Sports Passings

[tomalak301]

This is a thread I borrowed from the General Trek forum and considering the last few days it's probably worth having one here in the Sports forum.

In the last two days Bill Russell and Vin Scully have passed away. I'm gutted by the Scully news. I knew it was coming but it was still quite a shock. I loved listening to Vin, and as a Giants fan, he was the only Dodger I liked. He was that calming voice, and in his later years he had some hilarious stories to tell.

RIP Vin, and thanks for the Baseball Memories.

 

[tomalak301]

I was listening to last night's Giants Post Game show and the stories the guys were talking about Vin Scully made me emotional all over again. They even broke their "no player of the game to a dodger" rule and gave Vin Scully the unanimous Player of the game. Vin Transcended the game of Baseball. He made it accessible to everyone and just going through the memories of watching him on MLB.TV or hearing his famous calls (Watching the Catch again), this death has hit me pretty hard and that doesn't happen with most celebrities. It's just amazing how connected Vin is to this rivalry and how the night he died, the Dodgers and Giants are playing at Oracle Park, the site of his last game in 2016. There will be no one like Vin Scully.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I love the story Vin Scully told in Ken Burns' Baseball about an early encounter with legendary Dodger fan Hilda Chester:

And to show you the intimacy of Ebbets Field, it was probably my first or second year. And I was sitting next to Red Barber. And he was broadcasting, and I was just sitting there. And it was a quiet, lazy afternoon with just a few thousand people. And Hilda [Chester] suddenly was in the grandstands instead of out in the bleachers, where she normally was. And out of the blue came this voice: "VIN SCULLY, I LOVE YOUUUUU!" And the crowd roared, and I was kind of embarrassed, and I lowered my head this way. And I heard this voice say, "LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!" So there was no place like Ebbets Field, the relationship of the fans to whomsoever came in contact with them.​