We will watch the #FenwayBowl on Saturday and think of Vin Scully, whose iconic career was launched by a college football game played in Fenway Park. #Bearcats #Louisville
The world lost Vin Scully in 2022. As the year comes to an end, we want to keep Vin Scully’s memory alive in any way we reasonably can. This is not a baseball site, but one happy fact about Vin Scully’s broadcasting career is that it was launched by a college football game. Since college football is priority number one here at Trojans Wire, and since a lot of USC football fans care about and appreciate Vin Scully — as Angelenos generally do — it’s certainly worth it to note that Vin, if he was still around, would be watching one bowl game in particular this Saturday.
The first-ever Fenway Bowl was not played last year due to the pandemic. Vin wasn’t able to watch a bowl game played in Fenway Park. This year will launch the event. Cincinnati and Louisville will play at 8 a.m. Los Angeles time on Saturday, beginning a set of seven bowl games on December 17.
Fenway Park was the site of a college football game which propelled Vin’s legendary broadcasting journey.
Here’s the story: A big Notre Dame-North Carolina football game in November of 1949 was supposed to be assigned to one broadcaster, but that broadcaster fell ill. Vin Scully’s mentor, Red Barber, did not yet know Scully at the time. Barber was the sports director for CBS Radio. Barber reassigned Ernie Harwell — who would become the iconic radio announcer for the Detroit Tigers — to the Notre Dame-North Carolina game. He therefore needed someone else to call the game between Boston University and Maryland in Fenway Park.
Here’s Red Barber’s recollection of the story:
“We needed someone to go up to Boston,” Barber told the Los Angeles Times. “I asked Ted Church for the name of that red-haired kid he had brought in. He didn’t know. I asked around, and nobody knew. I remembered he’d said he had attended Fordham, so I called Jack Coffee, the Fordham athletic director. That’s how I got Scully’s name and number.”
Scully braved very harsh and cold conditions on the Fenway Park roof — he was not placed in a warm, heated press box — and did such a great job that Barber took notice. Barber took Scully under his wing and developed him as part of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcast team that next spring, in 1950.
Scully would call Dodger games for the next 67 seasons.
When Barber left after 1953 to call New York Yankee games, Scully — in 1954 — became the Dodgers’ No. 1 play-by-play announcer and would remain in that position for 63 years. Scully and Jerry Doggett were the two principal Dodger radio announcers from 1957 through 1987, joined by Ross Porter in 1977. Doggett retired after the 1987 season. Scully and Porter were joined by Don Drysdale, then by Rick Monday. Porter’s run ended in 2004, with Scully continuing through 2016.
It all started at a college football game in Fenway Park. We’ll definitely watch the Fenway Bowl and think of Vin Scully.
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