Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about some of the memorable Topps cards of Orlando Cepeda, who died on June 28:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/orlando-cepeda-remembering-the-baby-bull-in-baseball-cards/
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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1984 Topps baseball set -- it's 40 years old!

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1984-topps-baseball-one-big-rookie-was-highlight-of-pleasant-looking-set/

Here is an interview I did with WLKF Radio in Lakeland about Forest Ferguson on D-Day, his athletic career and life. Starting at the 6:40 mark. 

If ever there was a saint in baseball, it was the late Vin Scully.

That is not blasphemy, although Scully might have objected. He was the voice of the Dodgers for 67 seasons, beginning in Brooklyn during the 1950 season and moving west when the franchise relocated to Los Angeles in 1958 and remaining on the microphone through the 2016 season. He was a devoted Catholic, a family man and a wonderful storyteller. A humble man who treated everyone with dignity, from sportswriters and fellow broadcasters to everyday fans who wandered up to the press box to say hello.

Scully was also the best to call a game from behind the microphone. Hands down.

Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $34.95; 288 pages), is a compilation of essays that capture the soul of the man. There were plenty of tributes when Scully died on Aug. 2, 2022, at the age of 94.

This book, edited by Southern California-based journalist Tom Hoffarth, is not a biography or a tribute. It is what the title implies — an appreciation of a broadcaster who touched so many lives on and off the field.
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“I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me,” Scully said when he signed off for the final time in 2016.

That was not false modesty, but we can all agree that Scully was dead wrong on that comment.

Scully called football games and golf tournaments, but it was baseball where he made his mark. He was a celebrity, but a humble one — which is difficult when you have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

​There have been books written about Scully during his lifetime. Vin Scully: I Saw it on the Radio, a tribute by Rich Wolfe, was written in 2003. Scully is heavily referenced in Curt Smith’s 1995 book, The Storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas: Sixty Years of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth. Then he gets the full biographical treatment for the first time in Smith’s 2009 work, Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story.
The Los Angeles Times also published a commemorative book in 2022, The Voice: Vin Scully is Dodgers Baseball, along with Vin Scully: The Voice of Dodger Baseball by the Los Angeles Daily News that same year.
Hoffarth’s book is much more personal. Fittingly, it is broken down into nine chapters that are called “innings.” There are observations by broadcasters like Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Joe Buck, Joe Davis, Jaime Jarrin, Ross Porter, Bob Miller and Jessica Mendoza; former players like Orel Hershiser, Eric Karros and Steve Garvey; sports journalists; baseball executives; umpires; and fans.
Even Kevin Fagan, the “Drabble” comic strip artist, weighed in.
The title of the Hoffarth’s book comes from the name of a seminar Scully took while attending Fordham University, the longtime journalist said in an interview with KTTV in Los Angeles. The class explained how to be “an orator who has compassion, and you’re not part of the story, you’re the one who is explaining the story to everyone else and not be the focus of it.”

The beauty of Scully’s announcing technique was that he knew when to keep quiet after a big play. He would let his audience soak in the moment after he documented it. That was apparent in some of his greatest calls.

Here are three that top my list.

Starting with Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, when Kirk Gibson hit a 3-2 pitch off Dennis Eckersley to give the Dodgers a 5-4, come-from behind victory.
“High fly ball into right field. She is gone,” Scully said, drawing out the word “is.” After more than a minute (about 68 seconds) to allow the Dodger Stadium crowd’s cheers to take center stage, Scully continued, adding that “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

What Scully said, University of Southern California journalism professor Dan Durbin writes in an essay in Hoffarth’s book, “was take a moment of your life, a moment of baseball, and transcend it with words.”
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“He didn’t simply describe that moment; he recreated it into something lasting,” Durbin wrote. “He infused it with a rhetorical art.”

When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record in April 1974, Scully’s measured and heartfelt call was memorable.

“What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world,” Scully said. “A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron.”
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When Sandy Koufax threw a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs on Sept. 1, 1965, it was Scully’s attention to detail that ramped up the drama in the Dodgers’ 1-0 victory.

He described how Koufax “mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, wipes it off on his left pants leg, all the while (Harvey) Kuenn just waiting.”
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When Kuenn struck out for the game’s final out, Scully waited 38 seconds before brilliantly giving a time stamp to summarize the event.
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“On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California,” Scully said. “And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games.”

​There are other calls, too — like the game-ending scene in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when Mookie Wilson’s grounder eluded Bill Buckner; or Don Larsen’s perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 Fall Classic. And many more.

What set Scully apart from other broadcasters — besides his wealth of baseball knowledge, storytelling ability and urbane delivery — was the common touch. In his essay, sports journalist Steve Dilbeck wrote that Scully had “an unforced presence.”

He knew the names of the elevator operator at Dodger Stadium, along with the press box attendant.

He would write notes — handwritten thank you notes, words of encouragement to someone who was ill. Dilbeck wrote that in 2016, Scully called Associated Press stringer Joe Resnick, who had terminal colon cancer, to offer words of encouragement. The gesture was warmly received by Resnick, who would die soon after the call.

I had two encounters with Scully at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida. The first came during spring training in 1980, my first year as a sportswriter at The Stuart News. I ran into a former college classmate and fellow sportswriter, who was working at The Palm Beach Post. We were there to do some features but had never been to Holman Stadium. We believed it was rather odd that there was a metal ladder leading to the back of the press box.

We climbed it and sat in what we thought was a rather cramped space. Then the sliding glass door to our right opened, and Scully said hello.

“Are you writers?” he asked. We nodded.

“First time here?” he continued. We nodded again.

“Ah, I see, well the writers sit down there,” he motioned, pointing out several rows of seats that became embarrassingly obvious to us neophytes, as we realized we were sitting in another broadcaster’s booth.

Scully was nice about it, though, telling us that “it happened a lot,” although I am sure he was being diplomatic.

Two years later I saw him again, along with a group of sportswriters and players around the batting cages at the stadium before a spring game.

Scully began telling stories, and everyone gathered around in a circle to listen — mesmerized.

His rapport with fans was genuine. Former Dodgers executive Brent Shyer wrote that a fan stopped Scully on a Chicago street and asked for an autograph. When the fan mentioned that he had been listening to Scully for years, the broadcaster responded, “Oh, you should get a medal.”

The 80th anniversary of D-Day has just passed, and Scully annually made it a point to give his listeners a history lesson on June 6. Author J.D. Salinger was there. So was John “Mad Jack” Churchill, who used a longbow, broadsword and a bagpipe while capturing more than 40 officers.

He was a patriotic man, and his call when Rick Monday thwarted two people who attempted to light an American flag during an April 25, 1976, game at Dodger Stadium.
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“And Scully took our breath away,” Hoffarth writes.

Scully would tell a group in Pasadena during a speakers series event in 2017 that he would no longer watch NFL games because he believed players kneeling during the national anthem were being disrespectful.
“I am so disappointed,” he said. “But I have overwhelming respect and admiration for anyone who puts on a uniform and goes to war.
“So the only thing I can do in my little way is not to preach. I will never watch another NFL game.”
Scully listened to the opposing viewpoints but remained firm in his convictions, Hoffarth writes.
Scully could be disarming. Michael Green, history professor at UNLV, wrote that he was 9 years old when he met Scully in August 1974 after his parents wrote him a letter, describing their son’s desire to become a baseball broadcaster. Green entered the booth and Scully greeted him: “So you’re the guy who wants my job!”
That would be a tough act to follow. Scully ad-libbed “about 80% of his lines” for his role in the 1999 movie, For Love of the Game.
“As an actor, call him “The Natural,” Hoffarth writes.

Scully encouraged being natural. Ask Lisa Nehus Saxon, who faced obstacles as a beat reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News when she battled to get equal access in MLB clubhouses during the 1980s. When she told Scully the next day that all she wanted was to “be one of the guys who could walk into a clubhouse without causing a stir,” the broadcaster gave some sage advice.

“Just strive to be the best version of yourself,” Scully said.

That philosophy led to the Dodger Stadium press box being named in his honor in 2016. The street leading to Dodger Stadium’s main gate was named for Scully in 2016, the same year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

Years ago, a friend gave me a tape of Scully calling a 1957 game at Ebbets Field between the Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates. Listening to it, Scully’s call could have been from any of his 67 memorable seasons with the Dodgers.

​It was always time for Dodger baseball.

It reminded me of one of my favorite Scully lines.

“Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day,” he told the audience, pausing before saying, “Aren’t we all?”

That is perspective at its purest form.
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Hoffarth offers some wonderful perspective in a fine collection of essays. Baseball announcers can connect with their audiences in different ways. Jack Buck had that gravelly voice. Harry Caray was the boisterous, unabashed rooter for the home team. Jon Miller, Bob Uecker, Lindsey Nelson, Phil Rizzuto — along with Red Barber, Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell, Bob Prince and others — all had distinctive styles of calling baseball game.

Vin Scully defined what it meant to call a baseball game. And it is appreciated.
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“He was baseball at its best,” former MLB commissioner Bud Selig wrote. “You can’t do any better.”

Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz are the Rodgers and Hammerstein of baseball book collaborators.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II was the lyricist-composing team who produced music for Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, The King and I and South Pacific. All were theatrical classics.

Comparing Spatz and Steinberg as a writing team to those theatrical greats may seem like a stretch, but it is totally appropriate. That is because their latest collaboration examines the life of a baseball player whose turbulent career on the diamond was equally fascinating on the stage and on film.

Mike Donlin: A Rough and Rowdy Life from New York Baseball Idol to Stage and Screen (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $39.95; 368 pages) showcases the authors’ thorough research and flowing prose. It sings.
Both authors are familiar with the New York baseball scene and have collaborated on two previous books on the subject: 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York in 2010; and 2015’s The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership that Transformed the Yankees.

In 2021, the pair collaborated on Comeback Pitchrs: The Remarkable Careers of Howard Ehmke and Jack Quinn.

Both men are  also prolific solo authors.

What makes the partnership interesting is that they live in different corners of the country. Steinberg is from Seattle, and the Brooklyn-born Spatz resides in South Florida. As Steinberg noted in an interview on his website about their collaboration on 1921, the two men approached their work by having “a real collaboration, a synthesis rather than just dividing up the book into what would be Lyle and Steve sections."
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It's true. It is difficult to determine which writer penned a certain passage. And that is the beauty of collaboration.

Donlin is an interesting character to tackle. “Turkey Mike” — a sobriquet the player disliked — had a 12-season career that spanned 15 years (1899 to 1914). Donlin, a left-hander who also batted left-handed, hit over .300 in all but three of his seasons in the majors. He never led the league in batting; his .356 average in 1905 was behind Cy Seymour’s .377 mark, and Donlin finished second to Honus Wagner in 1904 (.329 to .349) and again in 1908 (.334 to .354).

Donlin did lead the National League in runs scored (124) in 1905.

The Giants of the first decade of the 1900s were dominated by two personalities — manager John McGraw and pitcher Christy Mathewson. Both are Hall of Famers, but had Donlin kept his focus and his temper in check, he might have been considered Cooperstown material. He was certainly a well-known figure among baseball fans and helped New York win back-to-back National League pennants in 1904 and 1905. He was also a key component of the Giants’ bid for the 1908 pennant, a hotly contested race that turned on the infamous “Merkle Boner” and left New York one game away from the pennant.

But as the authors note, Donlin was “a hot-headed brawler who drank too much.” Nevertheless, The Sporting News noted that “the fans idolize the dashing, fleet-footed Donlin.”​

He could hit, run, argue and fight, and Donlin sat out due to contract disputes, and later, when work on the stage proved to be more lucrative. Donlin began his career as a pitcher but soon switched to the outfield, and he became a fan favorite.
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“It was his jaunty, fighting air which made him the idol of the sports world,” screenwriter Jean Plannette said in 1930.
Spatz and Steinberg list a litany of scrapes involving Donlin during the early years of his career. His swagger and short fuse would result in some memorable incidents.

In 1900 he was slashed in the face after taunting a bar patron in St. Louis.

During the 1901 season, Donlin threw a bat at umpire Jack Sheridan, and a fracas in a Baltimore theater in 1902 resulted in his pleading guilty to charges of “common assault” after he struck a woman who was a cast member in a Ben-Hur play. In 1906, he was arrested after punching a train conductor and pulling a gun on a porter.

It is a common thread that Spatz and Steinberg follow as Donlin’s career continued. He was a talented player who could not resist a drink or the good life, and that invariably led to trouble.

“He would fight at the drop of a hat,” St. Louis sportswriter Sid Keener wrote after Donlin’s death in 1933. “In fact, they didn’t have to do as much as tilt a skimmer to get Mike to swing his fists.
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“And yet, despite his desire to go out and look for trouble, everyone who knew Mike Donlin admired him.” 

In addition to the brawls, Donlin had a heroic side, too. Spatz and Steinberg authors note that during spring training in 1905, Donlin and teammate Dan McGann saved an elderly woman from a hotel fire by climbing a ladder and bringing her down from a second-floor woman.

What saved Donlin’s life, the authors write, was his relationship and marriage to his first wife, Mabel Hite. She was “a unique comedic talent” who introduced Donlin to vaudeville and the stage.

The couple, Spatz and Steinberg wrote, had “a loving relationship and a remarkable partnership.” They were married on April 11, 1906, and the authors believe that Donlin was attracted to Hite because “she would bring stability and love to his life, which had had so little of either.”

Hite was diminutive but forceful and made Donlin fly straight, “or else” the marriage would be over.

The lure of the theater would draw Donlin away from the diamond. He and his wife wrote and appeared in Stealing Home, a one-act play in late 1908 that received positive reviews because Hite’s comedic ability carried the show.

Donlin would waver over the next few years, the authors write. Baseball or theater? The latter would win out over the next few years, because it was more lucrative. Donlin had asked the Giants for an $8,000 salary in 1909 but was turned down. He and his wife made much more as actors touring the country, even though Donlin played second fiddle to his wife.

“On the stage his talent was indistinguishable from hundreds of other supporting players,” the authors wrote. “But the stage offered far more money, and more important, he would be with Mabel.”

Donlin returned to baseball in 1911 with the Giants but was soon traded to last-place Boston. Hite, meanwhile, began experiencing headaches and collapsed on stage during a 1912 performance. Reports at the time suggested she was suffering from intestinal cancer, and Hite died on Oct. 22, 1912.

Out of the majors by 1914 after a stint with the Pirates, Donlin remarried and returned to the stage. He married Rita Ross on Oct. 20, 1914 — a member of the musical comedy team, Ross & Fenton — and began appearing in vaudeville.

Donlin was able to reinvent himself during the 1910s, making the transitions from baseball to vaudeville and finally to motion pictures. He starred in the film Right Off the Bat, turning in a performance that was “a distinct surprise” and “could pass as a film lead on ability alone.”

Donlin would continue to bounce between acting and baseball , but gravitated more toward film. He played small parts in many of them, at times not even receiving a credit for his role.

He was not just “any extra.” “He became a beloved figure on the lots of Hollywood,” Spatz and Steinberg wrote.

Despite suffering a “mysterious illness,” Donlin would appear in silent films with John Barrymore in Sea Beast and with Buster Keaton in The General.

But by this time, Donlin’s once bountiful finances had dwindled, and he was unable to pay for medical expenses in 1927. He still remained relevant in entertainment, drawing positive reviews for his appearance in the 1930 play This One Man. He also appeared in more than 30 films between 1930 and 1933.
Donlin died on Sept. 24, 1933, with The Associated Press attributing the cause to an “athletic heart.” He was featured in bit parts of films that were released two years after his death.

Donlin, who was born in Peoria, Illinois, would be inducted into the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.

The authors concede that while Ross was married to Donlin for the last 19 years of his life, little was known about her. The authors said she was “an almost invisible part of this story.” She is listed with Donlin in the 1920 census in Idaho (both listed their occupations as “actors”) and in the 1930 census they were living in Beverly Hills, California.

It is a good bet that many casual baseball fans had never heard of Mike Donlin. But when he died, tributes flowed. Even Grantland Rice penned a long poem in his honor.

“I still recall your swagger — and your easy careless grace,” Rice wrote.

Humorist Will Rogers wrote that Donlin “couldn’t knock as many balls out of the park as Babe (Ruth), but he could knock more men out of it.”

Spatz and Steinberg capture Donlin’s colorful personality in a richly detailed, well-researched work. They do a nice job explaining the history of vaudeville and the early years of the movie industry, and their play-by-play of Donlin’s glory years in baseball — particularly with the Giants — is well documented.

It would have been great to learn how Donlin lost his money during the 1920s, whether by bad investments, alcoholism or medical issues. But the authors do a fine job in orchestrating a complete picture of Donlin.
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Drama always seemed to surround Mike Donlin, but he managed to make the best of it.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1984 Fleer baseball set: 

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1984-fleer-baseball-featured-snakes-umbrella-hats-and-other-fun-cards/