Vin Scully's Advice for Young Sports Broadcasters

Excerpted from LARadio.com:

When asked what advice he would give to the next generation of broadcasters, Scully emphasized the importance of bringing your best effort to every broadcast. “Never think about the size of the audience…when I was doing football for CBS and we would have production meetings and they would say this game you’re doing is going to 37 percent of the country or this game will go to 69 percent of the country, and I would always say to the producer please, don’t tell me the percentage, that minimizes my world. I just know that we’re going to do a ballgame, and we’re going to do the best, no matter who’s listening.” To those now broadcasting minor league games or doing play-by-play for a local college, Scully said it’s important to focus on the game at hand, regardless of the number of listeners. “Don’t think that it’s two last place teams and that there’s no interest, don’t think the pennant race is over, don’t think the game is absolutely meaningless…football, baseball, whatever it is…just go on and do the best job that you can. I think when you start thinking about the size of the audience, all of the sudden you might start thinking about the size of your production, and it should always be 100 percent effort no matter how big the audience may be.”