The Daily Dose/August 3, 2022
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.
“A VERY PLEASANT GOOD EVENING TO YOU WHEREVER YOU MAY BE”: You don’t want to throw the word legendary around willy-nilly, but it’s an appropriate label for Vin Scully, the retired Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers announcer who died Tuesday at 94.
A Warm, Personal Remembrance: For a kid growing up in LA wanting to be a radio announcer, the 70s were a great time. Vin, of course, headed the list of great sports announcers, but you also had Chick Hearn with the Lakers and Bob Miller with the Kings, and you leave out ring announcer Jimmy Lennon at the Olympic Auditorium, PA announcer John Ramsey, a travel agent in real life, who showed up virtually everywhere except those car races at Ascot, and Chick Anderson, the track announcer at Santa Anita, at your peril.
Oh Yeah: Plus you had Casey Kasem doing American Top 40 every week and Dave Diamond, wrapping up his DJ career doing weekends at KFI. It was radio wonderland for LA residents.
“On The Scoreboard…”: But Vin occupied a place others didn’t. One, you got the impression there was no place he’d rather be than announcing that day’s ballgame, even though he had the same problems we do and there had to have been times he didn’t really want to be at the stadium.
Sports Announcing 101: Two, he was unbiased, key anytime you’re announcing a sporting event, but even more so in a town like LA where you always had fans of the opponents listening.
Last But No Least. Three, he knew when to keep quiet. One hell of an example of this is our personal favorite Vin memory, his call of Henry Aaron’s 715th home run, when the Dodgers happened to be in Atlanta.
The Bottom Line: We’re not getting particularly worked up about our own probably inevitable death so we tend not to fret over someone else’s but we felt this. Radio at its best is a friend and when you were listening to Vin, as well as the others mentioned, you were visiting a friend. Vin was as good as there ever was at what he did and if everyone did their work as well as he did this world would be darn near perfect.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – There is more chaos at the morning coffee service (MCS) creamer rack. Today’s Diary.
Today, tho – and, again, there are no suspects – someone turned the three horizontal rows into three vertical rows!!!…I am not making that up…
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 1977 – The Tandy Corporation, owners of Radio Shack, announce the production of one of the first mass-produced personal computers, the TRS-80. The units cost $599 – about $2,800 in today’s money – and came with the games blackjack and backgammon and over 100,000 units were sold in the first year. The first TRS-80s were delivered in November, were available in many of Radio Shacks’ 7,100 stores in December, and Tandy introduced the floppy disk the following summer.
In 1914 – Les Nunamaker of the New York Yankees ties the major league record for most assists in an inning by a catcher in a 4-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers. Nunamaker had three assists in the second inning to tie the mark that had been done twice previously and has been done several times since. Nunamaker threw out Sam Crawford and Bobby Veach on steal attempts and later picked off Hugh High off of second base. The Tigers still got two runs in the inning and the feat has been accomplished many times since.
In 1985 – Tears for Fears is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of three consecutive weeks with Shout. It was the first Top 40 hit for the group, their first of four Top Ten hits, and their first of two #1s, The song went to #1 in six other countries including Switzerland and New Zealand, peaked at #4 in Great Britain, at #56 on Billboard’s soul chart, at #1 on their dance chart, and was Billboard’s 21st-biggest song of the year.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
Third, were we truly men of integrity–men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them–men who believed in us–men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?
John F. Kennedy
Speech to the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1/9/61
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
The 1,000th #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 was Born This Way by Lady Gaga, which spent six weeks at the top starting in February 2011.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
How many Radio Shack stores are there now? – Answer next time!
