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Tribute to Vin Scully – Part V

30 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by ts4jc in About Me, Just for Fun

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1946 World Series, 1950 World Series, All Star Game, anecdotes, barnstorming, baseball, Baseball Ambassador for Inclusion, Baseball Hall of Fame, baseball writer, Bear Mountain, bigotry, Bill Veeck, Billy Bean, black players, Bob Feller, Boston, Boston Red Sox, Branch Rickey, broadcaster, Bronx, Charlie Culberson, cleanup hitter, clutch hitter, color line, Commissioner of Baseball, Dixie Walker, Dodger Stadium, Dodgers, Don Newcombe, Enos Slaughter, exhibition games, fans, Fordham University, Gay, Happy Chandler, Harry Walker, honors, ice skating, integration, International League, Jackie Robinson, Jaime Jarrin, Joe Williams, John Wright, Latin America, Leo Durocher, Leon Culberson, Los Angeles Dodgers, major leagues, minor leagues, Montreal Royals, Nashua NH, Negro Leagues, New England League, New York Giants, NL MVP, NL Playoff, NL Rookie of the Year, NL West pennant, oral history, Orient, pennant clincher, petition, Philadelphia Phillies, race, Rachel Robinson, racism, Roy Campanella, Roy Partlow, Sandi Scully, segragation, St. Louis Cardinals, Stan Musial, stolen bases, storyteller, strike, Tom Yawkey, Vin Scully, walk-off home run, winter ball, World Champions, World War II

Tying it all together

Leon’s son Charles was the first of two Culbersons drafted by the Giants.  An outfielder, he played in the minor leagues for five years, three in the Giants organization and two in Royals organization.  But he didn’t make it past Class AA and his last season was in 1988.  Two important things happened in the Culberson family in 1989.  Charles’ son, Charlie, was born on April 10.  Leon only had a short time to enjoy his grandson.  He died on September 17 at age 71.

Some might have found this to be an interesting story: the grandson of a major league player associated with a Series losing moment, getting some family redemption by hitting a pennant-clinching walk-off home run.  But what does this have to do with Vin Scully other than its connection with Vin’s last game broadcast at Dodger Stadium?

Vin Scully delivers the 2000 Fordham University commencement address

From a personal perspective, it might be said that Leon’s career ended in the Bronx about a year before Vin’s academic career ended in the same borough.  By the following year, Vin’s professional sports broadcasting career would start in the city and stadium where Leon spent most of his major league career patrolling the outfield.  And less than two years after Leon’s last major league game, while he was still playing in the minor leagues, Vin began his 67 year career as broadcaster for the Dodgers.

But from a historical perspective, there is so much more.  Simply from a baseball point of view, 1946 represented a changing of the guard in baseball.  It was the year that many players came back from World War II.  Some were able to pick up where they left off.  Some were better players than when they left.  But some found that in the years they were away, even if they were playing baseball frequently while in the military (and most were), their skills eroded during that time.  And of course there were a few who didn’t come back at all or who came back too severely injured to play the game again.

Meanwhile, there were young players waiting in the wings who had gotten an early taste of the major leagues, even as diluted as they had become during the war.  So there was a sifting process.  Some made it even with the stiffer competition and others did not.  And there were also players coming back from the war who had either not yet made the majors or barely had a taste of it before they were drafted or they enlisted.  Many of them played against established major league players and acquitted themselves well.  They were looking for their big chance.  So there was a sifting process.  There were still only 16 teams and only about 400 spots on the roster (plus a few extra on the injured list).  Some would make it and many would soon be disappointed.

Branch Rickey

And to add to the apparent oversupply, Branch Rickey and then Bill Veeck were bringing in even more players from a previously untapped source: the Negro Leagues.  Over the next 10-15 years, that would change the face of baseball and the face of America.

While the major leagues were not integrated in 1946, a few of the minor leagues had become integrated.  All the black players were on Dodger farm teams. There are few people who don’t know that Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Dodgers late in 1945 and starred for the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers AAA team in the International League, in 1946. What is less known is that Rickey signed pitcher Roy Partlow to come along side Jackie. When Partlow didn’t pitch well, he signed pitcher John Wright.  While both were experienced Negro League pitchers, neither of them could handle the pressure and didn’t last the season. At the end of the year, Robinson was the only black player on the Montreal roster.

Rickey had also signed Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe to play in the Dodger organization.  Campy was ready for the majors and certainly would have starred with Montreal.  Newk was still rough around the edges and needed a little more time to develop.  Rickey wanted to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers gradually, but he didn’t intend to start these two future stars at such a low level.  However, the highest level team in the Dodger organization that would take them was the brand-new Nashua team in the Class B New England League.  Ironically, blacks would play home games in 1946 for a team about 50 miles away from Boston, the home of the foot-dragging Red Sox owned by Tom Yawkey.

In addition, consider the fact that in 1946, the Cardinals had won their fourth pennant and third World Championship since Pearl Harbor was attacked.  They had to survive a best-of-three playoff with the Dodgers to win the NL pennant and the World Series.  For the first time in the modern era, two teams were tied at the end of the regular season.  They were two teams whose rosters in part were the result of Branch Rickey’s leadership.  And before the war started, they looked like they were on the verge of a lasting rivalry.  In 1941, the Dodgers were in first and the Cardinals second.  In 1942 when only a few players had gone into the military, the order reversed with both teams winning over 100 games.  Now it looked like the rivalry was resuming.  Instead, 1946 signaled the beginning of a change in the balance of power in the National League.  And it signaled the beginning of the end of a regrettable practice in major league baseball.

Through 1949, the Cardinals were contenders.  But other than Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial, their team had gotten old.  And they were not yet signing black players like the Dodgers were (and getting a head start over the rest of baseball in doing so).  From 1947 to 1963, the Dodgers finished first eight times and won three World Championships; they also finished tied for first twice and lost playoffs; they finished second three other times, one of which they were not eliminated until the final day of the season; they only had a losing record twice.  The Cardinals came up empty for that entire 17 year stretch.  Then for the next five years until divisional play started, the Cardinals won three pennants and two World Series, and the Dodgers won two pennants and one World Series.  By then we had already reached the expansion era and the free agent draft era.

Black players were also bringing a more aggressive game with them with more emphasis on speed.  Since the National League overall integrated faster, their game became more associated with stolen bases, taking the extra base and breaking up double plays.  And starting in 1950 and lasting for decades, the National League replaced the American League as the dominant team in the All-Star Game.

Roy Campanella

While Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and a couple more black players were on Dodger farm clubs in 1946, there was no iron-clad guarantee that they would make the major league roster in 1947 or any other year.  So many things could still go wrong, from poor performance to a violent outburst.

But as it turned out, the seventh game of the 1946 World Series was the last game played in segregated major leagues.  And only one more World Series (1950) was played without at least one black player included.  By the end of the 1950’s, every team was integrated, although a few like the Yankees, Phillies, Tigers and Red Sox dragged their feet getting there.  That’s the same Red Sox who were the Cardinals opponents in the 1946 Series.  They would be the last team to integrate their major league roster.

It is a matter of debate regarding how far some of the Cardinals (and a few players on other teams) were willing to go to strike in protest of Jackie Robinson being brought to the major by the Dodgers.  We do know that there were players on the Cardinals talking about it seriously.  After all, even a group of Dodgers were circulating a petition to keep Robinson off the team until Leo Durocher put an end to it.  We know that Slaughter, the person who scored the winning run of the 1946 World Series, was one of the ringleaders of the strike talk that came to light when the Cardinals arrived in Brooklyn for a three game series on May 6. And we know that at some point during the season, Slaughter spiked Robinson on the thigh when he hit a ground ball and was thrown out by a good margin.  We also know that Harry Walker who had the Series winning hit that drove in Slaughter, as well as his brother “Dixie” on the Dodgers were among the most vocal objectors to blacks in the major leagues.

White players had opportunities to play against black players from time to time in exhibition games, during barnstorming tours and in winter ball in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Mexico.  In a few cases, they competed against each other on military teams.  So they knew how good the best black players were.  And yet many of them, such as Bob Feller, fed comments to the press that it was lack of ability that kept blacks out of the major league, not prejudice.  Feller also said that Robinson would not hit well in the majors and that he would have no problem getting out Jackie.  Bigoted baseball writers like Joe Williams seized upon these comments to decry blacks’ entry into the majors.

Jackie Robinson and Bob Feller being feted after the end of their playing days.

In delicious irony, Feller and Robinson would be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame together.  Jackie would be the National League Rookie of the Year in 1947 with a .297 batting average.  In 1949, he was the National League Most Valuable Player and batting champion while finishing second in runs batted in.  He also led the league in stolen bases those two seasons.  1949 was the first of six straight seasons of hitting over .300 and he hit .311 for his career.  Although he never hit more than 19 home runs in a season, he was such a great clutch hitter that in his prime, he was usually the Dodgers cleanup hitter.

Although Jackie Robinson died at the relatively young age of 53 in 1972, his wife, Rachel, has been one of the heritage faces of the Dodgers organization ever since then, along with Vin Scully.  The close relationship between Scully and the Robinsons goes back to Scully’s earliest days with the Dodgers, including the challenge Jackie posed to Vin to race on ice skates when the three of them were sent to Bear Mountain to do a promotion on behalf of the Dodgers. Jackie had never skated before, and the race never happened, but Jackie was serious.

Rachel Robinson

Rachel, a strong positive partner for Jackie throughout his career, going back to his season in Montreal, eventually became one of the best ambassadors of baseball as well as a respected part of the conscience for the game.  Their daughter and granddaughter are picking up the mantle.  They have been and continue to be reminders of a grievous part of the history of baseball and the United States in general, the sacrifice it took for a handful of courageous people to begin to overcome bigoted attitudes, the heritage of those playing now who would have been barred at one time, and the progress (and in some cases the lack thereof) that has been made since then.

For his part, Scully’s storytelling, including stories about Jackie Robinson, has made a major contribution to the oral history of baseball.  In addition, his skill in describing the action to the fans and newly initiated, his ability to convey the mood of the game with vocal inflection and keep things interesting without rooting or losing control of his emotions, maintaining his objectivity without attacking any of the participants involved: all these things have helped develop multiple generations of baseball fans in North America and beyond.  And he has been a positive influence and role model for many other broadcasters during his career, including his Spanish-speaking counterpart on the Dodger broadcasts, Jaime Jarrin.  With his voice preserved in countless ways on the Internet, I hope he will be an inspiration to many future broadcasters as well.

Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler

The baseball world of Leon Culberson and the seventh game of the 1946 World Series was, with a few minor league exceptions, a white-only world.  When the baseball owners voted after the end of that season, they voted 15-1 against Jackie Robinson being allowed to play in the major leagues.  It took the moral persistence of Branch Rickey (the only yes vote), the ability of Jackie Robinson to play at a superior level with grace under pressure, and the courage of Major League Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler to defy that vote and integrate the major leagues for the first time since the 1880’s.

The baseball world of Charlie Culberson and Vin Scully in the final year of his career has made tremendous strides of inclusiveness based on talent.  Major league baseball has fielded players from every inhabited continent, including many star players from Latin America and the Orient.  There are currently 63 black players and managers in the Baseball Hall of Fame, 30 of whom had careers primarily in the former Negro Leagues.  There are currently 12 Latin American players in the Hall of Fame, many of them black (and therefore on more than one list).

Billy Bean

Although no major league player has come out as gay to the public during his career, two have come out after their careers.  Billy Bean was one of them.  Since 2014, he has served as MLB’s first Ambassador for Inclusion.

The racism of Enos Slaughter of the Cardinals and the Red Sox organization (and many others) eventually lost.  The walk off home run by Leon Culberson’s grandson Charlie that clinched the Dodgers 2016 pennant in the last home game announced by Scully connected the two ends of Vin’s career.  Hopefully it presages an even better future where people of every color, every nationality, every religion, every gender and every walk of life can feel welcome to participate in the glorious game of baseball without harassment, whether as player, administrator, owner, reporter or fan.

It seems to me that Vin, who developed a rooting interest in baseball for the underdog, is pleased to have seen and broadcast the growth in diversity in baseball over the past 67 years.  And if the most popular personality in Los Angeles Dodgers history is someone whose first rooting interest was the New York Giants (and still admits a soft spot in his heart for the Giants) can anyone doubt that miracles still happen?

The Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate their 2017 NLCS victory. Shortstop Charlie Culberson (#37), who went 3 for 5 in the game and batted .455 in the series in place of injured Corey Seager, joins the celebration on the left.

At a time when the reputation of so many celebrities, especially male celebrities, is crumbling before our very eyes, I still feel comfortable honoring Vin Scully.  I would love to meet Vin and Sandi Scully.  My mind floods with questions I could ask them, especially Vin.

Vin was correct that baseball continued without him for the most part in 2017, although there were still a few honors to send in his direction.  But he is wrong that he will soon be an afterthought in the minds of baseball fans, not only in Los Angeles but wherever talent and class are appreciated.

Who also honoured us with many honours; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary. – Acts 28:10

God bless,

Lois

Tribute to Vin Scully – Part II

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by ts4jc in About Me, Just for Fun

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1953 World Series, Al Helfer, baseball, baseball broadcasts, Baseball Hall of Fame, big brother, Boston, Boston University, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, Brooklyn Trust Company, CBS, Cliff Dapper, College Football, Connie Desmond, Dodger fan, Ebbets Field, Ernie Harwell, family, father figure, Fenway Park, Ford Frick, Gillette, horrendous conditions, Jerry Doggett, Larry MacPhail, Los Angeles, Madison Square Garden, Mel Allen, National League, NBC, New York Rangers, Red Barber, Ridgewood NY, taskmaster, University of Maryland, Vin Scully, Walter O'Malley, WOR-AM, X-Files, Youngstown Ohio

My family: fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Red Barber

Marquee from the third Madison Square Garden (1925-1968)

To trace my love affair with the Dodgers and my admiration for Vin Scully, it goes back to July 15, 1910 when my dad was born in the Ridgewood neighborhood of New York City on the Brooklyn-Queens border.  My dad contracted polio when he was four years old and it prevented the muscle in his left calf from properly developing.  So he was never an athlete, although he loved to fish and occasionally go hunting.  But he knew his sports and he talked about going to different sporting events in his younger days such as watching the New York Rangers play hockey in their early years.  He took my brother and me to our first Dodger games before they left for California and our first hockey game to watch the Rangers play the Red Wings in Madison Square Garden (the one between 49th and 50th Streets) in the early 60’s.  And it was natural that he would be a Dodger fan based on where he lived from the day he was born to the day the Dodgers left town.

When we were younger, my dad would play catch with us.  And one of my memories is when we bought a sheet of plywood to become a basketball backboard, tied it to the car, got on the Thruway and had to reach out the window to hold it down until we could get off at the next exit and travel at a slower, safer speed.  My brother and I would always have a supply of sports equipment at our disposal.

In the early 1930’s my mom moved to NYC from Ohio with her mother.  She also was no athlete.  But she loved to dance and she loved watching the boys play baseball in the neighborhood parks.  And based on her pictures as a young woman, I know they enjoyed watching her, too.  But the boys of Youngstown’s loss was my dad’s gain.  After a few years of courting, my parents married in September 1937.  It was a marriage that lasted until my dad died in March 2002.  As fate would have it, the marriage began at one of the biggest turning points in Dodger history.

While the Dodgers’ crosstown rivals, the Giants and Yankees would be going to their second straight World Series, the Dodgers not only limped home to one of their typical 6th places finishes (ahead of Philadelphia and Cincinnati), they were close to going out of business.  Bill collectors waited in the team’s office to get paid.  They couldn’t call: the phones had been shut off for non-payment.

Larry MacPhail

The Dodger owners had been squabbling, which was part of the team’s problem. Finally in desperation, they asked NL President Ford Frick in early 1938 what he thought they should do.  Frick suggested they hire a strong general manager, someone who could rebuild the team.  When they asked Frick for a name, Frick asked Branch Rickey for a suggestion on who could turn the team around.  Rickey gave them the name of Larry MacPhail who had begun to turn the Cincinnati Reds around (even though they finished last in 1937, the team MacPhail started to build won the NL Pennant in 1939 and 1940) until he had a falling out with Reds’ owner Powell Crosley.

MacPhail took the job only when given the assurance that he would have the money necessary to rebuild the team.  Even though the Dodgers were deep in debt at the time, the Brooklyn Trust Company (already heavily involved financially with the team) gave the assurance to MacPhail and team owners.  Whether it was due to MacPhail’s reputation as a shrewd baseball man, his family’s wealth or sheer desperation to recoup their investment, MacPhail now had working capital.  Before he left the team at the end of the 1942 season, what had been the financially weakest team in baseball was now on solid footing and with a solid team that only needed to wait until the end of World War II to dominate the National League for the next decade.

Ebbets Field

MacPhail did three things to make the Dodgers a respectable contending team.  He fixed up Ebbets Field to make it a comfortable experience for the fans, and also installed lights for night baseball, just as he had done in Cincinnati.  His eye for talent and bargains enabled him to build a competitive veteran team from carefully chosen castoffs like Dixie Walker, Hugh Casey and Whitlow Wyatt and acquire others like Dolph Camilli, Billy Herman, Mickey Owen, Pee Wee Reese and Kirby Higbe from teams looking to unload them for one reason or another.  Meanwhile, he hired scouts and bought minor league teams to obtain one talented potential major league regular.  A future Dodger star who came to the Dodgers with the rest of his minor league team was Carl Furillo.  And to promote the team, he ignored the agreement the three NYC teams had made to not broadcast their games on radio.  He didn’t have enough time to do that for his first season in Brooklyn.  But he negotiated with General Mills to sponsor the broadcasts and entered into an agreement with 50,000 watt station WOR to air the games.  By the start of the 1939 season, he was ready to go.  To complete the process, he hired the broadcaster that he previously hired in Cincinnati: Red Barber.

My mom already enjoyed baseball, but Red Barber made her a Dodger fan.  Once the Dodgers started broadcasting their games, my dad asked my mom to keep track of what happened during the Dodger game while he was at work.  It was Red Barber’s descriptions that kept her interest and made it easy.  She loved his laid-back, down home style and his calm voice.  She became a Red Barber fan for life.  And many baseball fans in the New York Metropolitan Area, especially Dodger fans, felt the same way.

Red Barber, Connie Desmond and Vince Scully (L to R)

Red Barber and Vin Scully first connected a little over ten years after Barber arrived in New York.  The native New Yorker met the transplanted Southerner in the fall of 1949.  Scully was a recent Fordham graduate, and he had done summer fill-in work in Washington, DC, on a CBS affiliate.  Once he returned to New York, one of his stops was CBS to deliver his resume and letters of reference.  Redhead briefly met redhead that day and something about that young man impressed Barber.  Ironically, their first work together involved football, not baseball.

In 1949, CBS Radio had a college football program, Football Roundup, featuring the top games each week on Saturday with broadcasters at each game providing a remote feed to give updates on the progress of their game.  Barber was in the CBS studio in NYC coordinating the program switching from game to game and giving the cue to the next announcer to give a quick update.  As Vin recalls, there were 4 games covered simultaneously on any given Saturday, so each announcer had to stick to the basics.

As Saturday was fast approaching one week in November, they suddenly found themselves an announcer short.  Try as they might, no other sportscaster was available on such short notice.  Barber remembered that “young fellow” who had stopped by recently.  And soon Vin was heading up to Boston to broadcast the Boston University-Maryland game from Fenway Park.

Football at Fenway

Fortune smiled on Vin just to get this opportunity.  It smiled on him again during the game.  By the second half, none of the other games were close.  The only interesting contest was the game at Fenway (which Maryland won, 14-13).  And pretty soon, Vin would say, “And back to you in New York, Red.”  And Barber would reply, “And we’re sending it right back to you, young fellow.”

Vin also had some bad luck that day.  Or so he thought.  It turned out that his alma mater, Fordham, was playing Boston College that day, also in Boston.  There was going to be a dance after the Fordham game that he wanted to attend, being single at the time.  He didn’t want to be encumbered with extra clothes at the dance, so he left his hat, coat and gloves in his hotel room.  Since he was working for CBS, he assumed he would be broadcasting from the broadcasting booth.

Instead, he found himself up on the roof of Fenway, with the sound engineer, a card table and a long length of cable.  The chilly winds quickly blew away his notes.  The temperature was in the low 40’s.  And at the end of the game, Vin thought he blew his big chance, that the cold, windy conditions adversely affected the quality of his broadcast.  But even though he expected a booth, he was still young and green enough that he didn’t complain.

On Monday, a representative of Boston University called Barber to apologize for the horrendous conditions under which the announcer had to work.  When he explained the details, both the quality of Vin’s work and the quality of his character rose in Barber’s mind.  Barber called Vin to tell him he would have a booth the following week at the Yale Bowl.  He was assigned to the Harvard-Yale game.

Ernie Harwell was the broadcaster originally assigned to the Boston University-Maryland game.  He was not the announcer who became ill.  He was reassigned to replace that announcer for what was considered to be a better game, the North Carolina-Notre Dame contest at Yankee Stadium.  But North Carolina’s star running back, Charlie Justice, was injured, and Notre Dame was en route to an undefeated season and #1 ranking in the country.  Notre Dame won easily, 42-6.  So Scully ended up with the best game instead of Harwell.

Harwell had a second role in this narrative.  In 1948, Barber was suffering from a bleeding ulcer.  Harwell was an up and coming, highly regarded announcer for his hometown Atlanta Crackers team in the Southern Association.  There was only time in major league history that a player was traded for a broadcaster.  Branch Rickey traded a minor league catcher, Cliff Dapper, to Atlanta to acquire the services of Harwell to fill the breach left by Barber’s infirmity.  Harwell stayed as part of the Dodgers broadcasting team in 1949, but he was chafing under Barber’s demanding nature as the top man in the booth.  He found a temporary home uptown.

Through 1948, the Yankees and Giants shared broadcasters and a radio network, but in 1949, they each went their own way to broadcast their team’s entire 154 game schedule.  Mel Allen went with the Yankees and Russ Hodges went with the Giants as the respective #1 announcer.  And the Giants gladly grabbed the dissatisfied Harwell to add to their broadcast booth in 1950.  This was a time of baseball sportscasting excellence in New York City.  All five broadcasters mentioned are in the Baseball Hall of Fame and have received numerous similar honors.

Barber had the lead role in choosing a successor to Harwell, to join him and Connie Desmond in the Dodgers broadcast booth.  He might have chosen Al Helfer, with whom he had worked in Cincinnati and Brooklyn before Al enlisted in the Navy at the start of WWII.  He was not tied to any particular baseball team at the time.  Or he might have chosen another experienced baseball announcer.  But he had a dream for quite a while of taking a promising but inexperienced announcer and molding him into a top flight broadcaster.  He decided that Scully filled the bill and Branch Rickey seconded his decision.  Never was the perspicacious Barber more correct.

Indeed Scully found Barber to be as stern a taskmaster as Harwell did in those early years.  But the easy-going Desmond was a counterbalancing force, quick to throw his arm around the chastised young broadcaster, console him and encourage him.  Where Barber was the strict father figure (indeed he thought of Vin as the son he never had), Desmond was the big brother who lifted his spirits and told him it would all work out.

Then fortune smiled on Vin again during his fourth season with the Dodgers.  In 1953, the Dodgers and Yankees repeated as league champions and met in the World Series.  The year before, NBC had the #1 announcer from each team split the play by play for every game.  That paired Mel Allen and Red Barber.  But they weren’t paid by NBC.  They were paid by the primary sponsor, Gillette.  They offered a tiny sum to the broadcasters, believing they should consider it an honor to be chosen.  Barber wanted more, but Gillette felt no reason to budge.  By 1953, Walter O’Malley had become principal owner of the Dodgers.  Even though Barber was brought into major league baseball in Cincinnati and Brooklyn by Larry MacPhail, Barber and Branch Rickey had developed a close friendship.  Barber felt a strong loyalty to Rickey and that stuck in O’Malley’s craw after he forced out Rickey as Dodgers President.

Barber informed O’Malley of the impasse with Gillette.  O’Malley, as a powerful owner of a very successful team in the number one media market, could have gone to bat for Barber and put pressure on Gillette and NBC.  Instead, he chose not to, telling Barber it was not his problem.  That led to two important vacancies.  Most immediate was who would be the Dodgers representative on the national telecasts.  The choice was between the more experienced Desmond and Scully who was fairly well-seasoned by now.  But Desmond also declined to work the Series for reasons not reported, but it might have been related to some obligations to broadcast college football.  That’s how Scully became the youngest person to broadcast a World Series game.

(Scully worked the World Series with the Yankees #1 broadcaster, Mel Allen. Here’s Mel doing the voice over on a vintage Gillette TV commercial of the era.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9KVfn2-EEU )

The second choice that had to be made was who would be the new number one man in the Dodger broadcast booth in 1954.  The logical choice was Desmond.  But the pressure of being number one drove him to the bottle even more.  Helfer was brought back in to the job he left after the 1941 season, but more and more Scully was emerging as the top man.  Finally during the 1955 season, O’Malley fired Desmond because of missed broadcasts.  Desmond pleaded for one more chance and was reinstated for the 1956 season, but the O’Malley’s patience was exhausted that year.  He never announced for another major league baseball team again.

A rare picture of Jerry Doggett without Vin Scully

The Dodgers brought in Jerry Doggett to finish out the 1956 season.  Even though Doggett was ten years older, Scully had seven full years of major league broadcasting experience.  Doggett had only three years doing one major league game a week on the Mutual network.  By that season, less than 30 years of age, Vin Scully was the number one Dodger announcer and would eventually be recognized by most observers as the number one baseball announcer anywhere.

Knowing a good thing when he had it, O’Malley resisted the pressure to leave Scully and Doggett behind when the team moved to Los Angeles in the 1958 season.  Soon the Los Angelenos forgot all about the idea of their local favorites doing the broadcasts.  Doggett, still another redhead, was well-liked and stayed behind the mike for Dodger games until the end of the 1987 season when he was 71 years old, just missing out on the Dodgers most recent World Championship season.  He passed away in 1997.  Chris Carter, creator of the X-Files, named characters after both Scully and Doggett on the show.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. – Psalm 16:6

God bless,

Lois

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