It's all Vin Scully's fault

As I sit here watching the Dodgers on MLB.com while listening to Vin Scully call the game, I'm reminded of why I decided to get into journalism in the first place. Because of baseball.

Back when I was a kid, I didn't just listen to the games. I lived them. I kept score. Meticulously. I jotted down notes. And as soon as a contest was over, I would plop a piece of paper into my old Olympia typewriter and start writing a game story - on deadline. In the morning, I'd check my piece with what the hacks were printing in the Los Angeles Times. It was then that I realized I could make a living as a sportswriter. It was then I realized that I wanted to be a newspaperman.

Somewhere along the way, sportswriting gave way to covering city councils, school boards and the police beat, but it was the Dodgers, and more specifically Vin Scully, who inspired me into this line of work.

It was a choice I never regretted. Not even with the apocalypse upon us. But I find myself much more subdued than I ever was. I find myself often thinking of the thousands of journalists who have been laid off over the past few years, many of them friends of mine. And I find myself often thinking of the dozens of co-workers who will soon be leaving from the Union-Tribune.

To prepare for deadline writing by listening to the radio back when Maury Wills was still playing shortstop for the Dodgers requires a passion that you cannot fake. Yet what is happening today is sorely testing that passion, and I have found myself wondering if there are other careers - teaching perhaps -that I should transition to before my middle age years are up.

But then I listen to Vinny and fall back into my bedroom, circa 1970, typewriter atop a milk carton, stubby little fingers flailing away. That I never put the teddy bears in a row of chairs and pretended to present lessons in history underscores where my passion lies.

A journalist I am. For now. And it's all Vin Scully's fault.