FATE, kismet, the turn of a card, the turn in a road, a turn in the weather, 30 sec onds later or earlier in any direction. For all our plans, luck, good and bad, is still a power hitter.
For Vin Scully it was Marguerite Clark.
Scully, not merely the Voice of the Dodgers since 1950, but the voice of elegant and intelligent play-by-play since 1950, will be in town Tuesday when Ralph Branca will present to him the first Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award from Fordham’s WFUV radio station. In 1947, Scully was a WFUV original.
When we asked him the other day whether there was a spin-of-the-wheel episode in his life, the kind that would allow us to hear Vin Scully for so many years, he thought a second, then said, “Marguerite Clark.”
His voice coach? Academic adviser? Tarot-card reader?
“She was a secretary at Fordham, a friend of mine. Senior year I went to her with Broadcast magazine. It was time to hunt for a job, and she was going to help me send out letters to radio stations, from Massachusetts right on down.
“When we saw the listing for ‘WTOP AM and FM, 50,000 watts, Washington D.C.’, I dismissed it. ‘That station’s much too big; it would never hire me. I’m just a college kid,’ I told her.
“But Marguerite said, ‘Why not? It’s only another three-cent stamp.’ That’s how long ago that was.
“I was a big spender in those days, so I went for another three cents. WTOP wrote back, ‘Please send a sample of your work.’ Back then you had to make sample recordings on these 331/3 discs.
“WTOP again writes back, ‘We don’t hire sight unseen. Come down for an audition.’ Well, I was hired as a summer replacement, a station announcer.
“My first professional on-air words were a commercial for WTOP’s FM station, one of the first in the country. FM was sold as an alternative to AM because you didn’t get interference and weather static. I was supposed to say ‘summer thunderstorms.’ I said, ‘thummer sunderstorms.’
“But being hired at WTOP was a huge break. That was a big CBS station; Arthur Godfrey and Edward R. Murrow worked there. That’s where I met Red Barber [who would recruit Scully for Dodgers broadcasts].
“I later learned that I was the one hired among 54 candidates. If I’d known that the odds were so great, I never would have even bothered to travel to Washington for the audition.
“And none of it would have happened if not for that push from Marguerite Clark, the secretary at Fordham. Marguerite Clark.”
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Tuesday, during the fourth replay of Carlos Delgado‘s weak attempt to snag what Ron Darling described as a “sure-fire double play ball” between first and second – the ball wound up in right field – Darling said Delgado made a “great try.” Come on, Ron, all of us – you, Delgado, viewers, even Giuseppe Franco – knew better.
Mike Fratello, a Jersey guy who works well with Marv Albert, is apparently a candidate to replace Mark Jackson on YES’s Nets’ telecasts. . . . Fox is very interested in having SNY’s Kevin Burkhardt become a fill-in MLB play-by-player come September, when Joe Buck and Matt Vasgersian move to NFL telecasts.
NBC, today at 5 p.m., presents “Icons From The Archives,” which includes 1970s footage of Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron, Joe Namath and Howard Cosell. In the segment on Aaron, Reds pitcher Jack Billingham is seen on stage in a nightclub, singing his country ode to Aaron, “Please Don’t Hit It Off Of Me.” Aaron soon would hit his record-tying 714th homer – off Billingham. And there’s footage of NBC News breaking into an April 4, 1974 soap opera to deliver that news.
Darell Garretson, the longtime NBA ref who died last week at 76, had the most intense, burn-right-through-ya stare I have ever seen in a human. When he shot that stare at Piscataway Nets’ coach Kevin Loughery, it was just a matter of who the other coach would choose to shoot the technicals. . . . As Mets outfielder Angel Pagan stole third with a headfirst slide Wednesday, it struck us that no broadcaster seems to find danger and/or folly in headfirst slides into third, just first and second.
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Speaking of angels and pagans, if only they had beaten the Rangers in Game 5, the Devils, of all teams, last Sunday on NBC would have been preempted by the Pope. . . . And my homeboy, Rich Ippolito, notes that with Boo Weekley having won the PGA Tour event in Hilton Head for a second straight year, Boo Weekley should now be known as Cheer Yearly.