I’m going to indulge Mr. Saddleburr and his weepy walk down memory lane with who he calls, a class act, Vince Scully.
(Are you sensing some eye-rolling and sneering? I have my reasons! I’ll explain later. lol.)
Vin Scully, after a storied and amazing 67 year career, is retiring at the end of this season. He said he will not do play-by-play should the Dodgers make it to the playoffs. (They have a 5 game lead with 14 games to play, and they’d still be in the wildcard hunt if they suffered a total collapse. Barring a crash of the team plane, I’m pretty sure the Dodgers will be in the post-season this year.)
The LA Times asked Scully what his most embarrassing moment in the booth was.
“The most, and I think you’ll get the picture immediately, back about my third year, about 1952 the Dodgers were playing Cincinnati and Cincinnati had an outfielder named Lloyd Merriman, I’ll never forget it, and Lloyd had a ball foul and my mind told me to say ‘hot shot hit foul’ and it never came out that way,” Scully said. “Everybody in the booth fell down and I was absolutely mortified.”
Ya, great story Vin. But I don’t consider this your most embarrassing moment in the booth. (Now you’ll see why I have a burr in my saddle, Mr. Saddleburr, over Scully.)
Vin Scully did the play-by-play for the 1986 World Series, one of the greatest ever played.
For the entire series it seemed like Scully was in love with Boston Red Sox second baseman Marty Barrett. You’d think they were getting ready to enter a civil union. No matter what Barrett did, it was the greatest thing ever performed in baseball. You could hear the love in his voice. What made this particularly galling is that Vin Scully was a national league guy. But it was obvious he hated the Mets.
In fact, Scully was caught on a hot mic going to commercial deriding manager Davy Johnson for some managerial decisions, and enjoying that his decision backfired.
So, when the Mets were down 2 runs with 2 out and nobody on in the bottom of the tenth inning, Vin Scully announced with great glee that MARTY BARRETT was named the World Series MVP.
Fifteen minutes later, Marty Barrett was wondering what the hell just happened. The Mets won 6-5. Then the Mets won game 7.
Ray Knight was awarded the World Series MVP trophy.
THAT is Vin Scully’s most embarrassing moment in the booth.
Okay, now that I got that out of my system.
Thank you Mr. Scully.
You are a class act. You’re a hall-of-famer and a national treasure.
The moral of the story is no matter who you are, no bad mouthing the Mets.
Whoa. I had no idea that there exists such a festering wound.
Well at least you’re over it now.
Be prepared for the next two weeks. More gushing to come.
Hubris, salty, bitter and tough as an old crow.
MVP? Bill Buckner.
Bill Buckner started his major league career with the Dodgers. Sad that he didn’t know when to retire.
Troy Aikmen is my Vin Scully. So glad he won’t be in the booth tonight.
Scully could tell you how Mike Piazza (or whoever) is batting .429 in Tuesday night games against National League Eastern Division teams with the temperature above 70 degrees – like that was meaningful.
If Bill Buckner tried to catch a bus it would have rolled through his legs.
Back in the Stone Age when I was an L.A. Dodgers fan (don’t hate me, I was a kid) I thought Scully was the greatest baseball announcer in the universe. Then I grew up, moved to San Diego and changed my loyalty to the Padres (sad, I know). That was when I found out how very partisan and snide Vin Scully could be. Most of the time he acted like it was beneath the Dodgers to even play the Padres. It was sort of like the libs that look down on conservatives because they are ever so much smahrter, don’t you know? It was a real disappointment.
As a former Southern Californian (and life long Angels fan, though we rooted for the Dodgers too), I can tell you we DESPISED Vin Scully in my house.
My dad started it of course…’cause Scully could never ‘shut the hell up’.
I have another Scully story.
Hate to pile on, because the guy really is a national treasure, but here’s another embarrassing booth moment.
I was with Hippie Critic watching a game and Scully was doing the play by play.
Hippie is a savant when it comes to baseball history.
He’s well read on it, knows really obscure players and defunct teams. He really could work at Cooperstown.
Well, Scully launches into one of his factoids and he says something along the lines of, “no pitcher has strung together this kind of streak in modern times. To get a comparison of what this young arm has done you got to go alllllllll the way back to Eddie Park.”
And Scully said it like he knew the pitcher intimately and was waxing nostalgic about “good ol’ Eddie Park.” Like if you never heard of Eddie Park you don’t know your baseball.
I asked, “who the fuck is Eddie Park?”
Hippie, not missing a beat, taking a sip of his beverage nonchalantly says, “he means Eddie Plank. Scully’s an idiot.”
Eddie Plank! Gettysburg Eddie. Next time you’re in Gettysburg, eat at his namesake restaurant–it’s pretty good!
And Tom Hamilton, who announces the Indians, runs Vin Scully over, backs up, and runs over him again. Far and away the best home run call in baseball, and a pretty smart dude, too! His only drawback is being from Wisconsin.
Thanks, Fur, love that Eddie Park/Plank story !!
I must admit that I usually hit the mute button on almost all baseball announcers by about the 3rd inning.
@riverlife_callie
You’ve got to admit that San Diego was more like a Triple A team back in the 1960s. Even at 8 years old I remember the Dodgers beating them 19-0 in one game.
Just sayin’.
And SD is 22 games behind the Dodgers this season.
Not looking for a new enemy, but……
I probably shouldn’t have posted this. There won’t even be any make up sex. LOL.
One name for an announcer the Milwaukee Brewers’ Bob Uecker. Growing up in Milwaukee was the best. We had bubblers and prickers. If you haven’t lived there, you won’t know what these are.
Vin is the best. I was a Dodger fan 66 years ago because of Vin and Red.
Red was #1 then but he did not want to move west; same with Pee Wee (best SS in the Bigs 66 years ago.) So Vin moved up, and amazingly got better!
Only announcer to come close was Don Drysdale.
I remember the Eddie Plank mess and you nailed the worst part about it Fur. It was that he was wrong with great vigor.
YES!!! Vin Scully. Sheesh. I watched the Dodgers only when I went to the stadium so I didn’t have to listen to him. LOL! That guy could be in mid sentence about someone’s batting average and then suddenly be tripping out about a tree swaying near the diamond vision. Dude, take a breath. STFU for 5 seconds!!!
I find Keith Hernandez goofy. A good kind of goofy though. 😀
I love Vin Scully – no apologies!
It is difficult to enjoy the announcer of a team you don’t like, but there are many announcers much worse than Vinny!
(Life long Dodgers fan if you did not guess).
Don’t worry Scully haters, he was one of a kind and there’ll never be another like him. So enjoy the new generation of mutable douches – looking at you, Mets, Giants, Red Sox, and Padres announcers.