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How do we love thee, Vin Scully? Were we to count the ways, the number would be astronomical by now, and Saturday's broadcast was no exception, as the legendary Dodgers announcer treated viewers to a 5-minute lecture on the History of Beards.
Scully begins, "I'm not gonna do it now because it's 2 outs with the bases empty, but sometime during the game if you've been, like the way I have been, looking at players with these big beards, I decided I'm going to do a little research on beards."
And research he did.
SB Nation has picked out some choice bits from the highly educational spiel:
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.
And, seamlessly—because Scully is also, we tend to forget, actually calling the action of the game during this lesson—he makes his way from ye olde tymes up to Abraham Lincoln:
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.
It's likely this research was in part prompted by Dodgers notorious red bearded third baseman Justin Turner, who was also the inspiration for the "Justin Turner Chia Pet" giveaway night on Saturday.
It goes without saying we will miss Vin Scully and his glorious tales very, very much once he retires at the end of this season, after 67 years (!!) in the broadcast booth. As for the Dodgers: they've lost six games in a row, but they've certainly been entertaining off the field.
