Vin Scully spent 5 minutes during a game schooling viewers on the history of beards
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
Vin Scully is the master of banter during games. Never was that on display better than a sleepy Sunday afternoon game between the Dodgers and Padres that went off the rails in the second inning as Scully gave a complete history of beards.
Why give a complete history of beards? Well, players have beards. Big beards, small beards, beards that climb on rocks -- and this motivated the legendary Dodgers’ announcer to give us a little background info on the beard.
“Way back to the dawn of humanity beards evolved, number one, because ladies liked them -- and number two, it was the idea of frightening off adversaries and wild animals. [...] In fact, it was so serious, if you look it up, that there’s a divine mandate for beards in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. [...] There became a time when Greek dramatists mined the popular prejudice against clean-shaved men.”
Scully continues talking about beards for several minutes, so let’s skip forward.
”Then of course you come to Abraham Lincoln, who was clean shaven and a little 11-year-old girl named Grace Viddel, she said to Mr. Lincoln “If you would grow a beard my daddy has a beard and my mommy teases him that he would vote for you.” So Abraham Lincoln grew a beard.”
Scully’s beard talk went for a total of 4:54, including breaks for pesky things like balls and strikes, of course.
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