On hearing Dodger sportscaster Vince Scully’s pronouncement that he signed on for the farewell tour of his 66 year career, long before the Dodgers migrated lock stock and barrel to the City of Angels. Chavez Ravine in essence, the renowned EbbetsField on Brooklyn’s Bedford Avenue before, but a memorial scene vanished into the unconscious, orchestrated into condos and long leased terrace apartments.
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But it was Scully’s spirited articulation that made the listener’s donkey ears wiggle, the vibes crashing those potato crops,incubating between the lobes.
Ah! Those 66 years that Vince matriculated in his coast to coast “poetics”.. A fanfare that few mortals can attested for. “Sixty sixyears of a benevolent scorecard, penciling in the Brooklyn Los Angeles Dodger pastime. The “Field of Dreams” where innocence and base stealing go hand and hand. Even to stealing signals from enemy coaches on the baselines as dugout marauders disguise, camouflage their fingers, hands, eyebrow, caps . Swishes across their numbered blouses.
A metaphor into an allegorical cracker box, mustachio on a hot dogged bun, magnifying a war: an aggressive battle, played at high stakes and moneyed free agency after Curt Flood broke the 7 year chains for being one, with his sharecropper owner.
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A glorious Peter Pen passage of youthful dreams, akin to sailing homemade sail boats on the Prospect Park Lake. The very motion, transfiguring the sails movement in the water’s ripples.
But it went beyond high wonder, transfiguring Capra’s “It’s a wonderful life” starring Jimmy Stewart, featuring Ward Bond as the stalwart cop the bridge as General Stewart was thinking ofhari kari. Despondent about his bank defaulting, on his neighbors loans.
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Could Gladys Gooding sing her lungs out to exemplify the bank’s failing? The rat a tat of Hilda and her misfit band of pots and pans, their crashing symbols but a bleacher “clutch” for the 2014 Metropolitan Opera union cataracts and contracts where once meeting of the voices and musical gifts wasn’t a spoiler of a walkout. A federal arbiter into the clashing orchestration $’s..
Would it all go down the drain? Could these broadcasters of the national pastime like Red Barber, Scully’s mentor at EbbetsField, tactfully and diplomatically weigh the pros and cons.Liberating each side’s position so they can once again “play ball” .
Negotiations gone stale: humor and laughter enveloping the once terse and tense battle field of give and take. Compromise being the rule of thumb, the name of the game..baseball’s obiter dictum of a “prayer” to renew an open minded dialogue.
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Not to say that Vince Scully’s adds an immortal gusto to the flowing poetry of his soulful lungs.. Transcending Caruso, “derBingle,’ Frank Sinotra and all those crooners who gave an extra dimensional sparkle to solemn words and melodious musical language on paper.
How could the intertwining of their brain neurons be reconciled? Where in our cyber space digital galaxy of stats, find a common ground.
A transcendental “Play ball” by umpires Bill Klem! Majorkurth!
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Meanwhile how do the fans perceive Vince Scully’s 86 year old life? A poetic euphoria of 66, playing out .His mentor being Red Barber, coming from his retired “ catbird’s seat” in Tallahassee, Florida...
Never a shill for the owners…Dan Topping of the Bronx Bombers later. Nor the Dodger new proprietors LarryMacphail throwing the dice for a Dodger team, competing withStonehams Giants and those Baba Ruth Lou Gehrig JoeDimaggio Bombers from the Bronx.
Vince Scully’s legacy of 86 years may begin with the Gashouse Gang of Pepper Martin, Branch Rickey, Leo “the lip” Durocher, the St Louis Cardinals of Stan the man Musial with his harmonica, those batting eyes and memory, calibrating the pitcher’s arm.. The ball release off his fingers.
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Oh those catatonic knothole kid 55 cent bleachers, on the Bedford Avenue center field stage: Leo Durocher as player manager. “Nice guys finish last” retiring to the dugout, mastering signals to his Charley Dressen coaches…..Walter Alston, Tommy Lasorda subsequent managers at Chavez Ravine.
Pete Reiser… concussion crashing into the center field wall,chasing a fly ball .Dolphh Camilii on first, Howie Schultz wartime sub, and Boston Celtic draft ,during Red Auerbach’s basketball immortals.
Breaking the color line with UCLA’s Jackie robinson at the midway point. Pee Wee, Eddie Stanky, Billy Herman, EddieBasinski, Eddie MIksis, Pee Ccscarart, Bobby Bragan, Lew Riggs, Arkie Vaughan,” Cookie” Lavagetto Billy Cox at the hot corner, Junior Gilliam, Don Zimmer as a backup to captain Pee Wee.
In left field Joe “Dusty” Medwick, Gene Hermanski….Center Duke Snider and Reiser.. Al Gionfrido chasing down a Willy Mays fly ball…The Waner brothers Lloyd and Paul..theadvertising sign of clothing “FREE suit if batter hits the sign”by Abe Stark, father to Ray Stark’s ”Annie”
Augie Galan Goody Rosen and French Bourdaray in right….Dixie Walker and Carl Furillo, guarding the pasture in right field. Pitchers Wyatt, Higbe, Curt Davis, “Fat” FreddyFitzsimmons, Hugh Casey from the bullpen, Ralph Branca(married the boss’s daughter), ace lefty Sandy Koufax from Lafayette High, Don Drysdale of Van Nuys High and owner of the “Dugout” on Oxnard, Preacher Roe, Rex Barney, Hal Greg,Ed Head, Johnny Podres, Joe Black, Don Newcomb, Sal Magliethe barber, Bobo Newsome’s blooper ball, Cal Abrams, VanLingle Mungo. Managers Leo, Dressen, Casey Stengel out of Glendale, Gil Hodges, his first baseman extraordinary, *whose dream died too young, Walter Alston… …
Mickey Owen of” old reliable” Tommy Heinrich’s passed ball,the hated Yankees winning the World Series , 1941. *The Mick passing at 89, ”Old Reliable” at 97.
Roy Campanello, “Campy”, a more recent neighbor of piano playing Liberace, Encino, California.
Vince Scully’s 86 years … thru two wars and 9/11. May the baseball Gods give him an encore, comparable to Winston Churchill, leader of the free world, World War 2, whose voice was grafted by his mother, her birth in Brooklyn Heights, thirty minutes from Ebbets Field, where Vince Scully found his own..
August 1, 2014 The City that never sleeps.
