Scully’s Call Reminds Us That Baseball Is A Pastime

“Something just occurred to me,” said Tim McCarver, the ex-catcher-non-mentis.

It was Sunday, 7:46 p.m. - the top of the ninth inning during Fox’s telecast of the World Series Game 1. Atlanta led 12-1 so the viewing audience was not quite mesmerized by the TV’s blue glow.

With extreme caution, I looked up from the National Enquirer story on Katie Couric’s troubled marriage that I had been reading. I squeezed the La-Z-Boy arm, jaw clenched, braced to accept what McObvious was about to spit out:

“Andruw Jones,” he proclaimed, “is just seven years older than Jeffery Maier.”

Jones, the Atlanta Braves outfielder, who hit two homers in the game, is 19.

Maier, New York’s kid-sized Kevorkian, who assisted in the death of the Baltimore Orioles during the ALCS, admits to being 12.

You do the math.

It only took McCarver 8-2/3 innings to come up with that act of jobbernowlism.

Funny, but at that precise moment, something also occurred to me: Vin Scully and Jeff Torborg are doing this game on CBS Radio.

Which brings us to another Andruw Jones story.

Monday night, Game 3. Jones goes up the wall to make a spectacular catch in the fifth inning. He comes down and throws to first base to double off Tim Raines.

Scully puts the postscript on the play:

“Boy, it reminds me of a catch Willie Mays made for the New York Giants against the Dodgers in the early ‘50s. Billy Cox was the runner at third base. He weighed 150 and could really run. Carl Furillo hits a ball into the gap. Mays runs after it and with his back to the plate, leaps to make the catch and, in midair, spins around so that when he lands on his feet, he makes a perfect throw home to double up Cox trying to score.

“After the game, the writers are mobbing Charlie Dressen, the Dodgers manager. ‘What do you think of Mays’ play?’ they ask. Dressen was so upset. He finally blurted out, ‘Yeah, well let’s see him do it again.”’

And, of course, Scully’s story ends just as play is ready to begin again.

Welcome to two different mediums trying to do basically the same thing - tell the story of this World Series. Which is best? Depends on your taste.

Fox wants desperately to bring baseball into the future with its new “Non Stop Fox” attitude - even if it means allowing the all-too-occasional McCarver slobbering anecdote between a Bob Brenley belch and a Joe Buck hiccup.

CBS Radio allows Scully to remind folks that baseball is a pastime, a game that can be seen clearer in the mind than on a TV screen. Scully speaks in iambic pentameter to a world caught up in snippy sound bites.

On Fox, the Goo Goo Dolls are riffing on “Take me Out to the Ballgame.”

On CBS Radio, Scully notes the irony when Yankees public address announcer Bob Shepard politely asks the Yankee Stadium fans to join in for the traditional seventh-inning stretch - even though it’s raining ice water and the home team is down by 11.

On Fox, there are microphones strapped onto everything except John Wetteland’s fungus-infested hat. Hey, wasn’t that cool when Atlanta manager Bobby Cox blurted out a profanity during the Game 1 introductions? It was the kind of language you’d expect him only to use around his wife.

On CBS Radio, when an outstanding play happens, Scully backs off and lets the crowd roar wash over his microphone. As you’d expect him to do.

On Fox, the graphics are like a cutting-edge video baseball card. There’s the perpetual score, pitch count, out total, inning reminder and little red dots to show where the runner are.

On CBS Radio, Scully says “deuces are wild.”

In many creative ways, Fox has juiced up the product. The microphone innovations are tremendous. There isn’t anything on the field that gets missed.

Even the AFLAC trivia question has some meat to it.

Hall of Famer Scully is one of the final links to baseball’s magic past - like Richie Cunningham asking his dad to spot him 50 cents so he can take a date out to Arnold’s.

When Scully calls a home run by Jim Leyritz, it sounds just like one hit by Rick Cerone, Thurman Munson or Yogi Berra.

It’s so strange to hear Scully give out the CBS Radio website address, where the audio is simulcast. Scully should never have to use the phrase “dot com.”