Herb Score

[ballpeen]

from Cleveland.com

 

Former Cleveland Indians pitcher and broadcaster Herb Score died this morning at age 75 at his home in Rocky River, the Indians confirmed today.

 

He was a brilliant Indians pitcher whose baseball career was virtually ended at age 23 when he was hit in the right eye by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald of the New York Yankees on May 7, 1957.

 

Then he became a Cleveland sportscasting institution, calling Indians games on radio and television for 34 years, longer than anybody else in the city's baseball history.

 

He gained a loyal following, although he did not have the greatest voice or elocution. He was like a favorite uncle who talked baseball. "For me, broadcasting the game is like sitting in the stands talking to the fellow sitting next to me," he said.

 

Still, to those who had seen his talent on the mound, it was comparable to Napoleon becoming a war correspondent.

 

 

Cleveland State University Special Collections

Herb Score (left) and Kerby Farrell of the Cleveland Indians talk pitching in 1957.

"He was a great pitcher," said his close friend, former Indians right fielder Rocky Colavito from his home in Bernville, Pa. "He had a chance at becoming as good a lefty as there ever was. He had that kind of stuff. He had hard knocks, but he never complained. You had to respect him for that. I loved him like a brother."

 

"Ted Williams (Hall of Fame hitter) said he had the best fastball of any left-hander he ever faced," the late Ken Coleman, onetime Indians sportscaster, once said from his home outside Boston.

 

When Score stepped on the Stadium pitching mound on the night that changed his life, he appeared to be headed for baseball greatness

 

 

 

 

...............................................................................

 

R.I.P Herb

[Pumpkin Eater]

 

There is still something missing from the radio broadcasts after he retired.

[Guest Masters]

It is a sad day in Tribe town.

[Beanpot]

Yeah, sad day. He and his family were all over Rocky River growing up and some of them are still there to this day. Condolences to every one of them.

 

Terrific write-up in the PD. Thanks for posting that peen. I especially liked the picture of Herb and Rocky. Very touching.

 

Joe Posnanski wrote a terrific bit about Herb a few months back. It's long and brilliant, like most all of Joe's entries. He promises a retrospective soon. Really, if you like baseball and wonderful writing, you owe it to yourself to read Posnanski's blog/column/books every chance you get: http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/

 

Here's just a part of his entry about Herb from early July:

 

Herb Score was, of course, the Indians radio voice when I was young. I know I’ve written before (I know!) that people around town called him Herb “No” Score for the obvious reasons, but I firmly believe that with the weather, your mother’s spaghetti and meatballs and baseball announcers, quality is beside the point. It doesn’t really matter if someone else has 72 and sunny every day or someone else’s mother is Lidia Bastianich or some other kid’s listening to Vin Scully.

 

Herb was ours, and he forever will be the voice of summer for me. He gave us everything, he gave us the weather (“It’s a beautiful day for baseball”), he gave us the news (“Don’t forget Sunday is youth jacket day!”) and he gave us a feeling of what it was like to be at the ballgame even that meant (as it often did) being in a cavernous 80,000 person stadium with 2,400 people freezing their butts off while Don Hood gave up the lead in the seventh.

 

I don’t remember the precise time when I heard Herb Score’s sad story, but I’m sure it was not from him. Herb in my memory never talked about the old days on the air. I mean NEVER. I’m almost certain it was my father who one day said, “You know that Herb got hit in the face with a line drive. It ended his career.” I did not know that, in fact. I was still at that age I just assumed that everything was as it had always been — Herb Score had ALWAYS been the Indians announcer, the Indians had ALWAYS stunk, my father had ALWAYS worked in a factory and so on. When I heard that I became fascinated. Hit in the face? Ended his career? I began to research him.

 

Score signed with Cleveland in 1952, three years before the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Sandy Koufax. In fact, you can find newspaper stories from 1955 and 1956 where various Dodgers types would say that Koufax had the talent to become another Herb Score. Unlike Koufax, Score was not a bonus baby and so did not have to go right to the big leagues. He went to Indianapolis instead, struggled mightily, and then went to Reading and wasn’t much better. Score had the incredible fastball, of course — in that 100 mph range, probably — but his delivery was violent, and his control was nonexistent, and he basically, as he once told me, had no idea what he was doing out there.

 

Then in ‘54, he went back to Indianapolis was suddenly was brilliant. He won 22 games and struck out a billion. He started with the big league club in 1955 — just like Koufax. He was older than Koufax, though, more polished, more ready to show his brilliance. Even though he was second in the league with 154 walks*, he was incredible. Herb went 16-10 with a 2.85 ERA, a 140 ERA+ and a league crushing 245 strikeouts — nobody else was even close.

 

*Score’s 154 walks, impressively, was not even CLOSE to Bob Turley’s 177, which no one except Nolan Ryan has topped in the last 50 years. But here’s somethign even more impressive: Turley’s 177 was not good enough to lead all of baseball. That same year Sad Sam Jones walked 185, which is the most for any National League pitcher since 1900. Do you think the Rays are going to send their Defenders of the Game after me?

 

Score, of course, won Rookie of the Year in ‘55. I have his baseball card from that year, and I look at it sometimes … here was a guy who was young and unhittable and had to believe he had a chance to become one of the best who ever lived. Herb doesn’t really talk about that … he’s a humble guy. But there haven’t been too many first years like it. Almost 30 years later, Dwight Gooden would shake up the world when as a 19 years old he went 17-9 with a 2.60 ERA (137 ERA+) and 276 strikeouts. People thought Gooden would transform the game. Score was like that only left-handed.

 

Herb’s next year, he was even better. He went 20-9 with a 2.53 ERA, and his 263 strikeouts was the most ever for a SECOND year player (and it was 70 more than anyone else in the league). He had a 166 ERA+, which is amazing, and he cut down his walks by about 20 percent, and he led the league in shutouts, and he allowed an incredible 5.85 hits per nine innings. He wasn’t about to become the best pitcher in the league, no, he WAS the best pitcher in the league, and he had just turned 24, and it had been a while since baseball had seen something like him.. Later, there would be Koufax and Sam McDowell and Frank Tanana and Unit and Scott Kazmir and all that, but in 1956, there had not been a dominating, strike-em-out, flame throwing lefty in a while. Some called him another Lefty Grove, but it had been 20 years since Grove. You couldn’t go back to Rube Waddell. There was Hal Newhouser, but Score was different. Score was like something new. The Red Sox reportedly offered a million bucks to get him. The Indians said no.

 

Score came out in ‘57 like he would be even better. His first outing he went 11 innings against the White Sox, gave up two earned runs (despite walking 11 — ELEVEN!). He struck out 10. He shut out the White Sox his next time out on four hits, then beat Detroit in a three-hit, one-run performance his next time out. He was rolling. He struggled a bit against Washington, giving up five runs in 6 1/3 innings, but he struck out 12. His ERA was 2.04. He had not given up a home run all year … had not given one up since yielding a homer to Ted Williams on Sept. 14 of the previous year.

 

Then the fateful day: May 7, 1957. The Indians faced the Yankees. Hank Bauer led off with a groundout to third. Up stepped Gil McDougald, a good player who would finish fifth in the MVP voting that year. The count worked to 2-2, and that’s when McDougald hit the line drive that would forever haunt him … he blasted the ball right back at Score, who did not have time to get his glove up. The ball smashed into Score’s right eye. Most people don’t know that McDougald was thrown out on the play … third baseman Al Smith took the rebound and threw out McDougald, who would say he wasn’t really running. He was scared. Everyone in the house — about 18,000 people — was scared. Witnesses would say you could hear the ball hit Score’s eye echo all over the gigantic ballpark.

 

Everyone rushed to the mound to help — Indians, Yankees, trainers of all kinds. The public address announcer said: “If there is a doctor in the stands, will he please report to the playing field.” Score’s memory of all these things was always sketchy when I talked to him … either it was sketchy or he had already told the story so many times that he simply did not have anything left to say about it. He was conscious the whole time. The New York Times would report that after he left the field and waited for the ambulance, he said, “I wonder if Gene Fulmer felt this way.” Fulmer had just been knocked out for the first time in his career by Sugar Ray Robinson.

 

His nose was broken, his right eye swelled so much that doctors would not know for days if he would ever see out of it again. McDougald was so shell shocked by the experience that he talked about retiring.

 

And that’s where the story ended for me as a kid. Herb Score, this brilliant young pitcher (“He would have been better than Feller,” Cleveland old-timers said) got hit by a pitch and was never the same. A tragic tale. My friend Terry Pluto blamed the Indians agony of the last five decades on the curse of Rocky Colavito, but I always thought that curse of Herb Score fit better*. He’s one of baseball’s all-time could have beens, and it seems at least possible that with a healthy Score in ‘59, the Indians and not the Go Go Sox might have won the pennant. And then … who knows?

 

*Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s really the curse of Chief Wahoo, it’s been nothing but heartbreak since the Indians went with the red-faced Wahoo … not that I’m getting into THAT political hornet’s nest again.

 

Well, it turns out that the story DOES NOT end on the day of McDougald’s liner. And here’s where the revemyth begins. Score recovered. He started pitching again. He made the club out of spring in ‘58. He had a terrible outing his first time out … naturally. Some people suggested that he had changed his delivery. They said his velocity was down. He pitched pretty badly his first three times out. But his fourth outing of the year, Herb Score was back. he threw a three-hit shutout against Chicago, struck out 13, it was a masterful performance, and led people to believe that Score was all the way back.

 

Then his next outing he would pitch reasonably well against Washington … but it was during that outing he had to leave in the ninth inning because he felt some sharp pain in his left elbow. The doctor called it a “strained and inflamed” ligament back then, in those years before Tommy John surgery, and it seemed like he might miss a couple of starts. Herb told reporters he was doing better the next week.

 

But it wasn’t better. Score missed six weeks. And here’s where it really ended … he was never again a great pitcher. Oh, Score had a couple more high strikeout games. He struck out 13 Yankees in May of 1959, including Yogi twice. He struck out 14 Kansas City A’s two months later. But these were just warm days in December. In ‘59, Herb dealt with some more arm issues and went 9-11 with a 4.71 ERA. The Indians traded him to the White Sox then, and he went 5-10 with a decent 3.72 ERA, and then he was done.

 

And so the second version of the story went that Score WOULD have come back — in fact, WAS all the way back — when the arm troubles really destroyed him. Herb himself has suggested this was true. In those dark ages of arm surgery, bad elbows ruined many a great player, and in the second version it was this and not the McDougald hit that ended Score’s bright career. And I think for people who follow the game closely, this became the more accurate version of Score’s tale.

 

In the end, though, I’ve come to believe that everyone had it right the first time. Thus the revemyth. Yes, Score did come back and look good for one game. Yes, he had arm trouble which never really let him go. But, you know, I was talking with Ken Griffey the other day — did I mention I’m writing this book about the ‘75 Reds? Griffey was talking about how when he was young and in the minors he was a brilliant base stealer. He stole 43 bases in 107 games in Triple A. He was perhaps the fastest player in the National League in ‘75 and ‘76, a guy with 80 stolen base speed. But he really didn’t steal a lot of bases for reasons that … well, hope you are saving up for the book.

 

Anyway he said that over those those couple of years, he LOST it. He just lost that ability to steal — whatever it is that makes up the ability. He lost that combination of nerve and awareness and burst and whatever else. He was a GOOD base stealer, but he was never again a great one. The moment was gone.

 

And I think that could be what happened to Herb Score too. We can never know for sure what it is that drives an athlete. I’ve always thought that for every great baseball player there is probably a domineering or missing father, a discouraged best friend, a pretty face in the crowd or a fear of silence. But what do I know? Motivations are personal, and they are hard to explain … hell, I don’t even know why i write this blog.

 

But I do think that when McDougald’s line drive hit Score, something changed, it HAD to change, Score could never be the same again. Maybe, as some suggest, he did change his delivery, which caused the arm trouble. Maybe the long layoff and then throwing as hard as Score threw caused the arm trouble. Maybe Score had lost that little edge, that sense of invincibility. Or maybe because of his violent delivery, he was an elbow injury waiting to happen. I don’t know, for sure.

 

I just think that whatever happened to Herb Score happened because, at the height of his power, a line drive came back too fast. I think it’s just like I heard it when I was 9 or 10. The young Herb Score pitched just about as well as any young pitcher who ever played this crazy game. Then he got hit in the face with a line drive. And he never pitched great again. And it’s the saddest kind of sports story, that story of what Roger Kahn called unmade music.

 

There’s one more thing I want to say about Herb Score: He has not lived a sad life. He was the Indians announcer for 35 years, and he retired as one of the most beloved men in Cleveland, and when he got into a car accident in 1998 people were praying for him all over. He said something once that I think about all the time, something that I think is much bigger than baseball. Terry Pluto asked him why he would never say something like, “Well, this is a pretty obvious bunting situation” or “He will probably try to steal second here.”

 

And Herb said this: “No, that’s a Dad’s job"

 

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/07 ... -revemyth/

 

Beanpot

[ballpeen]

I was 9 when Score was hit....and he was a big favorite of mine, as he was of all 9 year old boys in Cleveland at the time.

 

A few years later, a couple of new kids moved to Bay and said he didn't come back because he was scared....I got in a fight over that and made the older of the three take it back.

 

Having to wear "husky" sizes did have it's advantages.

[Furnier]

I loved Herb Score. The man was a Cleveland institution and made the likes of Jack Brohamer, Del Unser, Frank Duffy and Charlie Spikes not only palatable, but exciting.

 

Herb Score personified the baseball experience for me. I was sad when he retired, but today I feel like we lost one of the greats.

 

R.I.P. Herb

 

Doug

[Beanpot]

I was 9 when Score was hit....and he was a big favorite of mine, as he was of all 9 year old boys in Cleveland at the time.

 

A few years later, a couple of new kids moved to Bay and said he didn't come back because he was scared....I got in a fight over that and made the older of the three take it back.

 

Having to wear "husky" sizes did have it's advantages.

 

Jesus, I'm so freaking glad you found this place, peen. You have the gift of saying tons with few words. The "advantages" thing is golden!

 

Beanpot

[Beanpot]

I loved Herb Score. The man was a Cleveland institution and made the likes of Jack Brohamer, Del Unser, Frank Duffy and Charlie Spikes not only palatable, but exciting.

 

Herb Score personified the baseball experience for me. I was sad when he retired, but today I feel like we lost one of the greats.

 

R.I.P. Herb

 

Doug

 

Amen, Doug.

 

He was the transistor under the pillow guy for me, even if it was a bit after the transistor. That voice of his continues to contain a ton of memories, no matter is he's around or not.

 

Beanpot

[CIMO.]

R.I.P. indeed. Herb as a hurler was well before my time but I'll always remember his radio work. Kind of the antithesis to the ESPN guys like Mark Schlereth who think they're above the rest of us because they played professionally, I hardly knew anything about Herb's career until I read Pluto's 'Curse of Rocky Colavito'. Great article posted by Bean, too.

 

 

The Tribe run in the 90s was the best time in my life as a sports fan and I doubt it will ever be topped, even with a title. But I always wish I could've been there for the Tribe's real glory days.

[Beanpot]

The Tribe run in the 90s was the best time in my life as a sports fan and I doubt it will ever be topped, even with a title. But I always wish I could've been there for the Tribe's real glory days.

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums up how I feel. The Schlereth thing is especially spot on. Here's Ocker:

 

Sheldon Ocker: Indians legend Herb Score was one of us

By Sheldon Ocker

Beacon Journal sports columnist

POSTED: 06:20 p.m. EST, Nov 11, 2008

 

More than a few Northeast Ohio sports fans viewed Herb Score as a tragic icon, a heartrending example of Cleveland's luckless sports landscape.

 

I will tell you from experience that he didn't agree.

 

Oh, maybe he did for a few moments after one of our first encounters, but he shook off the minor disaster almost instantly. More remarkably, Score continued to speak to me for the next 30 or so years.

 

In 1970, I was a rookie baseball writer who had just been handed a hamburger in the small snack bar behind the press box at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Score was standing next to me.

 

Burger in one hand, plastic squeeze bottle filled with ketchup in the other, I pressed hard. Ketchup burst out of the container, bounced off the meat patty and landed on Score's nearly white raincoat, purchased earlier in the day.

 

I was mortified. I had just stained a man's expensive (I think) garment, maybe permanently. Of all the trench coats I might have soiled, why did this one have to be resting on the broad shoulders of Herb Score, of all people?

 

Score was of my generation, but when I was in elementary school, he was already pitching for the Indians. And not just pitching. Score was to be the next exalted pitcher in a franchise that employed future Hall of Fame starters Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Early Wynn.

 

Score was sure to follow them. In 1955, he was American League Rookie of the Year. He led the league in strikeouts and was selected to play in the All-Star Game his first two seasons, and he won 20 games in 1956.

 

We all know what happened after that. On May 17, 1957, Score was struck in the right eye by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald of the New York Yankees. The ball broke Score's nose and fractured several bones in his face. He recovered but was never the same pitcher, winning only 19 more games in a career that abruptly ended with the Chicago White Sox in 1962.

 

Score forever adamantly denied that being hit in the face led to his decline as a pitcher. His take: A more mundane injury, a sore elbow, shortened his career.

 

Maybe so, maybe not.

 

More important, Score moved on. One phase of his life had ended. No sense brooding over spilled milk (or sprayed ketchup). Feeling sorry for himself didn't offer much solace, so why bother? Others suffered worse fates than him and didn't complain.

 

But it would be a mistake to say that Score was merely trying to make the best of a bad situation. He honestly didn't see himself as unlucky or as being deprived of his destiny. So what if he didn't make the Hall of Fame. How many players do?

 

Voice of the Indians

 

Score became the radio voice of the Indians from 1964 through 1997. He felt fortunate to be paid a salary for speaking into a microphone for a few hours a day, and not even every day. For five months of the year, he didn't even do that. This was not Score's definition of work.

 

Certainly, he didn't take the job seriously enough to become a polished broadcaster. Score didn't understand that talking about baseball is no less a profession than playing baseball. Maybe that's why he became known for his bloopers.

 

''Warming up in the bullpen is Efrem Zimbalist Jr.,'' Score once announced, mistaking a television actor for Tribe reliever Efrain Valdez.

 

And Score once gave this line for an outgoing pitcher: ''And for Steve Lamar, two innings, one hit, no runs and a walk.''

 

The problem is that Steve Lamar was his partner in the broadcast booth.

 

But nobody seemed to mind Score's mistakes. He was one of us, a guy who worked and lived in Northeast Ohio for decades. He represented the joy and the disappointment of the 20th century Indians like no man this side of Bob Feller. Maybe even including Feller.

 

Fabric of the team

 

Eleven years after his last broadcast, until his death at age 75 on Tuesday, no sports fan around here is likely to consider Score's life as separate from the fabric of the local baseball team. And consider this: In the 39 years Score was associated with the Tribe, he watched or participated in more than 6,200 games — 41 percent of the team's total from its inception until his retirement.

 

Score had his shortcomings as a broadcaster, but he did one thing better than anyone. When play stopped for a discussion among players, managers and umpires, Score instantly knew why. Always, without exception.

 

During a game at the Metrodome in the early '80s, a manager called time and began jawing with an umpire. I was sitting next to Terry Pluto, then the beat writer for the Plain Dealer.

 

Neither of us could figure out what was going on, so we headed for the broadcast booth to ask Score. While we waited for a commercial break, Pluto lost the handle on a paper cup, and Score suddenly was bathed in hot chocolate.

 

He stopped his description of the game and told the radio audience, ''Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer came into the booth. I do not know why he is here, but he just spilled hot chocolate on my pants, on my shirt, on my tie, on my shoes, on my scorebook. Hot chocolate is everywhere. ... And there's a fastball for ball 2.''

 

Meanwhile, ball one and a couple of strikes never made the airwaves, but so what? If Score taught his listeners anything, it's that baseball, even at the highest level with millions of dollars at stake, is just a game for most of us.

 

Moreover, even that rare individual who might have reached the top of the major-league mountain if not for a bad break needs to keep his life in perspective.

 

And so as he did with me after the ketchup disaster, Score continued his friendly association with Pluto for the next three decades. Believe me when I say that Terry and I were grateful.

 

http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/34297829.html

 

Beanpot

[JohnG71097]

I got to hang with Herb one night

 

It was at the old Stadium Club/Alvie's. He had just come in after a home tribe game, must've been late 80's I guess. He had his usual after the game VO and Ginger. He talked to me for about 10 minutes, just baseball bs before he excused himself to head on out. He was an everyday guy and that is what made him so special, he didn't put on airs.

 

Posanski puts it best

 

Herb Score (1933-2008)

Math is not my thing, of course, but I once spent an afternoon trying to figure out how many hours I have spent through the years listening to Cleveland Indians announcer Herb Score. It added up to something like 173 full days. Of course that does include commercials. And I wasn’t always listening that close.

 

Herb Score died Tuesday. He was 75 years old. It had been more than 10 years since he had called an Indians ballgame, but his death still hit me hard. He was very much on my mind Tuesday night when, for reasons that I cannot begin to explain, I found myself as the featured speaker at a singles club at a church. Someone asked what it was like growing up in Cleveland in the 1970s when, let’s face it, things weren’t all that great. Cleveland was a punchline. The sports teams were all lousy. The Cavaliers off-court entertainment was called “Fat guy eating beer cans,” which pretty succinctly described the act. The Indians were such a farce that sometimes the team bus had to drive around on the road to find a hotel that management had not stiffed on the bill. The city went bankrupt. It was said that you could walk across Lake Erie. The Cuyahoga River had only just stopped burning. The sky was smog. The snow was slush. The Winter of ‘77 was like Siberia with potholes. That was home.

 

And, I said, here’s what I believe: When you are growing up, you are raised by your parents, but also by your friends, your teachers, your faith, your neighbors, your city. At the end of the day, you are really raised by your hometown baseball announcer.

 

Herb Score was the Cleveland Indians radio announcer from 1968, the year after I was born, to 1997, which was the year the Indians lost to Florida in the World Series. His last game was Game 7, which was fitting because the Indians lost in heartbreaking style, a scene Herb relived many times, for most of his life.

 

He called games on the radio for a nice even 30 years, and, speaking personally, those are the 30 years that defined me. Those 30 years more or less take me from infancy to my wedding day. Herb was always there, in the years before I was was fully aware and in the years when I would thumb-tack baseball cards to my bedroom wall. He was there in the years when I felt sure I would play second base for the Indians and the years after I realized that, no, I would not. He was in my ear at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, when my feet stuck to the ground and a metal beam blocked third base and I discovered that childhood thrill of watching a game AND listening to baseball on a transistor radio at exactly the game time. He was there in the times when I felt lonely after moving away to North Carolina, those warm evenings when I would sneak into my parents car and pick up Indians baseball games to feel a bit of home.

 

He was calling Cleveland Indians games in that heady spring of ‘87, when I felt sure that Cory Snyder, Joe Carter and Brook Jacoby were taking the Indians to the World Series.

 

I remember sitting in my car in front of my apartment in Cincinnati and listening when Herb Score called the final out in ‘95 and the Indians clinched their first playoff spot in more than 40 years. I will not say if I cried. That’s between me and Herb.

 

Yes, I do romanticize baseball radio announcers. I cannot help it. I think all the time about all those farmers who harvested the fields across the Midwest while listening to Jack Buck call Cardinals games. I think about all those people stuck on freeways in Los Angeles while Vin Scully told a story about Jackie Robinson. I think about people backyard barbecues in Cincinnati when Joe Nuxhall’s voice filled the empty spaces. I think about people sipping coffee in Seattle and listening on their headphones to Dave Niehaus shouting “It will fly away!” on a long home run. There’s a connection to baseball announcers on the radio, I think, like there is a connection to summer songs and summer movies and summer lovin’*.

 

*Happened so fast. Met a girl, crazy for me. Met a boy. Cute as can be.

 

Herb Score was my summer. I’ve always said that I have no idea if Herb was a “good” announcer, as far as quality goes, but that’s probably a bit disingenuous. I recall people around town would call him Herb “No” Score because he would sometimes go, you know, months between giving us the score of the game. Then again, I always thought Herb was trying to spare us; most of the time in those days we didn’t want to know the score, not really. Herb Score was like the weather, and you complained on bad days and felt thankful for the good ones. I always said that a warm winter day in Cleveland felt like a gift from heaven. So did a summer day when Herb gave the final score, and the Indians actually won.

 

And, of course, I’ve long been aware of Herb’s bloopers. He made them so often they seemed a part of the broadcast, like the pre- and postgame shows.There would be a mispronunciation here, a gaffe there. The Cleveland Plain Dealer put up a short list of Herbisms, of which I remember one clearly. I never thought of it as a gaffe but more as a moment of Zen. Herb said: “It’s a long drive. Is it fair? Is it foul? It is!”

 

Anyway, quality is beside the point when it comes to your hometown announcer. For me, Herb is the standard, will always be the standard, and by that I mean that every other baseball announcer will always be compared to him. This guy is louder than Herb. This guy talks more than Herb. The guys tells more stories than Herb. This guy doesn’t mispronounce as many names as Herb. This guy isn’t as fun to listen to as Herb. And so on.

 

The best words to describe Herb Score’s style are “Low-key.” He spoke low, and he had a low voice, and he didn’t spend a lot of time trying to paint word pictures. He didn’t question moves. He didn’t criticize players much (the most you would get out of Herb was a “He probably should have caught that ball,” or “Those walks will come back to haunt you”).

 

He didn’t let his inflection waver much, even when things went horribly wrong. And yet, while it might sound contradictory, he also gave you the impression that he was exactly where he wanted to be, in the radio booth, telling us what was going on. It’s hard to explain, but Herb always sounded off this quiet enthusiasm. I don’t know if it was really that way, and I don’t really want to know. Because it doesn’t matter. He SOUNDED that way. Herb Score never complained, never even hinted, that a game was dragging on too long or that the Indians were a circus act or that a game was out of reach.* I have heard announcers who were technically better than Herb, who spoke a lot louder, who got more excited after home runs and more disgusted after errors, and they sounded distant to me, sounded like they just were doing a job.

 

Herb, though, always sounded like he had stopped by the stadium before the game, and someone noticed him and said, “Hey, Herb Score! Fancy seeing you here. Hey, as long as you’re here, you wanna call a few innings on the radio?” And Herb said: “Hey, sure, I’ll give it a try.”

 

*I had never really thought of it before, but I’m sure that his consistent and optimistic tone had something to do with why people called him “No score.” It wasn’t just that he gave the score out less often. If the Indians were losing 12-1 in the eighth, as they sometimes were, his voice never gave it away. There was always a tinge of hope in Herb Score’s voice … until he finally had to come clean and give us the cold and unforgiving numbers. Then people would angry snap off the radio and think, “Dammit Herb, I would have turned it off earlier if I had known. Why didn’t you give me the score earlier?”

 

He rarely — almost never, in my memory — told stories of his playing days. I can remember being quite shocked when I first heard that he had been a brilliant young pitcher, a left-handed Feller, a Koufax prequel, all before a Gil McDougald line drive smashed into his right eye. It’s fair to say that Herb Score was the best pitcher in the world in 1956, when he was only 23 years old. He won twenty games that year. He led all of baseball with 263 strikeouts. He struck out 9.49 batters per nine innings — he was the only starter in baseball history to have struck out more than a batter per inning over a season (and he had done it twice). His 166 ERA+ was the best in baseball. There was nobody like him. And he started out the next year looking even better — he had a 2.00 ERA and had struck out more than ten batters per game when he faced the Yankees on May 7. And in the first inning, got hit in the eye with a line drive. For a while, there was worry he would be blind — McDougald felt such guilt about it that he said he would retire if Herb Score was blinded. Herb missed the rest of the season.

 

He did come back and pitch, and he had one more brilliant moment in ‘58 when he shut-out the White Sox and struck out 13. Then he had arm trouble. He plugged along for a while longer, but he was never the same.

 

Much has been written about what might have been for Herb Score — Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig ranked Herb one of the 100 greatest baseball players of all time based on what might have been. But what always struck me more about Herb Score than what might have been is what was — he did not talk about his misfortunes. He did not complain about them. He did not even speak wistfully about it. He went on to this other life so energetically that I remember being shocked that he had this past. Herb Score? You mean the BASEBALL ANNOUNCER Herb Score? He was a great pitcher?

 

I imagine that was the way Herb wanted it. He was an astonishingly modest announcer. He was so nice, Buddy Bell used to say, that he would make his bed at hotels. He was so decent that when asked 1997, 40 years to the day of the McDougald line drive, how he felt about it, he said, “I’ll be married 40 years in July and that’s the only anniversary I think about.”

 

And he seemed happiest in the background, unnoticed, a part of the game. He never wanted to say more than had to be said. Terry Pluto once asked Herb about that, asked him why he never talked strategy — for instance why he never said, “Hey, this is a good time for a bunt.” And Herb gave a beautiful answer. He said: “No. That’s for a father to tell his son.”

 

Funny thing is, I always felt like Herb was a lot like my father. I feel certain that a part of who I am as a writer and as a person comes from those many, many hours I spent listening to Herb Score call Cleveland Indians baseball games. I met him many years later, when I was an adult and he was almost retired, and I talked to him for a long while. Mostly I just wanted to thank him. But he did not want thanks, of course. He just wanted to talk a little baseball. That’s what we did for a good while. And when the conversation ended, he thanked me for listening. I wish I could listen again. Yes, it’s a long drive. Is it fair? Is it foul? It is.

 

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/11/12...core-1933-2008/

[Furnier]

That is an EXCELLENT article. Just nails it.

 

Like I said previously, Herb Score made some terrible teams interesting and exciting. I can remember walking around in late August with my little radio stuck to my ear after we were already 25 games out of first place and somehow listening to Herb it still mattered whether or not Pat Tabler or Rick Manning or someone other light hitter could pull that meaningless game out for the Tribe.

 

Herb was the best.

 

Doug

[SoCalBrownsFan]

I remember as a kid, listening to Herb broadcasting games. Just thinking about Herb, takes me back to the countless days when I was young listening to him doing the Tribe games.

 

RIP Herb.

[ballpeen]

I remember as a kid, listening to Herb broadcasting games. Just thinking about Herb, takes me back to the countless days when I was young listening to him doing the Tribe games.

 

RIP Herb.

 

 

To this day I prefer radio calls to baseball games. Probably the same reason as you...reminds me of laying in bed or sitting in the backyard listening to Jimmy Dudley call the game, wondering as a young boy will what places like Boston, New York, Chicago were really like.

 

Herb came around after those days as the radio voice, but 1100 AM can be picked up all over the place...I could even tune it in while in college down in Gainesville many times if I held the radio in the right position, and can pretty much always get it here in Tennessee after sundown when some weaker station in the 1090 or 1110 range have to sign off to let the clear channel big dawg bark all night long.

 

Herb is a voice that will be missed.....it reminded me of home.

[rich4eagle]

from Cleveland.com

 

Former Cleveland Indians pitcher and broadcaster Herb Score died this morning at age 75 at his home in Rocky River, the Indians confirmed today.

 

He was a brilliant Indians pitcher whose baseball career was virtually ended at age 23 when he was hit in the right eye by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald of the New York Yankees on May 7, 1957.

 

Then he became a Cleveland sportscasting institution, calling Indians games on radio and television for 34 years, longer than anybody else in the city's baseball history.

 

He gained a loyal following, although he did not have the greatest voice or elocution. He was like a favorite uncle who talked baseball. "For me, broadcasting the game is like sitting in the stands talking to the fellow sitting next to me," he said.

 

Still, to those who had seen his talent on the mound, it was comparable to Napoleon becoming a war correspondent.

 

 

Cleveland State University Special Collections

Herb Score (left) and Kerby Farrell of the Cleveland Indians talk pitching in 1957.

"He was a great pitcher," said his close friend, former Indians right fielder Rocky Colavito from his home in Bernville, Pa. "He had a chance at becoming as good a lefty as there ever was. He had that kind of stuff. He had hard knocks, but he never complained. You had to respect him for that. I loved him like a brother."

 

"Ted Williams (Hall of Fame hitter) said he had the best fastball of any left-hander he ever faced," the late Ken Coleman, onetime Indians sportscaster, once said from his home outside Boston.

 

When Score stepped on the Stadium pitching mound on the night that changed his life, he appeared to be headed for baseball greatness

 

 

 

 

...............................................................................

 

R.I.P Herb

 

God that is so sad........I was listening to the game when he got hit in the eye on the radio.......Herb was an Indian for all times.............beloved

 

thanks for the message somehow I never got it until today...........WE LOVE YOU HERB FOREVER all Tribe fans

 

I hate this crying for the lost beloved