An appreciation of the legendary Dodgers voice, now departed at age 94
Let’s be honest: Any written appreciation of Vin Scully is going to be inadequate.
You really need to hear him. Hear the sound, the enthusiasm, the melody that made Scully’s honey-covered voice the music of endless baseball summers.
There was nothing like Vin Scully, and never will be again. Better than the ballgame itself. Scully, who died Tuesday at age 94, was not just a defining broadcaster, not just the narrator of a franchise’s seismic journey from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, not just the melody of a baseball era, but eras.
He called Hank Aaron’s 715th (“There’s a high drive to deep left center field…”) He called Kirk Gibson (“And look who’s coming up…”) He called Bill Buckner (“Little roller up along first…”) He called Don Larsen’s perfect game (“Got him! The greatest game ever pitched!”) and Sandy Koufax’s as well (“2-2 to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away…”)
He also called doubleheaders and snoozers and blowouts all the spaces in between that make a baseball season such an epic. Scully at the microphone was an event unto itself, so much so he called many games by himself. He had a novelist’s command of language, a gift with metaphor (“He pitches as though he’s double parked,” he said of Bob Gibson) and, critically, he knew when not to speak, and let a moment breathe. (Note his wordless treatments after Gibson’s and Aaron’s iconic home runs.)
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His timing was optimal. The Bronx-born, Fordham-educated Scully joined the Dodgers not long after Jackie Robinson broke into the sport, then followed them west to sunny Southern California, where nearly every day was a great day for baseball. He was a radio baby, schooled by Red Barber, who arrived at the doorstep of the television revolution, when a single World Series game could hold an entire nation in its thrall.
When I met him in 2016, I asked him if he felt lucky to have arrived in baseball when he did. He shook the question off like a veteran fastballer.
“Oh, no, not lucky,” he said. “Lucky is too cheap a word. I really feel blessed. I truly believe God has given me these gifts. He gave it to me at a young age, and he’s allowed me to keep it all these years? That’s a gift. I say this because I believe it: I should spend a lot more time on my knees than I do.”
Scully became one of a handful of announcers whose voices became synonymous with entire regions. Broadcasting, especially on radio, has an intimacy–how many of us sat up late in bed, mini transistor on, wanting to see how extra innings shook out–and it creates an unusual bond. There are Brooklynites who still remember Scully live from Ebbets and Angelenos who can trace their love of a growing city to him. In leaner seasons, he delivered more joy than any Dodger.
He called other sports, too. Early on, Scully called college basketball. He called NFL football. He did golf as amusingly as anyone’s ever done golf. At Fordham, he played center field for the baseball team, and sang in a barbershop quartet, because of course he did.
Scully stayed sharp enough to call games into late life, and even after he retired, at age 88, and the Dodgers returned to the World Series, there were pleas to reinstall the legend to his booth. He resisted. He stayed content in his retirement, though he made a darling cameo to throw out the first pitch in 2017.
In person, Scully was as warm as you’d hoped he would be, impeccable in a blazer, his red hair trim and perfect. To be around Scully made a person sit a little straighter in the chair. He was the undisputed mayor of Chavez Ravine, who knew the name of the chef serving press box cupcakes, and nodded knowingly to Fernando Valenzuela, now a broadcaster himself, in the elevator.
Not long after our brief meeting, I got a phone call from an unknown number, and I let it slide over to voicemail. Shortly afterward, I listened to the message and it was Scully, just saying hello, checking in, in that unmistakable honey-covered melody that defined a sport for generations. It felt like a beautiful gift. As was the life of Vin Scully.