Herb Score died today.

Score was perhaps most famous for being drilled in the face with a line drive off the bat of Yankee infielder Gil McDougald. Score did manage to come back, but arm trouble derailed what looked like a promising career. His decline was blamed on the beaning, but Score shrugged it off. McDougald was equally as devastated by the beaning, if not more so.

From Terry Pluto’s The Curse of Rocky Colavito:

“I know it was an accident. It looked like the poor guy just couldn’t get his glove up in time. The nicest thing was that Herb’s mother spent a long time on the phone with me. I’ll never forget that. But I never felt the same about baseball after that.”

Pluto continued: “[McDougald] retired after the 1960 season at the age of thirty, even though there was plenty of life left in his career. He batted .289 in the seven years through 1957, and .253 in the final three seasons after Score’s injury.”

Score, a modest an unsentimental man, later became a television and then the radio broadcaster for the Tribe. His relaxed demeanor and dry sense of humor perfectly suited the sad sack team. Failure wasn’t the end of the world for Score, just another thing to deal with and move past.

“On the air, Score has an engaging, easygoing personality,” wrote Pluto. “He talks to you, not at you or down to you. He comes across as a man who would make friends quickly, a master of small talk about such things as the weather—and the weather is one of Score’s favorite subjects. Even when the Indians play in a dome. Score will tell you the temperature inside, then describe the weather outside the dome when he got off the team bus. This much is very true of Herb Score: He can talk for a long time about nothing much and do it in detail.”

A true baseball gift if there ever was one.

His partner in the booth for many years, Nev Chandler said, “Herb never talked much about his career. He did like to talk about Ted Williams, how great Williams was and how he could never get Williams out. The only time that Herb’s feelings about pitching came through strongly was a day I said on the air that this pitcher had a respectable 3.55 ERA.’ During the commercial break, Herb turned to me and said, ‘Let me tell you something. Any pitcher with an ERA over 3.00 is not doing his job.’

“I said, ‘Herb, that’s a pretty harsh analysis.’

“He said, ‘It’s true. If they get more than three runs off you, you are not doing your job.’

“That’s because not many people got three runs off Herb Score when he was healthy. But Herb would never say anything like that on the air.”

What I appreciated most in reading about Score was his unpretentious approach to baseball and broadcasting.

“The thing I believe in is that the players are the stars, not the broadcasters,” said Score. “I don’t try to be an expert on every play. I like to think that some guy is in the car with his son, and they are listening to the game. The guy will say, ‘This is a good time to bunt.’ Then the player bunts. In my head I know it’s a good time to bunt, but I don’t have to say it all the time. Why take that away from the father?”

Such sensitivity is rare in a medium where announcers act as if they get paid by the mouth full. Or by the opinion. Score’s hands-off sensibility was not a modern one, but admirable because it took the audience into such high consideration. It’s not In-Your-Face, but informative, and measured.

“I want to be objective as I can,” Score continued. “I hope you can’t tell who is winning the game by the tone of my voice. If the game is exciting, I’ll show it. If the other team makes a good play, that excites me, too. People tell me, ‘You’re not critical enough when a guy makes an error.’ Wait a minute. If a guy boots one, that’s obvious. I see the play. I mark down the error on my scorecard, and then I tell people it was an error. No one feels worse than the guy who dropped the ball or struck out with the bases loaded. He messed up and everyone knows it, including the fans. So why dwell on it? I want the broadcast to be even-handed and to sound like a couple of relaxed guys talking baseball. It’s not the opera or the White House.”

R.I.P.