“If A Fight Breaks Out…”

I once heard legendary baseball announcer Vin Scully tell this story during a game about how he put on a Dodgers uniform and crept into the Cubs dugout just after the Anthem at a Cubs-Dodgers tussle.  "I kept my cap down at the brow and arms crossed at the chest, so no one seemed to know who I was for a good half inning," Scully described in that relaxed pace only he could.  That's until the 1st base coach hollered "Vinny" and flipped a ball right at Scully as the players were heading in for the bottom half of the first. Scully caught it and saw written on the ball these words - "if a fight breaks out, I want you," and it was signed by Cubs manager, Don Zimmer.   A good friend of my family's Stephen Szydlowski reminded me the other day that baseball games in 2023 may be faster but there's no time for these stories, no time to give the audience the inside scoop, the perspective from the trenches. We rush through a lot of stuff these days if you think about it, in a culture where everything has to be instant, faster - rushing through meals, yardwork, paint jobs, backroads, grocery aisles and checkout lines, through work meetings, a good page in a good book, an email reply or text.  Schools seem to always be rushing at the bell and in healthcare I'd argue that most of the last 50 years have largely been a rush - in one of our recent consumer polls of 3,135 people some 45% say they actually feel rushed out of their appointments in an office or even at home, without a chance to give the nurse or doctor their perspective, their vantage point, the context.  Storytelling is somewhat a lost art and, yeah, maybe it doesn't fit the core curriculum for educators or meet the requirements for doctors to bill insurers - but it means something to people and I'd argue its vastly underappreciated in its ability to make an impact, and change a life.  Heck maybe we ought to set up a new code or payment for storytelling. At a minimum, generations Z, Alpha and Mega (I’m told that Mega are the kids who will be born starting in 2025), could all probably stand to learn a few things from a generation that grew up in no real rush without a screen, who had to rely on guys like Vin Scully to create an image and make us feel part of something, even if we were huddled around the Sony transistor with our left hand on the antenna and our right hand lightly turning the radio AM dial. “What’s AM,” Tommy asked when he was listening to me recite this column. “It’s a place I used to go as a kid on a Saturday afternoon.” “Cool,” said Tommy, “so how about now…can you get it on Amazon?”