Why Vin Scully was trending on Twitter ... don't worry, he's OK

For a brief period during Sunday night's Fox coverage of the World Series, Vin Scully was trending on Twitter.

It was not -- as many Twitter users feared -- because he had died, according to an L.A. Weekly blog (linked here).

"Instead, it was because sportswriter Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) asked his followers who should be calling the games. Scully was the overwhelming choice," the blog reported.

Posnanski, who a year ago wrote one of the best reads in a while on Scully (linked here), followed up on his own website (linked here) about the Fox coverage, mostly buring Tim McCarver.

But he included: "At some point during the night, I put up a Twitter poll: If you could choose any two living announcers to call the World Series -- they have to be living, this is not some sort of imaginary exercise -- who would you choose? ....

"The vast, vast, vast majority of people (of course) simply selected: Vin Scully. No second person. Just Vin. Brandon McCarthy chose Vin and someone to bring him water. Several chose Vin and Teller from Penn and Teller. And so on. I could not agree more. What I think makes Vin such a wonderful listen -- and has for more than a half century -- is that his voice stays in the background, the statistics he uses make sense and feel true, his stories enhance what you're watching, he's honest about whatever he's seeing and he has Coltrane's sense of rhythm.

"It's a remarkable combination. Baseball is a tough game to announce. The action is spread out. The pace is uneven. The strategies are often intricate and not especially interesting for casual fans (they don't call boring politics "inside baseball" for nothing). The statistics are often wonky. But there are great opportunities, too -- baseball's a wonderful game for stories, for drama, for insight. Yes, it would be great to hear Vin Scully call a World Series again. Well, hey, at least we got him to trend on Twitter for a while."

And again, why wasn't Scully included in the Fox coverage after all the online petitioning and media lobbying (including here?) We don't have an answer that satisfies us.