What Do You Think Of This Guy Scully?

T.J. Simers of The Los Angeles Times has an almost unbelievable column today (and trust me, I’m using “almost” deliberately – some of them are unbelievable), which quotes a Dodgers’ season ticket-holder as saying he’s received a survey from the team asking him (and presumably others like him) to grade the performance of Vin Scully.

While that sinks in, let me regurgitate some basic facts. Vin Scully joined the Dodgers early in the season of 1950. He has been connected with that team so long that two of the eight National League franchises the day he got there, have since moved, and a third has moved twice. Four of the other five have each twice replaced their ballparks. Between expansion and relocation, two-thirds of all the big league clubs are newer at this than Scully is. The late Bob Sheppard, considered an institution at Yankee Stadium since time immemorial, started the year after Scully did, and retired three years ago. He has broadcast Dodger games under twelve U.S. Presidents. Scully has been with the Dodgers for 100% of their seasons in Los Angeles and is generally credited with personally selling the sport and the franchise in its new home. If he isn’t the game’s all-time greatest announcer – if he isn’t sports’ all-time greatest announcer – he’s no worse than second or third.

And the unceasingly tone-deaf Dodgers are asking their fans if he’s any good, in the way that – well, I don’t know, maybe the way ESPN would have asked its viewers after I did the one and only game I ever did (or am ever likely to do) as a major league baseball play-by-play man, in 1993:

On a scale of 1 to 5, “They wanted my opinion of Vin Scully in the following eight areas: 1. Knowledge of baseball; 2. Knowledge of Dodgers organization; 3. Objectivity; 4. Accuracy of calls; 5. Storytelling ability; 6. Focus on the game; 7. Style; 8. Overall performance.”

Simers infers (and I think it’s a reasonable assumption) that somebody in The Fortress Of Solitude On Elysian Park Avenue must be seriously thinking using the poll results against Vinnie. Seems unlikely they’re going to give him an award or a bonus based on whether Steve From Pasadena has given him a 4 or a 5. More likely this is an anti-Scully move in the making, either in an effort to get him to retire, or perhaps in contract negotiations. Either way, it’s madness. Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela have their enduring legacies but you could add their reps together to those of Don Drysdale and Steve Garvey and pretty much any other fan favorite, and the cumulative weight still wouldn’t reach up to the top of Vin’s ever-polished shoes.

Moreover, if anybody actually attempted to run Vin out of his job before he was ready, the Dodger faithful would rise up with righteous wrath and run the McCourt ownership group out of town faster than you can say “Bankruptcy Referee.”

I am reminded of something that happened years ago. And I put this in this context: I was so nervous about meeting him that I couldn’t screw up the courage to even attempt it until I’d been on television and radio in L.A. for two years. When I finally did, Vin said “I thought maybe you didn’t like me, and it’s funny, because I listen to you every afternoon on KNX. Where on earth do you get those ‘This Day In Baseball History’ facts?” I blurted out my admiration, and my sources, and I’m proud to say he has been dropping these delightful nuggets into his broadcasts for the last 25 years.

Anyway, more recently than that, maybe ten years ago (or about a sixth of his career ago), I found myself in the extraordinary position of sharing one of those priceless “Let’s Complain About Our Bosses” sessions – with Vin Scully! The bosses were two branches of the same octopus (I worked for Fox, and the Dodgers were owned by them) and Vin couldn’t understand why the team suddenly wanted to make changes in his telecasts without consulting him. “I think, just by accident, I probably have a good idea what these viewers want from us, after fifty years. I mean, just humor me and let me go on thinking that!” Why, he wanted to know, did Fox insist on making his game telecast look just like that of the Pirates? “I love Pittsburgh. No offense meant to Pittsburgh. But why should my broadcast look like Pittsburgh’s? Or Pittsburgh’s, like mine?”

The Dodgers defended the poll to Simers by saying they ask their fans about lots of stuff, including all the announcers.

Which brings me back to a version of Scully’s question from 2001:

Why?

When you’ve got Vin Scully, why would you want him to be exactly like anybody else? Why would you even reduce him to being compared to anybody else?

51 comments

  1. shortcomment

    Olbermann hits a high drive to deep right field…she is…GONE!

    Vin Scully IS baseball. Frank McCourt isn’t worthy of being the other signature on his contract.

    • Charlie

      It’s all about money. Vin is very highly paid and McCourt is undermining him by using “fan opinion.” Why not get a neophyte who’ll work for food?
      No Dodger fan, in his right mind, could ever find anything wrong with Mr. Scully. He simply is the best ever and I’m in a position to know. But baseball’s a business nonetheless and because of
      Dodger monetary difficulty, I would not be surprised seeing Vin gone very soon.

  2. J.D.

    The obvious parallel here, which I’m a bit surprised you didn’t mention, is the Tigers’ firing of Ernie Harwell back in 1990. And we all saw how well THAT worked out.

    • Charlie

      Harwell was fired in ’91, not in ’90. His and sidekick Paul Carey’s final broadcast was supposed to be on 10/6/91. It was for Paul but Ernie didn’t retire. He moved on to the Angels in ’92. But when Mike Ilitch bought the Tigers, he promised their fans to return Ernie to the booth and DID. He finally called it quits after the ’02 season.

  3. DG (@RealDanielGold)

    Just another stomach punch from ownership/management to us Dodger fans this year. If there was one shining beacon of greatness it is, and always has been, Vin. To disrespect him like this is to disrespect all of us and all fans of baseball.

    As you said: “Why?”

  4. Andrew Milner

    Scully has been with the Dodgers for 100% of their seasons in Los Angeles and is generally credited with personally selling the sport and the franchise in its new home.

    Selling the franchise? Absolutely. Selling the sport? The (original) Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars minor league clubs always did well in Southern California. One of the great what-if stories in American sports history is, of course: What if the Pacific Coast League had achieved major-league status in the 1940s-1950s as they’d attempted?

    • Arthur Marx

      Here’s another “what-if” scenario to consider – one that took place long before Branch Rickey tried to turn the PCL into a “third major league” …

      Just after the 1941 season ended, American League owners had tentatively given their approval for the St. Louis Browns to move to Los Angeles, effective with the 1942 season.  Final approval was expected at the winter meetings. The events of December 7, 1941 put the kibosh on the move.

      I have often wondered what would have been the fate of the Dodgers if the Browns had relocated to L.A.

      Or what if O’Malley had accepted Robert Moses’ offer of free land in Queens?

  5. Christina

    I grew up listening to Vin Scully. We had an old console phonograph/radio and I would sit on the living room floor, in the dark, with my ear pressed to the speaker because signal was not always great (we lived in the OC) and listened to the Dodger broadcasts every night of my childhood. Vin Scully’s voice brought me into Dodger Stadium and I was THERE every damn time Manny Mota stepped up in the late innings to get that pinch hit and drive in that winning run. For every double play that Garvey/Lopes/Russel/Cey pulled off. For every one of those 30+ home runs hit in that magical season by Baker/Cey/Garvey/Smith.
    Seriously – his voice IS my childhood!!
    WTF is wrong with those freaking Dodgers now??! The Fox purchase pushed me away back then & I am a happy, suffering Padres fan now, but do you think I take every chance I can to tune in to the visitor broadcast on MLB radio when we play the Dodgers? Oh, you bet your ass I do!

  6. Devon Young

    I’ve lived most of my life in NY state (and wasn’t born ’til well after Brooklyn lost the team), and I sometimes watch the Dodgers on mlb.tv simply BECAUSE OF VIN SCULLY. He’s just awesome to listen to. He makes games interesting even when it’s 17-2 in the 3rd inning or something and you already know who’s going to win and you feel sorry for the team getting slaughtered. Who could they get to replace him that would even know half as much about the Dodgers history? I mean, any half baked announcer would need to at least know some stuff about the team’s history… and here Scully’s either witnessed it or heard about it straight from the horses mouth. I mean, he was there for the lone Brooklyn championship. He was also there for the only other time the team beat the Yankees in the post-season. Com’on… the Dodgers better NOT be even remotely interested in using that questionnaire against him in any way. It’ll be more than Dodger fans revolting if they do.

  7. Eric VanSickle

    Keith, you are so right about Vin, that he is the Voice of Baseball. If there were an MLB Films, Vin would be like George Vascenda (sp?). When I see the highlights of 1980s World Series, the two iconic ones (1986 and 1988) include the call of Vin Scully (because each were on NBC, and he was their lead baseball guy, as well as golf). The way he called the Buckner play in ’86 and the Gibson homer in ’88, I don’t think anyone — save the late Jack Buck — would do it any better.

    I just wish Vin could still go east of the Rockies.

  8. stolenmonkey86

    I think it’s more likely that the Dodgers will insist that Scully is the reason for their attendance woes, namely failing to reach 3,000,000 in attendance for the first time since the strike, and failing to outdraw the Angels for the first time EVER. “No, people don’t hate Frank, they just want to savor as much as they can of Vin.”

    If this strikes you as unnecessary then you don’t know Frank McCourt.

  9. Larry Fredlund

    I’m a Giants fan and as you would properly surmise, I hate the dodgers with every fiber of my being. I love Vin Scully. No one better, and we have now and have had many good ones in SF, Jon Miller, Hank Greenwald, Lon Simmons, Russ Hodges. Vinny stands alone. Of course it doesn’t hurt that he grew up a Giants fan as a kid in NY.

  10. Rich Hixson

    It’s kinda like the Vatican asking for opinions of th current paint job on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Mr. Scully nightly poetry is the only reason I still care about a team I’ve followed for nearly 50 years.
    Can’t we get Seal Team Six to “work” in the McCourts?

  11. J. Moore

    In Chicago,I grew up in the eras of Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray…in a time that messing with either would of cause more than a small riot in my town…though when you go without a World Series win for as long as we have..LOL, you do know where your loyalties ly. In this time of competing for dollars instead of loyalty, the idiots at the top, pick on “old school” because they don’t understand “old school”. They read their charts…consult those who probably have never even seen a game…if they can reproduce it than it can’t be useful to them or (and this is my favorite) They can’t deal with one person being more important to the big picture than they are.

    Corporation assholes despite what some may say aren’t “real people” so sometimes they will ask real people what they think…but it doesn’t matter because they will still do what they want anyway.

    Hopefully Dodger fans will keep him safe…

  12. Joe Rota (@13Fists)

    I want to say this is a set up.
    Nobody is that dumb.
    What easier way to pile on the already idiotic and bloodsucking Dodger ownership that an attack on Vin.
    But this looks legit.
    Sigh.
    How far hath the trolly dodgers fallen?

    I am for a hostile, and i mean HOSTILE take over of the organization.
    It’s a sad day when you’d rather have Bud running your team, but they’d take it.

  13. Jeff

    One thing I’ve noticed is many younger listeners don’t have the same appreciation for Vin as older listeners. He looks at the players as human beings, not as cogs in a wheel or a sabremetric stat, so some of the younger listeners find him “boring”. The McCourts are really trying to kill this franchise if they let Vin go. He is the best in the game.

  14. Susan Sargent

    I grew up with Vin Scully during the 1960’s and 1970’s befor leaving California. I remember my dad bringing a radio to the Dodger games just to hear Vin’s game calling and my dad would ALWAYS turn the volumn down on network TV games and turn on the radio to hear Vin Scully. To say that he is a radio announcer institution is not even close to atiquite. Vin Scully is the Dodgers and bleeds Dodger Blue! They should be honoring him not questioning his committment to the Dodgers and the game of baseball.

  15. SteveK

    The highlight for me was in 1970 working as an intern at the old Glendale (CA) News-Press and meeting Vin in the press box. He was a class gentleman, and was interested in me and my desires to be a sports writer as if he knew me forever. Back then, all of the working press ate dinner in the same press box dining room, and above the din of conversation, Vin’s voice stood out above them all, even just having a polite conversation with his table mate. And it was the twilight game in which Bill Singer threw a no-hitter. (Don Newcombe was clutching my arm during the final Phillies at bat) and that still was overshaddowed by meeting Vinny.
    With all of the events that have hounded the Dodgers this season, they are the ones who should be fearing Scully’s retirement. They need him more than he needs the Dodgers.

  16. Sam

    I sure wish Vin Scully could call the World Series. Just one more time. He’s the greatest. The Dodgers won’t be the Dodgers after he retires. One could scan his transcripts for dactylic and iambic meter with the perfect use of assonance and alliteration– and he’s not even writing it down first.

  17. Eric VanSickle

    @Sam: Vin will never retire. They’re going to have to take his microphone from his cold, dead fingers, like several other great baseball announcers (Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Harry Kalas, Ernie Harwell, etc.).

  18. justme2

    As an SF Giants fan, I’m obligated to hate the Dodgers.

    Vin Scully is an exception.

    If the Dodgers force him out, they’re even dumber than I thought.

  19. GoldBacon

    Vin Scully is awesome! The Dodgers would be fools to do anything less than celebrate him, every day.

    In Houston, Gene Elston – who had been the Astros play-by-play man since the Colt 45s days – was ungraciously fired in 1985. We’ve been stuck with that boob Milo Hamilton ever since. If I were the new owner Jim Crane, my first action as owner would be to fire Milo. Second would be to declare the next home game Gene Elston Day, and retire his microphone.

  20. Jeff D

    Did the survey also ask what Dodger fans think of the Frank McCourt?

    Because on a scale of 1 to 5, he’s a big fat ZERO!

  21. Barb Chamberlin

    I grew up a Giants fan – we hate the Dodgers, but thanks to MLB Network I have had the great pleasure of listening to Vin Scully . I’m still not a Dodgers fan, but I am a Vin Scully fan. The man is phenomenal.

  22. Jack M. Berk

    Vin Scully is fantastic! As an old time Phillies fan with no power at all I wish I could trade our entire three man TV crew for the great
    Vin Scully. It would be a trade the fans would love,

  23. Patricia Powell Couvillion

    Keith, after you said he had broadcast for the Dodgers under twelve presidents, I thought you were going to say that he had been with the Dodgers for 100% of the presidents! Whoa! (Thus the name, Scully!) He is an icon for sure. I don’t know a lot about him, but I do know how some people do! I think you are right on all counts. Folks love him. We can see that already in the comments here. But it is like when they let my dad go from the Buick company after thirty-five years of stellar service. They were bringing in some “new blood”…a younger man. It broke my dad’s heart. It was one of only two times he cried in his life. Sad. As far as evaluations, they are often tools of a mean spirit! They are used to dismiss, for sure. I would say to whoever had this brainstorm to evaluate genius, “Judge lest ye be judged.” And to Vin, I would say, CALL ON! As a teacher, I have to admit, I never liked giving grades. It is stifling and NO ONE knows what grade one deserves better than that one! Thanks to Mr. Scully for making baseball great!

  24. JC Fierres

    This ranks as one of the most incredibly moronic things I have ever seen, read or heard. Nobody I’m the baseball world ( or any sport for that matter) can broadcast a game BY HIMSELF, and make the public feel as if there were 5 people in the booth. Mr Scully can do play-by-play, color, historic references, player info anything. Even when he goes of In tangents that have nothing to do with the game, it’s interesting. I’m a red sox fan , bit everytime the Sox game is finished, I. Tune into the dodgers’ broadcast to listen to mr Scully And every night, I learned something new. He’s the best ever.

  25. Steve Wehmhoff

    Remember when the Tigers fired Ernie Harwell? We had the priveledge of hearing him call Angels games after the passing (I think) of Bob Starr. The Togers admitted that they were just being STOO-PID!

  26. david

    This is just so amazing . . . and so terrible.

    There are some great announcers around today (and a few not so great), but Vin Scully is the voice. The main reason I subscribed to the MLB.TV package was so I could sit at home and watch Vin Scully announce games even though I live in New York. How dare they even think of retiring him before his time is done!

  27. Pingback: It’s Over (I Mean That In A Good Way) « Mike… Off-Mic
  28. Rich Procter

    Keith — Two notes.
    1) The LA Times used to do surveys asking fans who was their ‘favorite Dodger.” Scully won every survey I ever saw, even though he wasn’t on the ballot.

    2) Best comment I ever heard about Scully — “He’s the only announcer whose call is better than the game itself.”

    I’m one of those SoCal kids who grew up with my transistor radio under my pillow listening to the late innings of Dodger games. I remember walking into Dodger Stadium in the mid-60’s (the Koufax/Drysdale years) and never having to miss a syllable of Vin’s call, so many fans had him up on their transistor radios.

    I honestly didn’t think the McCourts could screw this up any more. They have. They have burned through over 50 years of goodwill in the last two years. Stunning.

    I’ve been a Dodger fan since 1958 (I was 7 years old, and I felt like the circus had permanently moved to town). Scully is the last reason to follow the team.

  29. Jim LaBrie

    When I grew up in Phoenix, Dodger games were on the radio. I’m 50 years old now, living in the Bay Area, and am a lifelong Dodger fan. Whenever anyone asks why I root for the Dodgers, my answer is the same: “if you grew up listening to Vin Scully, you’d be a Dodger fan, too.” The man’s voice is the sound of summer; it’s what baseball is supposed to sound-like.

    Congratulations, Frank McCourt — you’ve outdone yourself. I thought you were incapable of doing anything dumber than what you’ve already done, but you’ve lowered the bar. You’re lucky Vin Scully doesn’t fire you.

  30. Carolyn

    Mr. Olbermann, three grandslams for this post. I am a big, big Yankees’ fan in DC but I love Vin Scully. Whenever the Yankees are in a rain delay or postponed game, I listen to Vin Scully call the games via mlb.com. He’s the greatest! Wow, I cannot believe the Dodgers organization. I wish we had him in the Yankee’s organization; he’s definitely 1M% better than what we now have. He is baseball! BTW, is there any truth to the rumor that Vin Scully almost got hired to do the Yankee’s game but someone said no?

  31. Patricia Powell Couvillion

    Someone needs to make sure that Vin Scully gets to read all this. Too often we say all that good about them…but I hope we can say it to him! What a guy!

  32. Jeremiah Welch

    Amen – I subscribed to the MLB audio package for the first time this year specifically to hear Vin Scully while I still can, and I don’t even like the Dodgers! He provides us with a real connection (not merely a simulation) to baseball history and still makes it sound as if the ballpark is the best place in the world to be. His voice sounds like an old man’s? He IS an old man, and one worthy of our attention. Must every announcer sound like an over-caffinated pitchman?

  33. Michael Green

    A great post, even if I weren’t the leader of the Vin Scully Marching and Chowder Society (to use a Vin-ism). Tonight, in the 6th inning, when he usually does the history feature, he announced that he would return next year. I’m sure the Dodgers asked him to do it to take the heat off from the Simers piece. Last year, Peter O’Malley gave The Los Angeles Times an interview in which he offered to come back to help whoever would take over from McCourt, and the next day the Dodgers suddenly announced that Don Mattingly would succeed Joe Torre, although they had made the decision before spring training even began. Coincidence? Hardly.

    But while there’s the theory that this was to grease the skids for Vin to leave, it also may have been nothing at all except a stupid survey. They wanted to ask the fans about the announcers and probably just put Vin’s name there with everybody else since he is one of the team’s announcers. Yes, it’s incredibly stupid, but there may have been nothing conspiratorial about it. It wouldn’t be the first time Simers has made a mountain out of a molehill. Any which way, last year, some writer said that if Vin said it was up to his wife, send your bribes to Sandra Scully. This year, Mrs. Squires bribed Vin!

    As for his importance to me, the greatest day of my life was my wedding day, January 6, 2001. The second greatest was August 1, 1974, when I met Vin when I was nine. Nothing else comes close.

    By the way, a couple of notes. One, Ernie Harwell, bless him, did the Angels in 1992, BEFORE Bob Starr came back for his second tour of duty the next year. Two, in 1941, while Branch Rickey may have plotted about the PCL, Larry MacPhail reportedly put the entire Brooklyn Dodgers roster on waivers because he was so mad about them losing the World Series. The owner of the St. Louis Browns called and asked if he was serious. MacPhail offered to trade the two teams even up if the Browns would throw in something like $3 million. The owner spent a day or two running around St. Louis looking for the money, which he couldn’t get because he couldn’t tell anybody why he was doing it. Then came December 7.

  34. DJ

    Carolyn, the story of how Vin Scully almost became a Yankee broadcaster was recounted by Mr. Olbermann on this blog. To summarize, by the time the Yankees made the offer, the Scullys had grown fonder of California (especially the children), and they didn’t want to take the children away from their schools, friends, etc. Had the Yankees made the offer earlier in the 1960s, it might have been different.

    Odd that — would that have made the Yankees push Mel Allen out earlier? Would they have split Allen and Scully with one doing TV and the other radio?

  35. @chris_strom

    I grew up a Dodger fan in the heart of the Giants country. Great memories of happily going to bed early with the hopes of picking up an AM station out of Fresno. Vin Scully was the soundtrack for my childhood (and today to some extent). That said, I look forward to Charlie Steiner & Rick Monday’s appearance in the 4th. It almost feels as though now we can really dig into the current game being played. At the risk of sounding like a jaded misanthrope, I could not care less about the cavalcade of human interest stories that are the staple of Mr Scully.

    That said, I’m glad my 3 & 5 year old boys get another year of that voice.

  36. Patricia Powell Couvillion

    The days of putting old folks out to pasture have been gone! Now folks are spinning like tops in their eighties! Wheeeeeee!

  37. Michael Green

    DJ, here’s another bit of trivia. The first person the Mets apparently approached about leading their broadcast team late in 1961, as the team was being put together, was Russ Hodges, who of course had been with the New York Giants before moving to San Francisco. He said that he wished they had gotten in touch a little earlier because he had just signed a contract, but he recommended Lindsey Nelson, who then got an offer and was pondering it. Did they ask Vin? Who knows? But to show how small a world it is, Lindsey had worked at the old Liberty Network with Jerry Doggett, Vin’s partner in LA, and Lindsey’s wife went ahead to southern California while he worked another game before doing the Pro Bowl. She stayed with the Doggetts, and when Lindsey called to speak to his wife, Jerry grabbed the phone and started chewing him out for even stopping to think about it. Lindsey took the job while in LA. Meanwhile, the Houston Colt ’45s offered a job to Doggett, who had been a big favorite in Texas. He told Vin, who suggested that he talk with Walter O’Malley. Vin said they never discussed it again–oddly, as close as the two of them were.

    Chris_Strom, the beauty of listening ot baseball is that each of us has our preference in a broadcaster. Fans in Chicago must think Vin is nuts for not rooting for the team; if Hawk Harrelson came to LA, he would be in physical danger, methinks. But I disagree with you for this reason: I don’t think Steiner and Monday do a very good job of focusing on the game. Steiner does too much of a TV-style call and Monday blessedly tries to limit his contributions and do what an analyst should do: speak only when he has something to say and, otherwise, shut up.

    • Charlie

      You are absolutely correct. I remember how great he was calling the Brooklyn games and Vin’s established himself as the maestro of all baseball announcers. I am positive based on my website.

  38. Michael Peich

    Phifer Fullenwider. Keith–I knew that would get your attention. I am writing an article about T209s for Old Cardboard, and have a few questions that maybe we can discuss. Zach Rice has written to you on my behalf, and when I read your 12/09 blog on old Fie, I hoped I might be able to write you directly. Looking forward to talking about T209.
    Regards, Mike Peich
    mpeich@comcast.net

  39. Serbingood

    I grew up on the east coast in the 50’s and 60’s. I know that I listened to baseball on the radio (Senators and Orioles) and lived in Atlanta in the 70’s and listened to the games there as well. I can not tell you a single thing I remember about the announcers. All this time I was and still am a Yankee fan.

    When I moved to Nevada in ’79 I had more exposure to the Dodgers. Vin Scully made the national league and the Dodgers a team worth listening to. I could and still do close my eyes and see the game from his excellent descriptions. Learned a lot about baseball history as well.

    While my favorite broadcasters are Michael Kay and Paul O’Neil, when in the booth,, and Sterling/Waldman on radio, I have to give Vin a close #2. He makes a team and league that are not my favorites, interesting and valuable. For the management of the Dodgers to send a poll out on performance and preference is absurd but also indicative of the homogenization of society as a whole.

    We need more Vin Scully’s in sports and far less Selig’s and McCourts running the show. If baseball fails, it will fail from within. McCourt and Selig are doing their best to make it a corporate soulless game. .

  40. Charlie

    My question is this: taken singly, do you think that either Suzyn Waldman or John Sterling or Michael Kay or Paul O’Neill are as good as Vin Scully? The way I see it is that no “TVcaster” can compare to a “radiocaster” because the screen just about says it all. So that eliminates Mike and Paul even though they have the ability to make any boring game LOOK interesting and Paul’s quips are truly entertaining. Suzyn Waldman must have been given the job to stay out of trouble with Womens’ Rights groups. But John Sterling most certainly has a great basso profundo voice, terrific knowledge of the game, some outstanding pet names for players and excellent ability of painting word pictures. BUT HE AIN’T NO VIN SCULLY, MY FRIEND. NOBODY IS. I have a collection of close to 3,000 radio broadcasts beginning with the 1934 All Star Game; I’ve listened to every one and have paid attention to the style and skill of every broadcaster from the granddaddies like Ted Husing, Ty Tyson, Tom Manning, Graham McNamee and Hal Totten to and including
    play-by-play men in the new millennium. I guess offhand I could name you close to 100 broadcasters representing all teams, alive or defunct, and say without reservation that Vin Scully is the greatest baseball broadcaster to ever sit in a booth.
    Believe me, without my collection and first hand observations, I could be taken issue with but I’ve gotten the “skinny” first hand and am positive, without any reservations whatsoever, that no one has ever topped that redhead from Fordham.

  41. Charlie

    Scully? A genius. Here’s one of his statements taken out of Curt Smith’s “Pull Up a Chair.” Vin remarked, “Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” Enough said.

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