Dodgers broadcaster joined team in 1950 By ANDREW STEWART
The National Assn. of Broadcasters will induct Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully into the org’s Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
Scully, who joined the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcast team in 1950, followed the team to L.A. before the start of the 1958 season. As the only current broadcaster to serve a team for 59 consecutive years, Scully has also announced 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games.
The induction will be held during the NAB Show Radio Luncheon April 21 in Las Vegas.
Editor’s note: As Dodger Thoughts editor, Jon Weisman so aptly noted: “What Were They Waiting For?”
We send along our birthday greetings to Hall of Fame Baseball announcer, Vin Scully, who celebrates his 81st birthday today, with fifty-eight (58) years behind the mike for the Dodgers. His career as the Dodgers announcer started in 1950. Eight seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, fifty with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is as reliable as the seasons, a touchstone of life, as time goes by.
One of my favorite Vin Scully quotes underscores baseball’s connection to life:
“Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day (pause). Aren’t we all?”
From his National Baseball Hall of Fame biography:
Scully’s remarkable tenure as the “Voice of the Dodgers” began in 1950 when he joined Red Barber as a member of the Brooklyn club’s radio team. Scully followed the Dodgers’ move west in 1958. As Scully recalled: “Red was my teacher … and my father. I don’t know—I might have been the son he never had. It wasn’t so much that he taught me how to broadcast. It was an attitude. Get to the park early. Do your homework. Be prepared. Be accurate. He was a stickler for that. He cared. He was very much a taskmaster, or I might have developed bad habits.”
Many adjectives have been used to describe Scully and his style since his declaration to a teacher at the age of eight of his ambition to become a sports announcer: entertaining, precise, proficient, charming, friendly, outgoing, smooth, relaxed, warm, knowledgeable, intelligent, literate, concise, well-prepared, colorful. Los Angeles Times columnist and J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Jim Murray once called him “the Fordham Thrush with the .400 larynx.”
Scully has covered many of baseball’s most thrilling moments, including Sandy Koufax’s four no-hitters, Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, Maury Wills’s 104 stolen bases, Don Drysdale’s and Orel Hershiser’s scoreless inning streaks, and Kirk Gibson’s dramatic home run in Game One of the 1988 World Series.
For a bit more on his illustrious career, click here.
(He is an honorary member of the Ballparkradio broadcast crew)
Speaking of radio broadcasts, Ballparkradio will be on the air again in Orlando – 2009 being our sixth consecutive year of bringing you live AAU broadcasts. Back for his third year, and heading things up will be broadcaster Kyle Smith, now a fixture on the ISC II broadcasts during the summer, and featured broadcaster at this past summer’s ISF Jr. Men’s World Championships from Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Keep an eye out for the Ballparkradio schedule of broadcasts for the 2009, which will be the largest field of teams ever, at forty !
(click logo to visit Ballparkradio.com website)
Here’s a short clip of Kyle Smith, with yours truly, broadcasting at the 2008 ISF Jr. World Championships in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Remember you can view in high quality by clicking the little YouTube logo in the lower right, after you start playing this video.
Editor’s note: The ISC streaming media program has been around so long now, that we almost take it for granted, that we can sit down to our computer and pop on a game. That is what the viewers see — the game. What they do not see, is all of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making it happen, in large part, through the efforts of ISC Streaming Media maven David Blackburn.
As noted in the blog post belong, ISC-TV video operation suffered through some technical problems this year that were beyond their control. Sometimes the stream worked wonderfully, but oft times not, due to a trenching operation that cut a line that feeds the internet lines.
Since Dave invited me along on his very first (audio) test broadcasts back in 2001, I have seen firsthand the long hours he has put in for the benefit of fastball fans all over the world. This year, to make matters more worse, David was fighting the flu all week long, and due to a schedule conflict for his job, had to fly from Los Angeles to Kimberly Wisconsin, set things up, then fly back to Los Angeles, and then returned to Kimberly, Wisconsin again, and worked round the clock to get things things working.
So we tip our cap to Dave and say thanks for going above and beyond, so that the fastball community could watch the ISC World Tournament games. We’re sure you’re looking forward to an easier, smoother time in 2009, but in the meantime, for anyone wanting to catch the action they might have missed — including players in the games — there is a library of links above for you to enjoy.
A trenching operation cut through a critical AT&T T-1 Feeder Cable in Kimberly last week, which severely hampered ISC TV’s access to the appropriate bandwidth required for streaming live video from the Sunset Park Press Box. During the first 5 days of the ISC World Tournament, the live streaming was very problematic. It was very frustrating that the problem, and the solution, were completely out of the control of our ISC TV operation.
The feeder cable was repaired sometime on Friday Aug 15, and the final two days of ISC TV live streaming, went quite smoothly. Viewers who weren’t already alienated, enjoyed those final 6 – 8 games, as the tournament wound down to the Championship Game on Saturday evening.
There are now over 50 hours of the 23 game videos from the ISC TV coverage of the 2008 World Tournament archived on the Spirtsjuice.com / ISC page. These games are now available for viewing, on demand, for the next year. With a high speed Internet connection, the games can be viewed throughout the world. Other than an initial 10 seconds of buffering when the game is initially selected, the videos should play without any delays or buffering that plagued the first 5 days of our live broadcasts.
Follow the Kitchener Rivershark Twins march to the 2008 ISC World Championship by clicking here.
Click on the archive window’s down arrow, and select the game(s) of your choice, for on-demand viewing.
Hopefully there won’t be any trenches dug in the Quad Cities during August of 2009.
Dave Blackburn
ISC Commissioner
Streaming and Broadcasting
310-266-7803
daveb@virtvent.com
Editor’s note: For optimum desktop viewing, you can increase the size of the stream to 200% by right clicking the picture, then click “zoom”, and select “200%” . If you want to watch full screen, works best from a distance, like a TV across the room.
Ballpark Radio will be webcasting 20 games from the 2008 ISC II Tournament of Champions starting at 10:30 am Sunday August 10 and culminating with the ISC II Championship game Wednesday August 13 at 2:00 pm.
Broadcasters Jim Flanagan, Kyle Smith, Blair Setford, Joe Todd & Bill Hillhouse will be on hand to call the action. Established in 2004, the ISC II streaming audio broadcast program has drawn more than 30,000 listeners for the first four years.
To listen, just click the BALLPARKRADIO logo above, and then the “click to listen†button. Turn on your computer speakers, and you’ll feel like you’re right there in Appleton.
ISC II players, coaches and managers are encouraged to click on the Player Bio link on the Ballpark Radio home page here. (Coming soon.)
Today’s Schedule Kicks Off with a couple of morning games with Kyle Smith & Bill Hillhouse.
All Game Times are Central Daylight Time (CDT). Adjust for your time zone.
POOL PLAY
Sunday August 10
10:30 AM
#6 Elmira, ON Cubs vs
#9 Perkasie, PA Hoffman Rise
12:30 PM
#8 Wilkes-Barre, PA Keating’s Fitness vs
#10 Waterdown, ON Hammer
2:30 PM
#1 Bakersfield, CA Taylor Farms LumberKings vs
#16 Wyevale, ON Tribe
(Opening Ceremonies at 5pm)
6:00 PM
#2 South Lebanon, PA TNT vs
#14 Bridgeport, ON Braves
6:00 PM
Rude Pac, Sun Valley, CA
NY Knights, NY *This game on channel 2 – look for BLUE click to listen link at bottom of main page at Ballparkradio.com
“Two on Blue”
8:00 PM
#22 Hermann, MO Black Gold vs
#28 Appleton, WI The Bar of Appleton II
Ballpark Radio will be webcasting 20 games from the 2008 ISC II Tournament of Champions starting at 10:30 am Sunday August 10 and culminating with the ISC II Championship game Wednesday August 13 at 2:00 pm.
Broadcasters Jim Flanagan, Kyle Smith, Blair Setford, Joe Todd & Bill Hillhouse will be on hand to call the action. Established in 2004, the ISC II streaming audio broadcast program has drawn more than 30,000 listeners for the first four years.
To listen, just click the BALLPARKRADIO logo above, and then the “click to listen†button. Turn on your computer speakers, and you’ll feel like you’re right there in Appleton.
ISC II players, coaches and managers are encouraged to click on the Player Bio link on the Ballpark Radio home page here. (Coming soon.)
Schedule After the Jump.
(Kimberly, Wisconsin) For immediate release – July 25, 2008
The International Softball Congress (ISC) will be holding the 62nd Annual Men’s World Fastball Championship Tournament from August 10 – 16, at Sunset Park, in Kimberly, Wisconsin. For the 3rd consecutive year, the ISC will roll out ISC-TV, and broadcast live web video coverage of 24 ball games. The web casts will culminate with the 2008 ISC World Championship Game, which gets underway at 6 PM on Saturday August 16th.
“We are excited about bringing the ISC-TV operation to Kimberly, which is one of the greatest fastball communities in the world,†said Dave Blackburn, ISC Broadcast Commissioner and Producer of the live web casts. “We will have viewers following the action from all of the fastball hot beds from around the globe, and all throughout the North America continent.â€
“The ISC considers our video web casts as one of the most important and popular features of our annual World Tournament.” said ISC Executive Director Ken Hackmeister. “In 2005, our final year of “audio only”, we had 15,258 listeners. In 2006 and 2007 when we incorporated video, the numbers rose dramatically to 45,000 and 58,963 respectively. Clearly, fans around the world have embraced our video web casts.”
Viewers can watch games via a broadband connection, using the Windows Media Player. Click on the ISC / Sportsjuice button at the bottom of the ISC Home Page www.iscfastpitch.com
Video archives of games from the last two ISC World Championships can be found at the same ISC / Sportsjuice link above.
