{"id":1588034,"date":"2022-08-04T07:18:45","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T11:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1588034"},"modified":"2022-08-04T07:19:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T11:19:01","slug":"vin-scully-didnt-just-entertain-baseball-fans-he-made-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/vin-scully-didnt-just-entertain-baseball-fans-he-made-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Vin Scully Didn\u2019t Just Entertain Baseball Fans, He Made Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fvin-scully-didnt-just-entertain-baseball-fans-he-made-them%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1588034&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A lot of people think baseball is boring. I get that.<\/p>\n<p>Baseball is different than any other sport. It can be agonizingly slow, accentuated by heartstopping moments of pure joy, heartbreaking losses, and near misses. You can get muddled up in the slow part.<\/p>\n<p>Baseball is like life. Life is routine, you do the same things over and over again and occasionally, the routine gets broken up by a celebration, a tragedy, or a near miss. And most of the time, normalcy resumes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But those joys, sorrows, and near misses are stories.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone has a tale to tell. All the nameless, faceless people you encounter every day at work, on the street, or on the internet are just people until you learn their stories. Then they become friends.<\/p>\n<h2>Baseball is About Stories<\/h2>\n<p>As the skipper in Bull Durham says, \u201cThis is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball.\u201d\u00a0Players all blend together until you know their stories. It\u2019s the stories that make baseball come alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With basketball, the pace is so fast there\u2019s no time to tell the stories, So the media takes it up, complete with the drama that creates ratings in a 24-hour news world.<\/p>\n<p>A football game has too many players to relate to because a football game is war. On the battlefield, you don\u2019t have individual soldiers. You have regiments, companies, and battalions working together seamlessly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But baseball\u2019s battles are more like duels. One batter faces off against one pitcher. Nobody else gets involved until the pitch is hit or missed. Each individual effort leads to the team\u2019s victory or defeat. If you don\u2019t know anything about those individuals, yeah, it drags.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The pace of the game makes room for the stories. No other sport has that in the same way as baseball \u2026 as long as you have a good storyteller.<\/p>\n<h2>Vin Scully: The Master Storyteller<\/h2>\n<p>That\u2019s what Vin Scully did so well.\u00a0Every evening like Shaharazade, he\u2019d embrace those lulls and use them to captivate the listener. For 67 years, for over two hours a night, he turned faceless players into real human beings for millions of listeners and viewers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Even though players came and went, he would weave them into the endless tradition of the team and the entire game of baseball. And not just Dodger stories. Whatever team was on the field, Vin would happily tell those men\u2019s tales too.\u00a0Vin didn\u2019t just make Dodger fans. He created lovers of the game of baseball.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Through times of war and peace, unrest and prosperity, Vin would weave enthralling narratives that took people out of their living rooms and into the stands for a couple of hours every evening.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019d share how Jackie Robinson chose to retire rather than continue his career in Giants colors (Jackie didn\u2019t even like Halloween because the colors were orange and black).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Or as Paul LoDuca approached the plate, Vin would point out that you could see him write his mom\u2019s initials in the dirt before he put his catcher\u2019s mask on. Then he\u2019d tell how Lucy LoDuca, the devoted mom, would pitch beans to Paul when he was just a lad and that was why he was so good at seeing the ball and making contact.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Or he\u2019d tell how Tommy Lasorda decided that Orel Hershiser\u2019s nickname should be\u00a0\u201cBulldog,\u201d not because Orel was tenacious, but because he needed to be.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He might even take five minutes to enlighten us on the <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/wg5idK9bE_k\">history of beards<\/a> since so many players seemed to be sporting them.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes the harsh realities of American life seeped onto the baseball field, but Vin always found the glorious epiphany, like when Vin called the 1974 game when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth\u2019s home run record after months of receiving hate mail and death threats:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>\u201cWhat a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol \u2026 Henry Aaron has eclipsed the mark set by Babe Ruth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The internet is full of stories right now about this amazing man and how he inspired a love for our national pastime like no one else could. He was a poet and a gentleman. There will never be another man like him in baseball or otherwise.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But for millions of people, including me, he was the one who shared the stories that made America\u2019s otherwise boring national pastime come alive. He gave me and my family a priceless gift. It\u2019s a beautiful game. I will always be thankful.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Lora Horn is a freelance content strategist and writer for behavioral healthcare and nonprofits. When she\u2019s not attached to her computer, she\u2019s either watching baseball or in search of the perfect taco. You can find her at <a href=\"https:\/\/albacontentstudio.com\/%E2%80%9C\">albacontentstudio.com<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of people think baseball is boring. I get that. Baseball is different than any other sport. It can be agonizingly slow, accentuated by heartstopping moments of pure joy,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1220,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}