Posted on 09/02/2012 12:28:11 PM PDT by EveningStar
How old is too old?
I'll give you a hint: 85 is too old to be broadcasting play-by-play baseball on TV. Vin Scully is old enough to be pitcher Clayton Kershaw's great grandfather. He's been with the Los Angeles Dodgers for 63 seasons, and he should have retired about 15 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at bleacherreport.com ...
Marko Unrealmonte is batting .110 on his blogsite, thus is trolling here for a few bloop hits.
I miss Joe Morgan on ESPN Sunday night baseball.
Because Vin has been in the booth since the booth was at Ebbets Field. Because almost no living Dodger fan today remembers a time when he wasn’t in the booth. Because multiple generations of Dodger fans have grown up listening to him call the game. Because multiple generations of Dodger fans like him and think the world of him. Because he was and is one of the best in the game. Most importantly, because Dodger fans would lynch the owners if they ever even tried to fire him.
Trust me, God will call Vinny up to The Show soon enough as it is. Dodger fans know that. Dodger fans know they’ll eventually have to get used to somebody else. It already happened with Chick Hearn over at the Lakers. No need to rush it.
We sat around the hotel lobby enjoying a couple of adult beverages after a long day--and invited the famed announcer to join us.
He was a very regular guy with a great sense of humor...
Polite and classy...
And when our impromptu group of baseball fans began to disperse-- we asked the waiter for the tab....
Only to find it had been already been quietly "taken care of..."
.... by Vin Scully.
Ernie Harwell farewell speech. Its still a blurry screen maker for those who loved him. The man was a poet and a true Christian. Even a year before his death he still had that strong voice at 91 years old.
They just don’t make them like that generation any more.
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=6688931&topic_id=9822406&c_id=det
Dodgers Legends: Vin and Ernie
http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=8211861
They said Joe Paterno was too old to continue at his job too. And look how wrong they were.
Hey, isn’t this hate speech against the aging?
Why not consider his experience?
This a**hole sport writer need shut f**** up ES
That all to it
Vin is da man
looks like they took the article down.. haha could not stand the heat
Scully is better at 85 than any other MLB announcer I can think of. And there’s a good reason he’s a living legend. Not only is Mr. Scully supremely talented, he’s also the product of another era, before the advent of television, when play-by-play men had to describe the action to a radio audience.
As someone who labored in the salt mines of broadcasting before having the good sense to join the military, I can tell you there is a world of difference between calling the games for the two mediums. On TV, you’re more of a traffic cop, setting up the color guy (and the replay highlights) while offering minimalist play-by-play. One of my pet peeves about the current generation of announcers is that they “over-describe” action that is readily evident to the viewer.
Radio is a totally different game. The great ones, like Scully, literally create an audio canvas, making the listener feel like he’s sitting behind home plate. If you want to hear a true professional at work, listen to Scully describe the action while working in all the promos and other announcements he’s required to make. Seamless and seemingly effortless—just a marvel to listen to.
Scully really is the last of a breed, the play-by-play man indelibly associated with a single team. Jack Buck and Ernie Harwell were the only announcers that were comparable in terms of skill and longevity. Ernie still sounded great at the end of his long career, but Jack’s voice faded badly over the last decade of his tenure with the Cardinals. However, I will say that Jack was probably a better football announcer than Vin Scully; Buck and Hank Stram were masterful for many years on the CBS radio version of “Monday Night Football.”
For those of you who live in SoCal, enjoy Scully while he’s still around. There will never be another like him, and when you’re stuck with his replacement, some blow-dried ESPN transplant, perhaps even the idiots at The Bleacher Report will appreciate the excellence of Vin Scully.
I like to hear about the History of the game....it goes Way Back there....before I arrived on this Globe.
The rest of the stuff....I can remember myself...LOL!
I live in Phoenix. The Diamondbacks are my team. I am a lifelong Yankees fan. I despise the Dodgers. But give me Vin Scully.
The author should STFU. Scully retires when he wants to retire.
Heeb Carneal announced for the Twins until he was 81 or 82. I never felt he lost his touch. He died about a year after he retired.
I think his age is showing, in that his short-term memory is gone. He relies on reading statistics and press book bios most of the time from his monitors, frequently repeating himself. When Kershaw pitched the other night, he called him Koufax two or three times. He calls Arizona's Goldschmidt "Goldsmith," for instance. Dexter Fowler, of the Rockies, is always "daddy longlegs." And then there's the "zephyr blowing from left to right" and a ton of self-consciously mundane side comment references to art and literature, attempting to display his erudition.
As a lifelong listener and admirer of Vin Scully, it's painful for me to address this decline. When he sticks to describing the play on the field, he's the best there ever was. His play-by-play is beyond compare; but what they call the "color" has become annoying to me. I'm turning his voice off for much of each game.
And don't get me started on Eric Collins.
>>blasphemy. what an a$$hat.<<
Absolutely! Vin Scully has been and will continue to be the greatest treasure L.A. has ever had, even well after he starts calling the games for St. Peter.
I assure you, Vin will know when it is time to stop.
This person should be run out of town on a rail. Or be forced to exclusively cover why L.A. doesn’t have an NFL team.
..And the best ones could call the game even when they didn’t know what was going on. Al Schuss, the Padres announcer in their minor league days, was a master at calling away games from the studio using only a teletype feed and some sound effects. Once, when the wire went down in the middle of a game, Al kept one batter at the plate for half an hour and nobody was the wiser.
The last one to do such recreations was Les Keiter, who did the Hawaii Islanders broadcasts, that was well into the 1970s.
When I lived in Hawaii as a kid, I lived and died with the Islanders, I probably listened to every game on the radio.
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