The unthinkable: baseball without Vin Scully

[EasyAce]

By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/08/29/the-unthinkable-baseball-without-vin-scully/

When Bryce Harper was growing up in Las Vegas, where he could watch the Dodgers on television and listen to Vin Scully, he
noticed readily what most of the world has known for decades. It wasn’t just about the game to Scully.

“It was about the beauty of the game, the beauty of the fans, how much he could bring the fans together and the Dodgers together,
things like that,” Harper told the New York Times recently. “When you think of the Dodgers, you don’t just think about all the greats
that played for the Dodgers, you think of Vin Scully, as well.”

There was a time when such was said about the man who brought Scully to the Dodgers in the first place, Red Barber. The faithful in
Brooklyn were as likely to talk about and think about Barber as they were about Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Don
Newcombe, Carl Erskine, or Roy Campanella. Little did Barber know that his protege would eclipse him in recognizability after the
Dodgers went west.

How long ago was that? Put it this way: On April 1, 1950 (this is no joke, folks), future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was born
in New Jersey; surgeon Charles Drew, who invented the concept of the blood bank, died; the number one song in the country (Billboard)
was Teresa Brewer’s “Music, Music, Music.” (That was from my ootsy-poo period, she would say years later, when she transformed into
a respected jazz singer.) Milton Berle was still numero uno on television, Jack Benny was radio’s king, and the Dodgers were preparing
to break spring camp and get a season going.

In Barber’s day and for well enough after, the thought of a farewell tour wasn’t even a topic. Joe DiMaggio didn’t take one with the
Yankees; he simply retired, feeling he no longer had it, after the 1951 season. Robinson — despite a hilarious bid to trade him to the
New York Giants — simply made his quiet promise of retirement permanent in 1956. Ted Williams asked nothing more than a chance
to go out like a champion — and punctuated his Comeback Player of the Year season with a poetic home run at the end of 1960.
Stan Musial didn’t exactly take one, though he was saluted in a few cities in 1963. In 1966, Sandy Koufax — who once told Scully
 it was almost as much fun listening to him calling a game as it was to pitch a game — confided in one reporter that it would be his
final season, then went out, pitched it, and retired formally after the season.

These days, some farewell tours of baseball greats have been sublime. Mariano Rivera in 2013, graciously visiting American League
ballpark staffers while the opposing teams feted him. David Ortiz, doing likewise where possible this year and, while he’s at it, leading
the American League in slugging and OPS at this writing. Some have been ridiculous. Derek Jeter’s ostentatious 2014 farewell tour
comes to mind, Jeter having overstayed his pure baseball welcome by a couple of years as it was.

But when was the last time you heard of a team’s announcer getting the farewell tour. Not that Scully’s been feted in person city to
city this season. No. As the Times observed wryly, the farewell tour — Scully finally intends to retire after this season — has been
coming to him all season. Players and staffers from teams visiting Dodger Stadium have made the pilgrimage to the stadium press
box, long since named for him, to visit and salute Scully. And he’s cherished every such visit.

Even the umpires. “They look up to the booth and they see me,” says Scully’s Dodger radio broadcast partner, Charley Steiner. “They
kind of doff their caps, but they hold their palms upward as if to say, ‘Where is he?’ I’ll say, That’s the best I can do!”

This past weekend the Dodgers gave their longtime voice an amusing tribute. When players, coaches, manager, and front office
staffers joined up for a team photograph, they hoisted Scully face masks in front of their own mugs. The lone holdout? Scully himself,
seated front and center, grinning appreciatively. And appropriately. When ESPN conducted its 2007 polling to determine the face of each
major league franchise, with each team’s fans voting, Dodger fans voted Scully in a walk. He was the only non-player/non-coach/non-
manager/non-executive so voted.

It’s rare for a man or a woman to excel at something for the normal career span. Scully has excelled at it for almost seven decades. Even
his old employer Barber, who was legendary for his understatement and his anecdotal style, seems now to have been an amateur by
comparison. Barber could give you a profile of a player while he batted. Scully told stories. Barber was like the pleasant horticulturist next
door who didn’t mind if you eavesdropped. Scully was the one who’d open the door, invite you in to pull up a chair (he says it often enough
opening his broadcasts, anyway), and pour you a cold, tall one, right before the first pitch.

He means it when he speaks as though talking to friends, just as his listeners have meant it when they tell anyone who’d listen that they
feel him a friend. Numerous stories about him have noted that when people meet him for the first time and address him as “Mr. Scully,”
he’s quick to offer a handshake and say, “Forget the Mister. I’m Vin.” A few years ago, doing a game that coincided with the anniversary of
D-Day, he started a mid-game talk about it thus: “I don’t want this to be an intrusion, but I think we’ve been friends long enough, you’ll
understand.”

Scully’s genuine warmth has been known to cool down the most boiling of baseball hotheads while inviting viewers to smile with him as
he orders a camera pan to capture a very young child in the park and speaks of that child with a truly fatherly affection. (Codicil: Not only
did Scully have to survive the accidental death of his first wife — he’s long since been remarried happily — he withstood the death of his
own oldest son in a helicopter crash.) He’s also displayed a wry wit, and occasional understated editorializing, while observing and
discussing less commendable acts on the field.

You’d need a facility the size of a university video library, perhaps, to line up the absolute best of Scully. His moving call for salute to
Campanella the first time the quadriplegic former Dodger catcher appeared at a game when the Dodgers played in the Los Angeles Coliseum
awaiting Dodger Stadium. The ninth inning of Koufax’s perfect game. (There are twenty thousand people in the stands and a million butterflies.)
Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, hit against the Dodgers. Games Six and Seven of the 1986 World Series (when Scully worked concurrently for
NBC). Fernando Valenzuela’s no-hitter. (If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!) Kirk Gibson’s pinch homer winning Game One, 1988
Series. (In a season full of improbables, the impossible has happened!) His hilarious transliteration of Jim Tracy’s argument on a shallow line
out. (That is blinkin’ fertilizer! No way! No blinkin’ way! No bloody way!) Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter. (One measly out to go.) The thousands
of times he’d have cameras pan to capture very young children and purr something almost of fatherly affection about them.

They even managed to capture Scully’s style when casting him as himself in a baseball film; specifically, 1999′s For Love of the Game,
in which Kevin Costner portrayed a Tiger pitcher in Yankee Stadium threatening a late-season perfect game while his backstory is told in parallel
— the career, a star-crossed romance seeming to end on the day of the game. When Costner’s Billy Chapel consummated the perfecto, with his
estranged love watching in an airport bar, Scully crooned on script, “The cathedral that is Yankee Stadium belongs to a Chapel.” Unless the
writers and director just told Scully to say what he’d really say in a real such game.

“The people have responded so well — so touchingly — that it will be very difficult for me to just suddenly walk away,” he said in 2014, at a time
when he’d been publicly undecided about returning to the Dodgers for another season or two. “It’s the human relationships I will miss when the time
comes. Like everyone in life, I’ve had my tragic moments, and the crowd has always got me through those moments. That’s why I’ve said ‘I needed
you far more than you needed me.’ I rarely use the word ‘fans.’ I realize the origin is ‘fanatics,’ but I always use the word ‘friends’.”

The Dodgers’ season will end in due course. The last words Scully will ever deliver over the microphone and on the set will pass through the air
soon enough. No number of preserved clips stocked aboard YouTube or archive.org will make up for knowing that we go to the 2017 season
without him in his customary perch. He’ll remain grateful to have had the long professional life doing what he loved, grateful for having made a
friend of several generations of Americans, if not half the world.

And we’ll wish him well enough when he steps to the retirement we once thought would never arrive. But forget baseball; forget Los Angeles.
Knowing Scully won’t be at the mike, calling a game, telling the stories within the stories around the stories behind the stories, it’ll feel like
America won’t quite be America anymore.

"There are twenty thousand people in the stands and a million butterflies" (Vin Scully,
ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game, 1965.)


"What a marvelous moment for the country and the world"


"Behind the bag! It gets through Buckner!"


"The impossible has happened!"


"Cora up there kind of wearing Matt Clement out . . ." (Alex Cora's eighteen-pitch at-bat ending in a two run homer, May 2004)

[Cripplecreek]

It will pass.

I couldn't imagine baseball without Ernie Harwell and I still miss him a great deal but baseball goes on.

[EasyAce]

It will pass.

I couldn't imagine baseball without Ernie Harwell and I still miss him a great deal but baseball goes on.

Ernie Harwell was one of the baseball broadcasting greats, but he couldn't carry Vin Scully's microphone. When Scully
steps into retirement at last, we'll be left with little but cackling crows too busy saying stupid things to each other
to bother about talking to their listeners the way Scully did---like friends.

[geronl]

right, lets abolish baseball because some regional announcer has stopped announcing.

[Cripplecreek]

right, lets abolish baseball because some regional announcer has stopped announcing.

I know the name but wouldn't know his voice or recognize him if I met him on the street however I do understand the sentiment.

Harwell's last public speech before he died. His voice was as familiar as my own father.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4rCyVbzpVk

[EasyAce]

right, lets abolish baseball because some regional announcer has stopped announcing.

1) Saying that baseball won't be the same again without someone like Vin Scully isn't the same thing as saying
    we ought to abolish the game.

2) A mere regional announcer doesn't capture a country's affections, as Scully did in many a year during which
    he was a lead announcer for NBC's series of Game of the Week broadcasts aired nationwide and the years
    in which he was the chosen lead for the World Series when NBC had the Series.

3) A mere regional announcer doesn't attract personal visits not just from those traveling to and in California
    but from players and other team personnel on visiting teams---personal visits Scully has fielded for decades.
    (Other baseball voices attracted likewise: Ernie Harwell often did; so did Harry Caray; so did Bob Prince in
    Pittsburgh and Phil Rizzuto in New York, God rest their souls. So does Jon Miller in San Francisco, but none
    attracted quite the volume Scully has done.)

[EasyAce]

I know the name but wouldn't know his voice or recognize him if I met him on the street however I do understand the sentiment.

Play the clips I included above. ;)

Harwell's last public speech before he died. His voice was as familiar as my own father.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4rCyVbzpVk

I felt that way about Bob Murphy, who worked with the Mets from the team's birth in 1962 until 2003; he died in early
2004.

(He, too, is a Frick Award Hall of Famer, as are Harwell, Scully, Ralph Kiner [Mets], Mel Allen [Yankees], Milo Hamilton [various], Dick
Enberg [Angels], Graham McNamee [NBC], Red Barber [Dodgers, Yankees], Russ Hodges [Giants; he's remembered for screaming
"There's a long drive, it's gonna be, I believe---the Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" calling Bobby Thomson's
famed home run], Bob Prince [Pirates], and Harry Caray [Cardinals, White Sox, Cubs].)

Bob Murphy, inducted into the Hall of Fame as a Ford Frick Award
winner.

[dfwgator]

Growing up a Tigers fan, the unthinkable was baseball without Ernie Harwell.

[Cripplecreek]

Growing up a Tigers fan, the unthinkable was baseball without Ernie Harwell.

Visiting my dad today and we talked about Al Kaline. That guy started playing for the Tigers at 18 years old in 1953 and still works for the Tigers today.

[EasyAce]

Visiting my dad today and we talked about Al Kaline. That guy started playing for the Tigers at 18 years old in 1953 and still works for the Tigers today.

Did you know: Al Kaline is one of only five players affected by the infamous bonus baby rules of 1953-65 to become a Hall of Famer. The other
four: Sandy Koufax, Harmon Killebrew, Catfish Hunter, and Steve Carlton.

More bonus baby trivia:

* Three bonus babies never saw one day or inning of minor league playing time even after they could be farmed out: Koufax,
Kaline, and Hunter.

* Four bonus babies ended up becoming Original Mets: the two Bob Millers (Bob G. and Bob L.), Jay Hook, and Johnny DeMerit.

* Three of the bonus babies eventually saw time as major league managers: Steve Boros, Joey Amalfitano, and Tony La Russa.
(La Russa signed when the rule was modified in 1962 to keep a player on a roster for one season rather than two.)

* Four of the bonus babies eventually won Cy Young Awards: Koufax, Hunter, Carlton, and Mike McCormick.

* One bonus baby won the Heisman Trophy: Vic Janowicz.

* Janowicz was one of eight Pittsburgh Pirates bonus babies—the most bonus babies under the rule to be signed by any team during
the life of the rule.

* The least number of bonus babies affected by the rule to be signed by any team: 1. (The Dodgers signed Koufax; the Indians signed
an infielder named Kenny Kuhn, who played parts of three seasons before disappearing.)

* Only one black player was ever signed to a bonus large enough to count as a bonus baby under the rule: Willie Crawford.

* Two brothers became bonus babies—and with the same team: pitchers Lindy McDaniel (’55 Cardinals) and Von McDaniel (’57 Cardinals).
(Von McDaniel didn’t last past two major league seasons, but he’s this footnote in Cardinals history: the last man to wear number 45
before Bob Gibson.)

* There was one protest over one bonus baby when the Kansas City Athletics traded him to the Yankees days after he finished his bonus
time and could have been farmed out: Clete Boyer. The other American League clubs filed protests hoping to block the deal but the deal
was allowed to stand.

* Name the bonus baby who a) served in the U.S. military during the 1961 Berlin crisis; b) hit the first pinch grand slam in Mets team history;
and, c) caught Tom Seaver’s first professional game. (Answer: Hawk Taylor, catcher, ’57 bonus baby with the Braves.)

* Name the bonus baby who was major league baseball’s first Little League alumnus. (Joey Jay, ’53 bonus baby with the Braves.)

[GrouchoTex]

Ernie Harwell was one of the baseball broadcasting greats, but he couldn't carry Vin Scully's microphone. When Scully
steps into retirement at last, we'll be left with little but cackling crows too busy saying stupid things to each other
to bother about talking to their listeners the way Scully did---like friends.

It is hard to imagine, but the first time I heard Vin Scully was when my family moved from Texas to Cali for a while in the 60's and again in the 70's.
I thought that is what baseball was supposed to sound like on the radio.
Years later, that's still true today.

[EasyAce]

It is hard to imagine, but the first time I heard Vin Scully was when my family moved from Texas to Cali for a while in the 60's and again in the 70's.
I thought that is what baseball was supposed to sound like on the radio.
Years later, that's still true today.

When I lived in southern California from 1999-2007, I went to Dodger Stadium for the first time. I saw a phenomenon
in the stands I still can't believe---about half the fans in the park carried little portable TV sets, with the picture turned
off but the sound turned up. Listening to Vin Scully while in the ballpark. As if they wouldn't believe what they
were seeing on the field until or unless they heard it from Scully.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is unheard of. I've never seen that in any other ballpark.

[GrouchoTex]

When I lived in southern California from 1999-2007, I went to Dodger Stadium for the first time. I saw a phenomenon
in the stands I still can't believe---about half the fans in the park carried little portable TV sets, with the picture turned
off but the sound turned up. Listening to Vin Scully while in the ballpark. As if they wouldn't believe what they
were seeing on the field until or unless they heard it from Scully.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is unheard of. I've never seen that in any other ballpark.

In my time, it was transistor am radios, but yes, they brought them.

[Cripplecreek]

In my time, it was transistor am radios, but yes, they brought them.

Yeah I saw transistor radios (with an earpiece) at Tiger stadium as a kid.

The "color" provided by the old school guys like Scully or Harwell is what made them so special.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vGEcx4RSZU

[EasyAce]

In my time, it was transistor am radios, but yes, they brought them.

The transistor radios were something of a Dodger tradition from when the team first landed in Los Angeles
but it started out of perverse of necessity: While awaiting the completion of Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers played in the
old Los Angeles Coliseum. It had to be seen to be believed, how they shoehorned a baseball field into that big football oval . . .



. . . and for fans who had seats far behind the outfield, it wasn't easy to see the game action. So
they brought in their portable radios to listen to the broadcasts. And Vin Scully became as big a
star as the Dodgers' players might become as a result. So much so that when Dodger Stadium
opened fans kept bringing their radios (and, in due course, picture-blacked portable TVs) anyway.

As for the Coliseum, in due course it played a role in the O'Malley family selling the Dodgers in the 1990s:
Peter O'Malley wanted to build an NFL stadium on land the O'Malleys already owned; O'Malley believed
(and he probably wouldn't have been wrong) that the revenues from that stadium (I could be wrong,
but I think he would have leased it to an NFL team and split the parking and concessions with them)
would have enabled him to keep and keep running the Dodgers. Los Angeles's powers that be absolutely
insisted that the only way the NFL would come back to Los Angeles would be if they agreed to play in the
antique Coliseum. Peter O'Malley threw up his hands and was forced to sell the Dodgers at last because
he didn't want his family to be hit with onerous estate and inheritance taxes if he simply transferred
the team to one of his siblings or children.

Further sad irony: When Frank McCourt was being forced to sell the Dodgers after it turned out he used
the team as his personal ATM machine while cutting drastically on necessary expenses like stadium
security and the like, it turned out that Peter O'Malley was one of the people trying to put together
a group to buy the team. (For years, fans who met O'Malley asked if not begged him to find a way
back to the Dodgers, while first News Corp. and then McCourt owned the team.)

Today, O'Malley is sort of back in baseball: his family co-owns the San Diego Padres. His two sons
and two nephews own the team and he is said to act as a consultant.

[GrouchoTex]

The transistor radios were something of a Dodger tradition when the team first landed in Los Angeles
but out of necessity: While awaiting the completion of Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers played in the
old Los Angeles Coliseum. It had to be seen to be believed, how they shoehorned a baseball field
into that big football oval . . .



. . . and for fans who had seats far behind the outfield, it wasn't easy to see the game action. So
they brought in their portable radios to listen to the broadcasts. And Vin Scully became as big a
star as the Dodgers' players might become as a result. So much so that when Dodger Stadium
opened fans kept bringing their radios (and, in due course, picture-blacked portable TVs) anyway.

Yeah, that is a good point.
I had forgotten that.
Dodger Stadium was relatively"new" the first time I went.
Now it is 2nd only to Wrigley Field in the National league as the oldest.
My, how time gets away!

[Cripplecreek]

Scully ended up with the job when Harwell was traded to the Mets . Harwell was the only broadcaster ever included in a trade.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6479266/v7828951/vin-scully-reflects-on-the-passing-of-ernie-harwell

[EasyAce]

Scully ended up with the job when Harwell was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Harwell was the only broadcaster ever included in a trade.

Fixed!