Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story

Description

In 1950, Vin Scully broadcast his first major league baseball game for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers. Nearly sixty years later he still invites a listener to "pull up a chair," completing a record fifty-ninth consecutive year of play-by-play. Recruited and mentored by the legendary Red Barber, the New York-born Scully moved with the Dodgers to Los Angeles in early 1958. His instantly recognizable voice has described players from Duke Snider to Orel Hershiser to Manny Ramirez, with hundreds in between. At one time or another, Scully has aired NBC Television's Game of the Week, twelve All-Star Games, eighteen no-hitters, twenty-five World Series, and network football, golf, and tennis. He has made every sportscasting Hall of Fame; received a Lifetime Emmy Achievement award and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and been voted"most memorable franchise personality." In 2000, the American Sportscasters Association named Scully the Sportscaster of the 20th Century. The first biography of Vin Scully is long overdue. Curt Smith-to USA Today,"The voice of authority on baseball broadcasting"-is the ideal man to write it. Scully opens each broadcast by wishing listeners, "A very pleasant good afternoon." Pull Up a Chair will provide a reader with the same.

CURT SMITH is the author of twelve sports books, including the classic Voices of The Game, The Voice: Mel Allen's Untold Story, and Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers. He is a GateHouse Media columnist; XM Satellite Radio and National Public Radio affiliate host; and former speechwriter to President George H.W. Bush. Smith has written for, among others, Newsweek, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and the Washington Post. A senior lecturer of English at the University of Rochester, he lives in upstate New York.