Vin Scully: The gold standard of baseball broadcasters

In his misspent youth, your HB (Humble Blogger) was a broadcaster. As such, there were folks in our profession whom we held in great admiration – local guys such as early mentors Scott Dilworth, Harry Lytle and Roy Nilson along with a competitor for several years – Jack Harris. On the national front, NBC’s giants, Huntley and Brinkley along with syndicated radio commentators Earl Nightingale and Bruce Williams were much admired. But the man who stood above all others was a gentleman who combined our two youthful loves, baseball and broadcasting, into a symphony – Vin Scully. The Dodger great retired at the end of the season and the game will never again be quite the same.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Message for Hillary, in light of Bill’s comments on Obamacare perhaps you want to send the hubby off on a fact finding mission to Angola or somewhere until the election is over.

2. Local Democrats who usually want a voter registration for anything that is breathing go crazy over Pinellas’ plan to register voters at local Chick-fil- A restaurants. Seems the chain is too pro-life and (in an unpardonable sin) not open on Sundays. Do they think potential voters will be brainwashed?

3. Wednesday, October 5^th was Walk/Bike to School Day. The idea is noble but unfortunately unrealistic in this day and age. We can remember pedaling our bike from our parent’s home in Skycrest to the Clearwater Marina without our folks worrying. Today with ridiculous traffic and bad people, it simply isn’t safe for our kids and grandkids – unless, of course, you walk or pedal with them.

4. Memo to Donald: if you get elected and start bringing jobs back onshore as you promised, make call centers the first priority so all of us can understand the person on the other end when we call the cable company or make a hotel reservation. And why is it that these companies give folks who obviously live thousands of miles away from the USA Americanized names like Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice? Do they think they are fooling us?

5. You’ve lived in the bay area a long time if you remember all the excitement about the possibility of the San Francisco Giants (or the Twins or the White Sox) moving to the area.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. A follow up to the historical note above, a guy who never got nearly enough credit for the bay area finally having baseball is former St. Pete assistant city manager Rick Dodge.

7. Buck Showalter takes a ton of heat for not using his ace reliever in a non-save situation in the wild card loss to the Jays. After all, look how well that worked out for the Mets.

8. Playoff note - beyond cool: the only way to describe the Mets having Itzhak Perlman play the National Anthem prior to their play-in game with the Giants. Ain’t nobody taking a knee during that performance!

9. Sadly, lost in all the well-deserved plaudits for Vin Scully was the retirement of another incredibly good broadcaster – the Padres’ Dick Enberg. One last time – “Oh my!”

10. Newsweek may be gone, but we still have the indestructible 5:05 Newsletter which provides this offering: “Donald Trump cancelled a rally scheduled for Portland, Oregon. This was devastating news for Portland’s conservative community…a guy named Steve”.

Some sports heroes for old guys

We’ve mentioned this before, you really feel old when there is no longer a player in a major sport older than you. For this dyed in the wool baseball fan, it was Pete Rose who hung them up at age 45. But you have to love guys like Rose who still performed at a high level into their forties and beyond. Guys like Harry Gant who won at NASCAR’s highest level at age 52; George Blanda who played in the NFL until age 45; basketball’s Robert Parish, who was still battling under the boards at age 43 and this era’s ancient phenom, Bartolo Colon, who at age 43, wants to come back and pitch for the Mets next season You like the guy even more if the athlete, like Colon, appears to be as far out of shape as you. Rock on, Bartolo!

SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT WEEK – SOME CLEAR CHOICES IN THE 2016 ELECTION SEASON