I’m not criticizing baseball, but imagine this sequence. The batter fouls a pitch in the dirt. The ump hands the catcher a new ball to toss to the pitcher. He does so. The pitcher doesn’t like the feel of it, and tosses it back. The ump gives the pitcher another ball. The pitcher steps off the mound to work on the ball. He touches the resin bag. He gets back on the rubber and looks for a sign. He shakes off the first two signs, finally accepting the third one. The batter calls for time and adjusts his gloves (hey, Nomar!). There could be 30 seconds of no action on the field. Scully fills that dead time. If the game’s a blowout, some would argue that it’s all dead time. But Scully probably stops a lot of folks from switching the channel.

I also suspect My Vinny (as my young niece calls him) has more energy at the start of the game. So if the inning listened to was in the first three, it was a radio inning.

My big reason for loving Scully is that he calls every game as if he’s working for a national broadcaster and the Dodgers are not playing. He is the least partial announcer I’ve ever heard, in any sport. He compliments good plays by both teams. He doesn’t say things like “We need runners here to get a chance to tie.” He might go as far as “The Dodgers need someone else to get on base to bring up the tying run” but it’s still “The Dodgers”, not we. Almost every other local broadcaster I’ve heard, plus many of the cable networks devoted to teams (like WGN, and TNT back when they were broadcasting all the Braves games) it’s obvious who they want to win. That can be very offputting to neutral viewers.

Another big thing about Scully, and probably why he’s so talky, is that he assumes his audience has a reasonable idea of what’s going on. He doesn’t fill his broadcast with things all fans know; he might mention them when pertinent, but he might not. That frees up time for stories.

A third thing about Scully is he asks the questions I’m curious about. If a player leaves the game for no apparent reason, he’ll say something like, “We’ll check with the clubhouse to see if Manny’s okay.”

Yes, Scully’s showing his age. He gets names wrong more frequently. If I’m watching on television, I’m not sure he’s seeing the pitches clearly. And he has started to repeat his stories, making me wonder if he has gone back to the days when he used to work just television for some innings and just radio for others, instead of simulcasting as he does today. But he’s still the best announcer I’ve ever heard, and I cherish every game we get out of him. My hope is that next year I can afford the $100 for mlb.tv to get the audio feed from the television to hear the full nine innings of Scully.

Clock Vinny in the 4th and I guarantee you he’ll place in the middle of the pack — and that’s WITHOUT a color man.

Also I love, L O V E it when Jon Miller does a Vin Scully impersonation, they are priceless. Its a shame that he is stuck with Joe Morgan and Steve Phillips on ESPN because his broadcasts are far better on KNBR.

He’s a White Sox announcer and White Sox fans like him. Move the EF on already.

And from time to time, he will go exceedingly overboard on a single play. I can recall 2 to this day more than 2 decades after I first heard them:

A dodger let a ball get by him for a HR (should have been 1B and error but…) and the team lost 1-0. Critical play for sure but over the next 7-8 innings I heard that regurgitated nearly 3 dozen times. I mean please.

The other was similar in that he complained abut a (dodger) fan interfering with a ball that was called a HR and shouldn’t have been. In this instance not only did I hear him say that 20-25 times but I also had to see the replay almost every time WHICH CLEARLY SHOWED HE WAS MISTAKEN – hard to believe no one in the production said, umm Vin it WAS a HR.

Don’t get me started on Waldman and the broadcast. Surely Waldman can just be a reporter rather than a color analyst and Sterling needs a sidekick. There is also a weird thing of bringing in a beat reporter in the booth.

Howie Rose and Wayne Hagin for the Mets on radio have gone on a rapport after a rough beginning last season. They do chat and each have good stories, historical anecdotes on the game, and just seem like nice guys with one guy from the Midwest and the other from Queens.

Gary Cohen probably could win this easily but he has a three-man booth, sometimes four if Ralph Kiner is present, and has two chatter-boxes in Darling and Hernandez. Darling is Xs and Os though is pretty well-versed but Hernandez can go on about anything like an Orson Welles film or the food. Somehow it all works well but now that the team has gone down the tubes there is a lot of chatter not about the game itself. That can be annoying.

Michael Kay feels like he can talk about anything with the Yankees. Because he has a radio show and has made appearances on the Sports Reporters he all of the sudden feels the need to be opinionated. When he throws out questions to his dozens of partners in the booth it can range all over the place between Leiter, Singleton, Cone, and Flaherty. When Jim Kaat was still in the booth usually that never happened, in fact, Kaat’s opinion was the booth’s gospel. He is missed.