Vin Scully Hosts Game Show, February 6, 1969 |

In a skit, Tim Conway portrays San Francisco State President S.I. Hayakawa as a samurai warrior preparing to battle student radicals.

Vin Scully was hitting the game-show circuit.

The legendary Dodgers broadcaster had signed on to host "It Takes Two" on NBC. In an interview Feb. 11 with Times columnist Charles Maher, Scully sounded very much like a man thinking about life after baseball.

"I might be the poor man’s Art Linkletter," he said. "Maybe that’s what I hope to do — some day."

Maher added: "Some day may be very close at hand."

Thankfully, it wasn’t. Scully is still very much with the Dodgers.

"I’d like to try it just to see if I can do it. So if the time comes when I want to call it a career with the Dodgers, I’d have something else to do," Scully said. Seems impossible that he thought a Plan B was necessary.

"I really love baseball. … The only thing I hate — and I know you have to be realistic and pay the bills in this life — is the loneliness on the road," Scully said. "I know there are a lot worse jobs. I used to wash dishes in a hotel. And I used to be a mailman. And once I was a milkman. I had to get up at 2:30 in the morning to load the truck. That was beautiful. Doubleheaders and traveling are sensational next to that.

"I’ve got a racket. But I hate to see nights and days go by without seeing the family. Time is the most precious thing of all, and I hate to squander it."

— Keith Thursby

5 Responses to Vin Scully Hosts Game Show, February 6, 1969

JT says:

February 6, 2009 at 9:36 am

Interesting to read a review of the infamous “Turn-On.” IMDb indicates that the first (and last) episode didn’t even air out here.

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Cold in PHX says:

February 6, 2009 at 10:29 am

I noticed that too. Turn-On probably wasn’t seen on the West Coast, because it was the first TV show to be cancelled and pulled while on the air.

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Trolley Dodger says:

February 6, 2009 at 11:48 am

Awesome find, guys. Vinny is the best.

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Brady says:

February 6, 2009 at 11:56 am

That oil spill was incorporated into the plot of Sleeping Beauty, a typically awesome Ross MacDonald novel. (MacDonald, if memory and that one biography that’s out there serves, was pretty active in prostesting/publicly shaming that oil company.)

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David Middlecamp says:

February 6, 2009 at 1:05 pm

Our paper usually covers San Luis Obispo County but the epic nature of the 1969 oil spill drove coverage 100 miles south.
Telegram-Tribune staff writer Gilbert Moore wrote, “It coated miles of peerless beach with sludgy slime.
It captured loons, sea scooters, grebes-hundreds of them-in a cocoon of death.”
I have put a link to your site in my most recent post on the subject.

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