While wondering if I am too old and/or senile to blog about one of the abiding passions of my life, I came across a Tom Jones’ post on The Poynter Report. Jones is Poynter’s Senior Media Writer. I find the first word of his title comforting. Senior. He is also, like me, a former sports columnist. Encouraging.
Even more encouraging was the post’s topic—Vin Scully. The inimitable Scully painted matchless word pictures of Dodgers games from 1950 until 2016. Do the math. That’s 66 years and it’s not a misprint. Scully began calling the team’s games when it played in Brooklyn and moved with it Los Angeles.
Now, at age 92, Scully has joined social media to continue talking about the game he loves. He won’t be mike-side at the ballpark but will be playing host to a “meeting of friends having some fun talking about our favorite subject.” It’s a comeback worth noting, and an example worth emulating.
If it is good enough for Vin, it is good enough for me.
Vin will talk. I will write. Vin about baseball. Me about football. And I have another good example to follow closer to home: Bud Shaw, former sports columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland who wrote his eclectic “Spin,” part essay, part sports shorts with a twist that could put a twist in readers” knickers or a smile on their faces. When Bud stepped back a little from the field of play, he seemed to see it more clearly than those immersed in it. At least I thought so.
Jones pointed out that while “Scully was mostly greeted with warm wishes and glee,” Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina tweeted that because he loved Scully he felt compelled to warn Vin off a social media comeback. “Don’t do this,” Traina tweeted (of course). “Delete your account and go back to living a good life. You don’t need this hell hole.”
One person’s “hell hole” can be another’s salvation. In a time of pandemic, disconnection, and uncertainty, perhaps Scully and I are reaching for lifelines, for the certainties of the game. While this blog will have a Brownish tint, it will include preps to pros and be part of my broader writing life. A new book, Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns: A Memoir Straight from a Broken Oklahoma Heart, shares not only my grounding in football but also much about life, love, and death.
I cannot provide a roadmap for where we’ll go together on this blog or how long the journey will last. My old brain has nearly 75 years on it and no GPS. So consider this a denouement, the outcome of a complex sequence that is a life.
The Loves, 1948: Football Mama Colleen, future center Little Stevie, 2, and Dr. Clarence.
