Strike Is a Subject Scully Would Just as Soon Ignore

There seems to be a growing apathy over baseball’s labor strife. Maybe it’s simply that a lot of people don’t care if there’s a baseball strike. Football is right around the corner, anyway.

But in these parts, one thing that would be missed is the golden voice of Vin Scully.

There’s nothing quite like listening to Scully, still the master of his craft, call a Dodger game on radio or television on a warm summer evening.

As he prepared for a broadcast at Dodger Stadium the other night, Scully was asked about the looming strike.

“If it happens, it will be a shame,” he said. “What else is there to say? I’m not taking sides, and I have no inside information or any great insights.

“I only know what I read. Like everybody else, I can only hope that something can be worked out.”

The last time Scully had to deal with a midseason strike was in 1981.

He took some criticism, particularly from then-Times columnist Scott Ostler, because the night before the strike, he virtually ignored it during a telecast from St. Louis.

Scully, Ross Porter and Jerry Doggett made no mention of a possible strike. They did, however, talk about various promotions for the next home stand, which, of course, never took place.

Scully, recalling that night, said he didn’t want to detract from a game in which Jerry Reuss pitched a three-hitter and retired 22 Cardinals in a row from the first to the eighth inning.

“The strike situation had been covered thoroughly,” Scully said. “There was nothing else to report.

“It wasn’t a case of us trying to cover anything up. As far as we knew, there might have been an 11th-hour settlement. We had to carry on as if that might happen.”

Now, 13 years later, the players are expected to go on strike again next Friday, after the Dodgers play a non-televised day game Thursday in Cincinnati. Scully said he will again treat it as if there might be a last-minute resolution. But it appears that is only wishful thinking.

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Powerful piece: An issue in our society that is a lot more pressing than any proposed baseball salary cap is domestic violence.

Its connections to sports was dealt with this week in an excellent feature by ESPN’s Andrea Kremer. It was first aired on Tuesday’s SportsCenter.

Kremer, who spent a month putting it together, interviewed two women who had been beaten by Lewis Billups, former cornerback with the Cincinnati Bengals, who was killed in a car accident last April.

Tracey Fair, who dated Billups, said that one time seven years ago she was beaten by him for 3 1/2 hours, mainly taking blows to the head. He also cut off her hair.

Fair said he told her, “I’ll make you so ugly no one will want to be with you!” She has since had six plastic surgeries.

Jenny Chapman, the sister of basketball’s Rex Chapman, was engaged to Billups. She said she still fears him even though he is dead.

Also interviewed was Vance Johnson, former Denver Bronco wide receiver now with the San Diego Chargers.

Johnson, who has been in treatment for three years and is now in his third marriage, said he would become violent when things weren’t going well.

He also said he believed he had to be angry to play football, and to feel that anger he would get into a fight with his wife.

Kremer said it was difficult to get victims of domestic violence to talk because of fear of retaliation. Fair and Chapman agreed to talk only because Billups is dead.

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Radio goofiness: XTRA’s Lee Hamilton and Jim Rome have been going at each other the past few weeks, and it’s not all just for show.

Hamilton last week read a fax from a listener that said, “Clean up Southern California--napalm the jungle.” The jungle, of course, is Rome’s domain.

Hamilton also called his younger colleague “a whiny, runny-nosed 4-11 twerp.”

“He ran to management after that,” Hamilton said. “He can dish out the smack but he sure can’t take it.”

The feud should fizzle a bit because Hamilton, the radio voice of the Chargers, will be in Berlin next week preparing for the team’s exhibition game against the New York Giants on Aug. 13. He will still do the first two hours of his daily 4-8 p.m. show, however.

Berlin time, he’ll be on the air from 1 to 3 a.m. “I’ll be closing the pubs and opening the phone lines,” he said.

Rick Schwartz will be co-host of the shows with Hamilton and then go it alone the final two hours. The “Sports Doctor,” John Chlesnik, will fill in for Schwartz on his 8 p.m.-midnight show.

Schwartz recently returned to nights after a stint in the mornings. His former partner, Steve Mason, and John Ireland have taken over the morning slot.

One of Schwartz’s strengths is that he relies on cleverness and ingenuity and leaves the name-calling and crudeness to others.

Schwartz showed some of that ingenuity last Friday night when he zinged Hamilton, who was in Canton, Ohio, with the Chargers for the Hall of Fame game.

Schwartz called the Chargers’ hotel and, claiming to be Hamilton, ordered a $39 breakfast that included vodka and beer. Only problem was Hamilton wasn’t staying at the Chargers’ hotel.

Hamilton never got the breakfast, but he said he’s going to stick Schwartz with the bill anyway.

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Add Schwartz: Besides getting his own nighttime show, Schwartz is also going to be a part of XTRA’s UCLA football broadcast team, joining Chris Roberts and David Norrie.

XTRA, which has acquired the UCLA football and basketball rights, added Schwartz, a UCLA alumnus, to give the station a presence on the broadcasts. XTRA originally sought to hire a new talk-show host who would also do the UCLA play-by-play, but the station failed to find someone who met UCLA’s approval. So Roberts is back as the play-by-play announcer.

Tentatively, the way it will work is this: Schwartz will do a Saturday Bruin talk show, then join Norrie for the pregame show, and during the game he’ll also be in the booth. How much of a role he will play there is to be determined.

XTRA’s Steve Hartman, another UCLA alumnus, will do a postgame Bruin talk show.