* Now hear this: Curt Smith

Curt Smith, who has a professed fondness for the boys in the baseball booth, has published another in-depth biography about an broadcasting icon.

In Pull Up A Chair: The Vin Scully Story (Potomac), Smith — who has covered other industry stars as Mel Allen and Dizzy Dean— combines his admiration for the man was had been bring fans Dodgers games fore more than a half-century with his love for the English language, especially as it pertains to the national pastime.

Here’s my quick take on of the book, which is included in the baseball feature in the May/June issue of ForeWord Magazine.

Fans will tell you that a soothing, knowing voice can enhance the game experience. For more than fifty years, no one has done it better than the Dodgers’ Vin Scully. Curt Smith, who has made it his mission to chronicle the great broadcasters (Voices of the Game, The Voice, and The Storytellers, among others), does it again with Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story.

Unlike colleagues who fumble over their words, mispronounce names, and offer incredulous and inane stories, Scully is one of a handful of on-air personalities that could make a listener smile simply by reading from the telephone book. He began his career when the team was still in Brooklyn and made the transcontinental move with them, where he eventually became one of the high profile wordsmiths of the booth. “In an inning, Vin could turn from phrase (a terrier [fielder] nipped at an elephants heels) via simile (pitching like a tailor: a little off here, a little off there and you’re done) to resolution (crowd roars, voice recedes).”

And here’s a profile I did on Smith in 2007 following the release of his book on Mel Allen.