I owe Vince Scully an apology. And even worse, that debt has accrued more than 40 years of interest.
But what makes my offense even more horrific is that he was my hero.
Vin Scully reminded me of my father.
I lost my dad when he was only 45. Vin was born just a year after Pop but he lived twice as long. He didn’t join Phil Patton in the Great Beyond until this Tuesday. He was 94.
They had everything else in common. Both were gregarious, easy-going Irish-Americans. Both were also blessed with the Gaelic gift of storytelling.
Dad was the original Voice of the Gauchos. He started broadcasting UC Santa Barbara basketball and football games for KTMS Radio in 1959. He also relished telling his stories in print as sports editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press.
He always loaded his “Patton’s Pressbox” column with anecdotes about the Gauchos and the other sports figures of the area.
That was an art that Vin Scully mastered better than anyone during his 67 seasons as the Hall of Fame broadcaster of Dodger baseball.
I began sneaking a transistor radio under my covers at about the same time Dad stopped telling me bedtime stories. I’d fall asleep to tales of Sandy Koufax and Junior Gilliam and “3-Dog” Willie Davis. And Vin would speak just as knowledgably about the opposition, waxing eloquent about “Say Hey” Willie Mays and Stan “The Man” Musial and even Santa Barbara’s own Eddie Mathews.
His stories would sweeten our victories and dull our losses.
I still remember the night, late in the pennant race of 1963, when my midnight shriek brought Dad rushing to my bedside. He yanked the covers off my head and asked breathlessly, “What happened?!?”
“Dodgers just beat the Cardinals in the bottom of the 16th,” I replied sheepishly. “John Roseboro singled home Ken McMullen.”
I pulled out my earpiece and held it out so Dad could listen. All he could hear was a staticky roar. In typical fashion, Vin Scully had ceded a poignant minute of airtime to let Dodger Stadium’s delirious, sellout crowd tell the story.
Echoes From The Past
Broadcasting games wasn’t their only commonality. Both Dad and Vin were from the Greatest Generation, when duty and integrity were the values most prized.
Both joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school during the waning days of World War II. Both were also devout Roman Catholics. Dad, a radioman aboard the destroyer USS Zellars, swore that his rosary beads kept him alive during the ferocious naval battle off Okinawa that killed more than three dozen of his shipmates.
Scully’s Catholic guilt, on the other hand, set me up four decades ago for my own act of guilt.
Dave Kohl, my late father’s successor as News-Press sports editor, had been tasked with recruiting sports personalities to the annual pro-celebrity golf tournament that benefitted St. Francis Hospital.
I was alone in the office one morning, frantically organizing the sports section for our afternoon edition. The clocked ticked loudly as deadline approached while the phone rang at its own deadly pace. Most of the callers were demanding sports scores from the previous night.
In the days before the internet, every dedicated gambler kept the number of the local newspaper sports desk in the front of his Rolodex.
I was losing both my deadline battle and my patience when the obnoxious phone taunted me again.
“Sports department … What do you want?!?” I barked.
“Can I speak to Dave Kohl, please?” the caller replied.
“He’s not here,” I snapped back.
“OK,” the caller said haltingly. “Then can I leave a message?”
I didn’t even answer. I just slammed down the phone and began searching for a pen and paper.
“All right,” I finally bellowed. “What’s the message?”
“Tell him Vin Scully called,” he began.
The blood rushed out of my right hand. The pen slipped right out of my stone-cold fingers.
“Please tell him I’m sorry that I can’t play in the pro-celebrity golf tournament,” he continued. “I feel bad about that … but I’d still like to help the good sisters of St. Francis.
“Please have him call back so I know where to send them a check.”
My response seemed to come from the mouth of a terrified mouse.
“Yessir, Mr. Vin Scully,” I squeaked. “Yes I will.”
I swung the phone toward its base and missed hanging up three straight times. I had just met my baseball hero … and I had struck out.
Hooked on a Feeling
Fellow sportswriter Paul Yarbrough entered our back-room office about a half-hour later.
“Aren’t you done with the section yet?” he asked. “You’ve missed deadline.”
“I’ve done worse than that,” I replied. “I messed up a phone call with Vin Scully.”
An hour after telling Paul my terrible tale, Dave Kohl burst into the office. His eyes, magnified by horn-rimmed glasses, were as big as baseballs.
“What in the hell happened?” he asked. “I just got called in to see the publisher. He said Vin Scully phoned to complain about getting insulted by somebody.”
The blood immediately drained from the rest of my body. I had nearly slumped out of my chair when Dave began to cast a make-believe fishing line.
“Gotcha!” he declared through a sinister smile. “Hook, line and sinker!”
I would’ve punched him, but I’d already tempted termination well enough.
I did get the chance to make things right with my hero 15 years ago.
I arrived at Dodger Stadium during a pregame batting practice to interview Ryan Spilborghs, a Santa Barbara High and UCSB graduate. He was having a breakout season with the World Series-bound Colorado Rockies.
Interview safely recorded, I hurried upstairs to the press box cafeteria, heaped some free food onto a paper plate, and picked out an empty table where I could chow down undisturbed.
Food For Thought
And then that lanky, red-haired, golden-throated announcer sat down to my left with his own plate, interrupting my endeavor once again.
“Hi,” he announced, extending his hand. “I’m Vin.”
A chilling thought crossed my mind: Will he recognize my voice? I cleared my throat with several purposeful coughs to deny the mouse a squeaky encore.
“Nice to meet you,” I said in my best baritone voice. “I’m Mark … Mark Patton … I write for the Santa Barbara News-Press … I’m here to do a story about Ryan Spilborghs … He plays for the Rockies, you know? … They’re having a great year and so is he … He’s also from Santa Bar…”
I suddenly cut myself off. I was rambling on like some star-struck groupie.
“Santa Barbara, huh?” he said with a kind smile. “Beautiful place. I just love it there.”
My chance had arrived to bring up the good nuns of a hospital that had just closed down and the evil sportswriter who should’ve just shut his mouth many years earlier.
I was gathering my courage when Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers’ former manager and baseball’s lifelong ambassador, plopped into the chair on my other side. His prodigious pile of food put my own to shame.
“How’s Jo?” Scully asked, referring to Lasorda’s wife.
They were soon paddling a conversation right past me, back-and-forth like a ping-pong game. Scully eventually asked how he’d met his bride. Lasorda said it happened when he was pitching for a minor league team in Greenville, S.C. They were wed right after the next spring training.
A Matrimonial Advance
“Buzzie Bavasi was our manager at Montreal at the time,” he said, referring to the Dodgers’ Triple-A farm club. “Buzzie asked me, ‘Why don’t you marry that pretty blonde I keep seeing you with?’
“I said I didn’t have enough money to get married. He asked how much I needed … They liked their ballplayers married, you know, so they’re not out carousing all night.
“I told him how much, and he promptly wrote a check for that amount.”
Scully leaned back in his chair, mouth wide open, before declaring, “Wow, I never realized Buzzie was that generous!”
“He wasn’t,” Lasorda replied. “After the wedding, I looked at my paycheck and realized that they were deducting it every month from my salary.”
We all began to laugh. Lasorda then gestured toward me and asked Scully, “Who’s this guy?”
“He’s a reporter from Santa Barbara,” Scully said between chuckles.
Lasorda swiveled my way and gave a look that would’ve intimidated the toughest of umpires.
“What I just said is off the record … Got it?”
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “Of course it is.”
It suddenly felt like a bad time to own up to a faux pas from the past.
Tuesday’s sad news, however, made me realize that nothing is forever. Not Tommy and Jo Lasorda. Not Buzzie Bavasi. Not St. Francis Hospital nor the golf tournament that once gave it support.
And not even the immortal Vin Scully.
The time, therefore, has come for me to confess these stories, no matter how bad they make me look.
Sincerest apologies to all.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.