Shoutouts: Real gone home run calls and the greatest college stadiums

Penn State's Beaver Stadium

I have minor quibbles with each of today’s Shoutouts, but far too minor to prevent me from recommending them.

First up is Doug Mead compiling lots of fantastic vintage audio and video for a slideshow of The 25 Greatest Home Run Catch Phrases of All Time.

It’s a great lesson in a part of baseball history that for most of that history has been vital to fans, the role of the home-team announcer. Players come and go for the local nine, but in many cases, these guys, men like Harray Caray, Bob Prince, Vin Scully, Harry Kalas and Ernie Harwell, have personified the home team across generations.

My quibble has to do with the voices of my own childhood. Mead writes that Scully doesn’t really have a signature home run call. I would argue that call is: “Here’s a long drive to deep left field. Back goes (fielder’s name), a-way back, to the walllll, it’s gone!” Sometime after the ’70s, he started saying, “She’s gone” more often than “It’s gone.”

The other is Dick Enberg, whose “Touch ‘em all!” call predates Arizona announcer Greg Schulte’s by a few decades, though it lacks the colorful preamble.

This is just me being cranky, though. Mead has done a lot of research and he’s hit this one high. He’s hit it deep. He’s hit it … outta here! As Duane Kuiper might say.

Another fun slideshow with a ton of historical research is David Luther’s review of the Top 50 College Football Stadiums to See Before You Die.

Before I die? I do hate these tight deadlines.

It’s a whirlwind trip around America, with usual suspects like the Big House, Neyland Stadium and the Rose Bowl refreshingly joined by the likes of Carnie Smith Stadium, the home of the Pittsburg State Gorillas, Grand Valley State’s Lubber Stadium and the original, Harvard Stadium.

My quibbles are also personal. First of all, how could 88-year-old Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, in its beautiful hillside setting, be absent? And also, Luther describes the Los Angeles Coliseum as “beginning to show its age.” I went to my first game there in 1971. It was showing its age then.

But never mind. I’m bookmarking this terrific piece and turning it into a bucket list. I want to go to all 50. I’ve been to four so far, so if I just go to one a year, I can get to the other 46 by the time I’m …

I think I should shoot for three a year.