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A Great American -- A So-So Book
Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story
By Curt
Smith
(Potomac Books,
263 pages, $29.95)
It was a close thing recommending Pull Up a Chair to TAS readers. I'm finally doing so because of the book's subject, not because of its execution (which, several times while reading the book, I was in favor of). Vin Scully deserves a better biography, and we can hope one day he'll get one.
First, the most startling thing was to learn that Curt Smith's Pull Up a Chair is the first book written about Vin Scully, who is, by nearly universal agreement, the best baseball announcer to draw breath. And one of the most pleasing storytellers in the history of the world. The luxurious pace of baseball requires a storyteller to bring the game to full life, and Scully is the best.
Few who've had the pleasure of listening to Scully draw a word-picture of a baseball game on a summer night will argue with this summation. He can be eloquent and elegant, poetic but accessible, conversational but erudite. He has the sense of timing and drama and humor to give listeners the full import of the moment without yelling at them or hyping.
Scully's is a soothing sound. He always talks directly to the listener, not to a beefy guy wearing a tie in the booth with him (at least partly because Scully usually works alone -- he's his own color man -- but even when he has someone with him he talks to the person listening to the radio or TV). He's the listener's mature and gentlemanly friend, sharing the accounts of a ballgame, as well as the occasional musing on the nature of things.
Almost invariably it's, "Hi again, everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be." And then the magic begins. And the magic is there whether the Dodgers are in first place or in last, whether they're prevailing that evening or getting hammered.
Smith relates perhaps the most dramatic testimonial to how Scully can make baseball into music. In the early nineties, Ray Charles told Bob Costas that Scully was the man Charles would most like to meet. Why Scully?
"You've got to remember that to me the picture doesn't mean anything," said Charles, blind since age seven. "It's all about the sound."
Costas arranged the meet at Dodger Stadium and the two got on famously. "Vin was, of course, very gracious, and certainly had an appreciation of who Ray Charles was," Costas said. "Ray was like a little kid taken to see Santa Claus. He was just beside himself, clapping his hands, and throwing his head back."
Two great stylists, enjoying each other's company.
In one of his dopey movies, Woody Allen's character says, "The only cultural advantage to Los Angeles is that you can turn right on red." Wrong again, Woody. The only cultural advantage to LaLa Land is Vin Scully on the summer airwaves. He's one of the few adults in the entire L.A. Basin, and perhaps the only one there who's consistently listened to. If Los Angeles has a heaven (there are diverse opinions on this), Scully is its constant star.
For a few seasons in the eighties and nineties Scully announced baseball's Saturday "Game of the Week" in addition to Dodger games during the week. He's done the World Series a few times. He's even taken a few turns doing NFL games and some golf tournaments. But Scully is essentially a baseball man, and the bulk of his long career has been as an announcer for the Dodgers, beginning in Brooklyn, and for the team's entire history in Los Angeles. He took over as top Dodger banana after Red Barber and the Dodgers parted company in a somewhat scratchy divorce in 1953. Scully was a talented 25 year-old with some game then, but still with lots to learn. Now he's an 81 year-old master, still at the height of his considerable powers. (No job-hopper is our Vin.)
Scully's contributions to his sport, to his community, and to the language (which he uses and treats with great respect) have not gone unnoticed. He's won every award for announcing there is to win. When sportswriters or broadcasters rank play-by-play announcers, Scully is always where he belongs, at the very top. He was elected to the announcers' branch of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. He's been awarded at least one honorary doctorate of humane letters (from Fordham -- his alma mater). Small groups of college students, from Fordham and Pepperdine, have been fortunate enough to hear commencement speeches from Scully instead of from the honored drudges, politicians, or show-biz airheads who so often pull these assignments.
In Pull Up a Chair readers will learn the history I've lightly brushed above, as well as about the Bronx youngster you used to sit by the family radio listening to the crowd roaring at sports events and who decided in grade school that he wanted to be a sports announcer. Also about the good-field, not-much-hit center-fielder for the Fordham baseball team who learned it was a good thing he wanted to be an announcer because he wasn't going to make The Show as a player. There are also the tragedies in Scully's life, the death of his first wife, and later of a 33 year-old son.
Chair also outlines the developments as well as the clashes and conflicts in baseball during Scully's long career. There were the franchise moves, including baseball's Manifest Destiny, the dramatic expansion of baseball to the West Coast. There were strikes and rumors of strikes. Drugs and skyrocketing player salaries. The marketing struggles between baseball and other sports. There were the personalities, great and not so great, on the field and in the booth. They're all in Chair.
Comments
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Bill Lannon| 6.29.09 @ 8:26AM
Sorry, Mr. Thornberry, I just can't agree. I was a Dodger fan when Scully broke in with Red Barber, didn't care for him then, and do less now. I have always found his tone condescending. He sounds as if he is oh-so-patiently elucidating the obvious to the unwashed and unlettered.
I certainly respect his experience and his longevity, but not his work. And I fear the oft-praised and incredibly overrated Joe Buck is attempting to emulate him.
JJ| 6.29.09 @ 9:14AM
So Larry, write it!
Frank Marschino| 6.29.09 @ 9:33AM
Vin Scully can't hold a candle to the greatest play by play sportscaster of all, Ernie Harwell.
J. Davis| 6.29.09 @ 10:00AM
Scully is the best. Worth getting the MLB package just to get Dodger games.
Eric Paddon| 6.29.09 @ 10:09AM
I respect and admire Scully's network work with NBC, CBS over the years but truthfully I am not a fan of his stubbornly rigid solo announcer style that he still insists on doing to this day. That kind of style IMO became obsolete in the 1960s when the importance of having two people in the booth who could add the element of conversation and discussion became important to a baseball broadcast. Scully was great on NBC because it was a joy to hear him paired with Joe Garagiola, working together.
I'm not surprised Curt Smith has written another lousy book about baseball broadcasting. His books are always guaranteed to (1) repeat the same chapter headings from book to book (2) repeat verbatim the things he first did in his only halfway decent book "Voices Of The Game" with no sign of having updated his 20 year old notes and (3) irritatingly intrude his subjective view of who was and who wasn't a good broadcaster. I to this day will never forgive him for the cheap diss he gave of the New York Yankees broadcast team I grew up with in the 70s just because they weren't Mel Allen.
Joe| 6.29.09 @ 10:12AM
Larry was right. I listen to him and many others during my life time. He is great. Mel Allen and Chuck Thompson were others who were good. I know there were many others I am forgeting right now.
Thanks
Mike| 6.29.09 @ 11:47AM
In the 60's I was going to college at night till 9 and working by day in construction. I fell asleep every night in the summer listening to Mr. Scully.
Still remember it.
Bugg| 6.29.09 @ 1:56PM
Agree with Mr. Lannon. Scully was an overbearing windbag. And "was" because the powers that be yanked his act off national telecasts, meaning I no longer have to endure Scully. And he had the habit of giving out nicknames that became irritating. If only I neverhad heard him call Bill Buckner "Billy Bucks" as he did over, and over and over. Like Chris Berman on steroids.
Further, Scully is an Irish guy from the Bronx calling baseball games. Treating it with the seriousness of High Mass is silly. But no one is allowed to say it. Wouldn't kill him to have a 2nd person to bounce off of and tell some stories.
As to Joe Buck-is that his real voice, or just his big fake announcer voice? At a total loss what Fox sees in him other than his last name.
Kell| 6.29.09 @ 4:39PM
I suffered thru 18 years of listening to Scully announcing for the Dodgers when we lived out there. He's a windbag, a homer and a whiner. The Dodgers have a bad call made against them, you're going to hear Scully complain about it for the following three innings...at least. If he were announcing in Cincinnatti no one would ever have heard of him.
James A. Glasscock| 6.29.09 @ 4:44PM
I remember baseball broadcasts in the 1940s and 1950s. The Mutual Broadcasting System's game of the day, and then Gordon McClendon's Liberty Network featuring recreated games. I listened to Cardinal games on KMOX, St. Louis, and enjoyed them.
Every announcer and color man has a style. Why compare them? Enjoy the game and relax, folks. This is not life or death. Just a game and out to be fun when you listen.
Longdrycreek Ranch
Texas Panhandle
Over 74 years of enjoying baseball and football and games in general!
somnolence| 6.29.09 @ 5:00PM
Harry Caray was the most entertaining play-by-play man ever; Tony Kubek the most knowledgeable.
Brian B| 6.29.09 @ 5:55PM
Scully is good but has always seemed a little inaccessible to me.
I grew up on the late, great Bill King doing A's, Warrior's and Raider's games.
He could establish that next- door-neighbor rapport Scully has always seemed to lack. Holy Toledo!
Now if want to talk aggravating, how about Tim McCarver? Has any man made as long and lucrative a career out of stating and restating, ad nauseum, the bleeding obvious?
Conrad Spiracy| 6.29.09 @ 6:00PM
AMEN FRANK MARSCHINO!!!!!
Vin Scully is good, but not anywhere near the greatest.
I was one of those stereotypical kids in the 1960s taking my 9 transistor radio to bed with me and listening (under my pillow) Ernie Harwell broadcast Tigers games on hot summer nights. Ernie had the magic to make ME believe that I could become a professional player. (Alas, I gave up the game after Colt League - just below Babe Ruth League - at the age of 17.) Everyone got a kick out of listening to Ernie say, "It's a looonng fly ball. It's going..... going..... that ball is looooooonnnng gone!"
Ernie is a walking talking Baseball Encyclopedia, and I think you'd probably be able to get Vin Scully to admit it - many other "noted" broadcasters have already done so.
Another enchanting characteristic of Ernie's is his unabashed love for his wife of nearly 70 years, "Miss Lulu". Fans got to know and love her through Ernie's broadcasts.
How much do I love Ernie? As a 40+ year Michigan football fan, I was at an age of awareness when Bo Schembechler took over the reins of the program. Bo became a hero to me. His work ethic, his behavior ethic (no NCAA violations EVER), his optimism (the locker room sign that says "Those Who Remain Will Be Champions") - everything Bo did oozed hard work, good behavior and excellence in results. After Bo became the president of the Tigers unceremoniously fired Ernie, Bo forever went on my s--t list.
How important was Ernie? How about this:
"In 1948, Harwell became the only announcer in baseball history to be traded for a player when the Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager, Branch Rickey, traded catcher Cliff Dapper to the Crackers in exchange for breaking Harwell's broadcasting contract. (Harwell was brought to Brooklyn to substitute for regular Dodger announcer Red Barber, who was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer.)"
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Harwell
How beloved was Ernie by everyone? I was in fourth grade when the Tigers faced the Cardinals in the 1968 World Series. During the 2nd inning of game 7, our school principal, Franklin Hermann, as stern an administrator as there ever was, (Princeton Elementary in St. Clair Shores, Michigan) got on the school's intercom to announce the score. He then proceeded to ask the teachers' patience while he did something special. He then turned on his radio and Ernie's voice was instantly heard throughout the school - much to the appreciation, great shouting and applause of all of us kids. Mr. Hermann played the next 2 innings over the intercom, and we were dismissed at the normal time to go home and listen to or watch the rest of game. In typical Ernie fashion, we could visualize the game through his eyes and the words he used to transmit the game.
Lastly, and most importantly, Ernie remains a very devout Christian. For many years on Opening Day, Ernie would recite from Song of Solomon, 2:11-12:
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
How humble is Ernie? A quote from his induction into Cooperstown:
"Baseball is a tongue-tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown." - Ernie Harwell at his National Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (August 2, 1981)
Source: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/ernie_harwell_quotes.shtml
How respected was Ernie? Let's check in with Mr. Scully, during the last season Ernie broadcast for the Tigers:
One night in mid-July, Ernie Harwell watched on the Comerica Park video board as Vin Scully gave that night's farewell video tribute to him, "Dear Ernie: Fifty-three years ago, I followed you into Brooklyn. Twenty years ago, I followed you into the Hall of Fame, and our relationship has only been perfect. Baseball is so much richer for having you all these years and poorer for losing you. Sincerely yours, with love and affection, Vin Scully."
Source: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/ernie_harwell_quotes.shtml
Baseball will suffer a great loss when Ernie goes on to his final, but much deserved, reward.
Ernie and Lulu - if perchance you come across this commentary, we will always love you, and remember you both to our own dying days.
Peace.
Keith Kennedy| 6.30.09 @ 5:18AM
Thanks so much for the memory. I was a teen Dodger fan in Indiana in 1965 and stayed up past midnight to listen to the games. You made my day with leaving that suggestion to "listen for myself" on the 9th inning play-by-play. Awesome!
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