a a broadcast where people actually feel like they're welcome to listen and welcome to watch and want to watch and want to invite you into their homes because you don't like the guy you're working with it's going to come across on tv and if that happens you're going to alienate your audience and luckily that hasn't really ever been a case for me
I could not agree with that more. And I think there's been situations in the history of broadcasting where that has come across on air, on TV, and that does make things very uncomfortable. And I do really want to get into the Joe Buck stuff because, you guys, one of my favorite things of last season was seeing you two call a game together.
But, you know, you mentioned welcoming people into your homes, right? We're watching the game. You know, baseball is, like we said, America's pastime. I am curious, though, how... Your grandfather and your father would have handled the scrutiny of broadcasting these days with analytics and social media. How would they have embraced that? I just have to know.
I'll start with the social media part. I think Harry would have loved it. Harry came from an era where any publicity is good publicity. It doesn't matter if they're ripping you or praising you. your name's in the papers and, you know, people are thinking about talking about you. My dad was a much more private person.
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Chapter 4: How does Chip Caray view the evolution of broadcasting in baseball?
That's what sold him. And that to me is still key. You know, you want to come in and be yourself and have your own personality. And that's what I feel is missing with a lot of these young broadcasters. So I do like to hear that you're trying to differentiate your sons because you're right. That at the end of the day is going to make you stand out.
I agree. And this is not a knock on the RSNs because they have a business model and they have a look that they want. They also want a sound that they want. But what works in Minnesota is not going to work in Miami. What works in Miami is not going to work in Houston. And same in St. Louis. And so I agree with you. I think what harm is there in being yourself? You might as well.
It's the old adage. If something if I'm going down, I'm going to go down doing it the way that I think is best, not the way some suit in some office in L.A. thinks. Granted, you have to get the job first.
But at the end of the day, we're the guys and gals behind the microphone and it's our reputations, you know, and people sometimes overlook that part of it, that you got to be you be the best version of you and the rest will take care of itself, I think.
When you sit in that booth every single game, and obviously you're calling Cardinals games, 162 of them. It's a lot of games. What still makes you grateful for this job?
Well, the paycheck isn't too shabby. I agree. There's no heavy lifting. But, you know, I love what I do. You know, there's the old saying, you know, pick something you love and you'll never work a day in your life. And that's really true. Look, I'm not skilled enough to throw a 98-mile-an-hour fastball, much less hit one.
I'm not a great musical impresario, so I'm not going to make money as a rock guitarist. I'm not good at math, so I'm not going to work at NASA.
uh i can barely balance a checkbook um and so this is the skill set that i was given you know whatever the good lord did when he tapped me on the shoulder when i was born this is what i can do i can say ground ball a second and make it fun and entertaining for people for three hours a day uh i never lose sight of that um but you know i i uh i say to my partners all the time um
Once a month at least, when things are going bad or even when they're going good too, obviously, can you believe they pay us to do this? David Hill, with whom I worked with Fox Sports, he was the guy that ran Fox Sports when they got baseball back in the early 90s, came into a conference room one day and said something I've never forgotten. And he said, don't ever forget this.
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