Kentucky United States
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February 14, 2006
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Quote: Originally posted by eddessaknight on Aug 5, 2022
LOST MYSTERY: Would'nt you say guys & gals Dodger fans ????
Never saw any Scully memorials in any of the LP forums so they must have disappeared quickly. Don't recall any Cub fans posting Harry Caray memorials either.
Another mystery is why some are using "Vince" while others are using "Vin".
Those who run the lotteries love it when players look for consistency in something that's designed not to have any. So many systems, so many theories, so few jackpot winners.
There is one and only one 'proven' system, and that is to book the action. No matter the game, let the players pick their own losers.
LAS VEGAS United States
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November 22, 2006
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Barber takes Scully under his wing
Red Barber, who early in life planned to be a college professor, was a tough grader. He demanded a lot of himself, and he held those who worked with him to just as high a standard.
When Vin first entered the Dodgers broadcast booth, Barber told the young man that his job was to do whatever Red and his colleague Connie Desmond didn’t want to do. He also made it clear that any Scully errors would be corrected on air for all to hear. When Barber saw Scully drinking a beer with his pregame sandwich – a common practice at the time – he told Vin he never wanted to see him do it again.
Barber was no teetotaler – far from it; leisure hours drinks were something he treasured. But he believed a broadcaster should never have a drink, even a beer, on the job. Barber reasoned if Scully made an error, something inevitable for a broadcaster ad-libbing for hours at a time, anyone who saw him sipping the press room brew would conclude that alcohol had clouded his performance.
One of Red’s broadcasting mantras was pregame preparation. So before one game, when Scully told his mentor that a Dodgers’ regular would be out of the lineup, Barber demanded to know why. Scully told him he had no idea. To Barber, that was unacceptable.
Scully quickly realized that he needed to know the “whys”; he had to get to the stadium early and spend time talking with managers and players, absorbing compelling facts and stories to keep listeners engaged during slow stretches of each contest.
The delicate bonds that develop between any mentor and mentee, though often fruitful, almost always involve some degree of resentment and frustration, likely because each member of the pair has so much vested in winning the respect and affection of the other. Some of Barber’s barbs must have stung. But throughout his career Scully always credited Red for instilling in him the discipline and values of a professional baseball announcer. He claimed that the greatest virtue of Red as a mentor “was the fact that he cared. I wasn’t just another kid in the booth, just another announcer. … He made sure that my work habits were good, and he rode me if I drifted away from his ideal of the right way to work.”
Scully in the spotlight
In 1953, Barber left the Brooklyn booth after a dispute over his pay.
Ahead of that season’s World Series between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees, the Series’ sponsor, Gillette, offered Barber only $200 per game, take it or leave it. Barber left it, and when he did not get the support he wanted from Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, he decided to sit out the Series and sign with the Yankees for the following season.
Gillette then turned to Scully, asking him if he’d announce the Series. Scully called Red seeking his permission. Barber was genuinely moved by Scully’s request, given that his permission clearly was not needed.
All of a sudden, Scully, at the age of 25, was thrust onto the national stage. He remains the youngest person to ever call a World Series. Two years later, he announced the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series win, and in 1958 he moved with the club to Los Angeles, where he would call games for the next 59 seasons.
Barber and Scully maintained an affectionate dialogue for the remainder of Red’s life.
When Barber and Mel Allen were honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the first recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented yearly to a broadcaster for “major contributions to baseball,” Scully wrote his old teacher, “I know as well as anyone alive what a true artist you were behind the mike. There is a great deal of you in anything I do well in play-by-play, and it will live in me as long as I am working.”
At Barber’s funeral, Scully told a reporter that he was preparing to announce the fourth game of the World Series when he first learned of Red’s death. After absorbing the sad news, he began hearing his old mentor chiding him: “Now don’t you talk about me during the game. These people aren’t tuning in to hear about me. Talk about the game.”