Customer Reviews

Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story (Library Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

Vince Scully the legendary Hall Of Fame announcer for the Brooklyn and now Los Angeles Dodgers... is nearing his sixtieth complete year of broadcasting. I happen to have been blessed to listen to Vinnie as a young boy in New York... and then miraculously... our family moved to Los Angeles the same exact year as the Dodgers... so I have never missed a single year of Vinnie's poetic... magical... announcing of our families beloved Dodgers from the time I was old enough to know the difference between a ball and a strike... till today... when as a Grandfather I listen to Vinnie with my grandchild. This is a book that is long over do... but unfortunately... I'm sad to say it is disappointing for a number of reasons.

Since Vinnie did not participate in the development of this book the author depends entirely on historical quotes... and on countless occasions many sentences and paragraphs include numerous quotes from multiple individuals... and many times the same section has more than one quote from the same individual... IN NO LOGICAL SEQUENCE... and the reader becomes dumbfounded as to which quotes came from which individuals. At times such as these the flow of the story comes to a standstill as the reader literally scratches his head and tries to figure out who said what.

There are also numerous typos and/or sentences that just don't make sense. Such as page forty-eight when the author writes: "IT WOULDN'T HAVE GONE THROUGH THE (BROOKLYN) FENCE." "MUSED CAMPANELLA. MIGHT HAVE GONE THROUGH IT, THOUGH." Huh?? Or on page ninety-nine "THE KID YOU'D LIKE TO SEE RINGING YOUR DOORBELL WHEN YOU DAUGHTER STARTS DATING." There are also important historical mistakes such as the stating that in 1966 Koufax won his third straight Cy Young award. That is incorrect. Koufax didn't win three straight awards... though he did win the Cy Young in 1963,1965 and 1966. The reader is also let down when the most famous baseball fight in modern history involving the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers when Giant Juan Marichal hit Dodger catcher Johnnie Roseboro over the head with a bat is discussed, and none of the prior game detail that culminated in this horrendous event is covered.

When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles Vinnie and the transistor radio is what fueled the Dodgers growth in popularity as much as the team itself. Every member of the family from Grandma and Grandpa... to Mom and Dad... and the kids... all knew Vince Scully simply... and lovingly... by one word "VINNIE". He was a one name superstar way before Madonna... Britney... Magic and Michael. Vinnie was voted *THE MOST MEMORABLE PERSONALITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE LOS ANGELES DODGER FRANCHISE!* This book chronologically covers all the bases in Scully's career... but it is not an easy read due to the sloppiness mentioned earlier. What may or may not be an interesting coincidence... is that this book and the last shoddy baseball book I read... were both mysteriously delivered a couple of weeks "earlier" than the original release dates that had been posted on Amazon for months. Perhaps the publishers cut down on quality control to simply get the books out quicker than originally scheduled for some unknown marketing reasons. If so... I hope they learned their lesson.

As a previous reviewer said, the book came out too quickly. Throughout the book, quotes just appear, without it being clear who said them. Sentences come from nowhere (seemingly misplaced from other chapters where they belong). A very difficult read. Not the quality that Vin Scully deserves, that's for sure.
Hold off on buying this until the problems are corrected.

Love Vin Scully, and was looking forward to learning more about him and some behind the scenes stories. So there was an excellent chance I was going to like this book.

Unfortunately, it was one of the most disappointing books I can remember reading. It is only the 3rd book in my life that I returned to the store; the writing was that poor; the information that uninteresting. Very little insight into Vin; very little if any time was spent by the author with Vin. The writing was amateurish (and as you can tell, I am certainly not a great writer, so for me to think "amateurish", well...). The story bounced all over the map - - I had no clue where the next paragraph was going to go because it was often unrelated to the paragraph before. Incomplete sentences and incomplete thoughts abound in this book.

I have since found out that Mr. Scully did not authorize this book, nor did he have much participation in the book. But then, that was obvious to anyone reading the book.

I rarely review items, but again, this one was so bad and disappointing and such a waste of time, I felt I should share.

Vin Scully is one of my all-time favorite sports announcers but this book is awful. It seems that Mr. Smith has a list of words that he must use up before the book is finished. His sentences run on and make little sense. One should be able to follow a sentence from beginning to end without going back to the beginning. A waste of money. (Please someone write a real biography of Vin Scully!!)

It's ironic that a master of the English language should be profiled by someone whose work contains incomplete and/or unclear sentences and who seems obsessed with using colons. A writer should not try to outshine his subject. In frustration, I put down the book and turned on the television to listen to the real thing. Thank heaven I live in Los Angeles!

I am a former baseball coach, a life-long baseball fan and an avid reader, but reading this book was certainly a chore. Not because the subject (Vin Scully) was dull but Curt Smith tried to be so cute in his descriptions that even a seasoned baseball fan has to read and reread each paragraph to figure out where it is going. Here is an example from page 168: "On August 9 the Peacocks aired Wrigley Field's night inaugural. The Confines were rarely friendlier: Cubs, 6-4. L.A. finished 1-10 in the regular season against New York. The LCS became an antigen: ex-Brooks in seven. On October 15 a Series suggestive of 14 years earlier opened vs. Oakland at Dodger Stadium. Happily, network voices were as far from 1974's as Mary Martin from Madonna. Joining Vin was CBS Radio's Buck." The book's beginning is more straight forward, but the farther one reads in the book the more it is written in code.
Vin Scully's story deserves a better tell than this one. It is a very slow read. The editor's let this one go by without a good proofread.

I grew up listening to Vin Scully and this book is total disappointment. I cannot believe that this got published. It is the most choppy, incoherent book I have ever tried to read. Smith interjects words and sayings out of context that leave you stumped and bewildered. After the first 3 chapters I was going to throw it away but tried again to read. Alas, half way through I couldn't take it anymore and I threw it out the window. Terrible writing style. Hopefully Vin Scully will collaborate with another author to tell his magnificent story.

This book is poorly written and a difficult read. Vin Scully deserves better than this mish mash of inaccuracies. One can only assume that the author was paid by the word and wanted to fit in as many as he possibly could. The authors credits were written with more thought than the entire book. If you have a Vin Scully fan on your Christmas list, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT give them this book.

What a shame, given the subject matter, namely the greatest baseball play-by-play man ever. I kept waiting for the book to get better after a slow start, but it never did. More content regarding the time period, than about Vin Scully. Mr. Smith must like to use a punctuation cannon when he writes. Sentences are disjointed, too much "insider" stuff that even the most seasoned baseball fan would never get. As a lifelong Dodger fan, and more so a Vin Scully fan, this book was a total disappointment. This book does a disservice to any Vin Scully admirer. I found it hard to believe that Mr. Smith has authored 13 previous books in the sports genre.

I wish I had read the other readers' reviews before I purchased this book. As several have said, I purchased this book because I have listened to Vin Scully my whole life. It is a shame that his first biography is written in such an akward, disjointed style. I cannot remember the last time I quit on a book without finishing it but 50 pages of "Pull Up a Chair" was all I could take. What a disappointment.

Didn't Vin and the publisher read this book before it was released? Where are Rick Riley or John Feinstein when we need them? Too bad.