The legend who I have on my mind is responsible for:
- Four consecutive home runs in 2006.
- 73 home runs in 2001.
- Five world series victories.
- Three perfect games occurring in 1956, 1965, and 1991
- 18 no-hitters
- Shutting out the 1955 Yankees in GAME 7 of the World Series
- Two record-breaking scoreless inning streaks of 58.2 and 59.0 innings in 1968 and 1988.
Vin Scully is known by any self respecting Major League Baseball fan as "The voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers." To those hundreds of thousands of lucky listeners who consider themselves Dodger fans, they simply refer to him as "The voice of summer." That's right, this man is so well respected (and rightfully so) that he has a season embedded in his nickname.
So how did this icon get to be where he is? What has made him "the voice of summer?" How can one man who went to Fordham University become the voice that defines a team, multiple generations, and even a sport? Clearly he is a hard worker, but there are plenty of sportscasters out there who are up before the sun rises crunching numbers and doing all they can to be the most knowledgable, fact filled human stat machine they can be. Vin Scully has not been giving the play by play of baseball games for the past 64 years of his life, however. Vin Scully has been telling stories.
Scully knows there is an art to doing baseball games on the radio as well as on television, an art he has perfected. There is plenty of down-time in a baseball game with the average nine inning bout lasting over two hours and fifty minutes. In that time, there have been studies that suggest there is only 18 minutes of real action in a game. That leaves over 2.5 hours for Scully to tell his story of each day's game. He has no issue at all finding something to share with all his listeners whether it be an interesting statistic, a story about a player's off-field life, what is happening in the ball park or a fun fact about any player or team being featured at the moment.
If you listen to a Scully broadcast it is easy to get lost in the words coming out of his mouth, but at the same time, you know exactly what is going on in the game. Hearing a vivid description of what is on the field gets boring and repetitive, especially after 60-plus years. Scully throws in quick, insightful, and useful play by play comments to help people envision what is going on between pitches, but at the same time he gives a full narrative of whatever may be on his mind that day. The 84 year old has plenty of memories and has likely seen more games of baseball than any other human in history. He knows what people care about and what they find to be useless information. He finds the juicy little tidbits of information that everyone loves to use when they talk sports with their acquaintances.
Most importantly, he has no script as to how a baseball game needs to go. Each game is completely unique when you look closely at the sport and all of its endless intricacies and Scully knows this better than anyone. He has no recipe to determine how his broadcasts must go. There were two particular 9th inning segments which stood out to me that prove this point clearly.
In the 1965 perfect game thrown by Sandy Koufax, Scully made sure everyone knew how historical of an evening September 5th was. As he guided the audience through what was of course a 1-2-3 inning in which Koufax struck out all three batters he mentioned the time of day before several of his pitches. This is not something which is usually done, but neither is a perfect game. Scully couldn't just be calling that game the same way as he would call a shootout or even the end of a game which was 2-1. He really stuck to the details of what the pitcher and the three batters he faced were going through. Each defensive player who had been a part of the fateful evening was introduced to give them their fair amount of credit despite Koufax taking care of a perfect game record 14 batters via strikeout that evening. Listeners knew exactly how manager Walter Alston was playing his defense before each pitch and even what each batter would do as they stepped out of the box between pitches. This is not stereotypical of Scully, but he needed to make sure everyone knew the difference between this game and one of lesser importance. Details which are sometimes useless and silly were suddenly exactly what radio followers were listening for as they sat on the edge of their seats praying for perfection.
Years pass from 1965, and Scully is now calling a Dodgers-Yankees game at Dodger Stadium on July 31st 2013, a game in which legendary pitcher Mariano Rivera would be making his last appearance to the city of Los Angeles. This time, the Dodgers found themselves trailing 3-0 in what had been a "frustrating game" for both fans and players. Never being a sportscaster who favored the home team while making his calls, Scully considered it a win that he and Dodger nation were down three so they could have a chance to see Rivera one more time. The inning was an impressive one for the last man to wear the 42 jersey as he struck out two and got a roll-over ground ball to the 2nd baseman to retire the side 1-2-3, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for Rivera. What was out of the ordinary that evening was the fact that Dodger fans would never see him dominate their team again after he had been doing so like clockwork for the past 19 seasons. Scully barely spoke of baseball that evening in the bottom of the 9th inning. He never mentioned a comeback, never spoke of how the Dodgers could win or tie the game up at all. He told us about how magical of a man Mariano Rivera was both on the field and off. Listeners could tell who was batting and what the count was most of the time, but that was about it. Scully told stories of Rivera's outlandish career numbers, what other baseball clubs had done to honor him as he visited each ballpark for the last time around the league, what the Yankees had been doing for him, and all of his off-field adventures which somehow made him out to be an even more phenomenal human being than most already thought he was. It was an inning dedicated to the opposing teams relief pitcher and it was perfectly done. After a 6 minute half-inning of story telling, Scully finished up the game effortlessly while telling his listeners of Rivera's good deeds off the diamond. A.J. Ellis was up to bat and grounded out to 2nd on the third pitch of the at-bat to end things for the hopeless Dodgers that evening.
"Mariano Rivera is such a worth-while human being. He's made a lot of money in baseball, but he's given it back... that's a strike... he built a church in his small town in Panama. He built a church in New Rochelle, New York, his wife, Clara, is going to be the pastor. He also spent 3 million dollars to buy an old church in New York, he's going to refurnish and bring that to life... aaand he takes the life right out of the Dodgers, getting two strike-outs and a routine ground ball."
During this game, what was happening on the diamond took a back seat to what had happened in the life of the iconic Yankee. Scully told everyone all about how wonderful of a person he was and how talented of an athlete he had been. While doing this, he continued to keep listeners updated in the game which was all but over in order to keep everyone happy. Scully never really started bandwagoning for Rivera in his half inning dedication, he simply told people facts about his life which were certainly worthy of all the credit in the world. Letting fans know all of the most important stories about Rivera they might not have heard throughout his 19 year career since there would never be an option to do so again.
Scully was (and is) a master of a fine art. His ability to illustrate a baseball game is effortless and has been voted as the standard of perfection in Curt Smith's book, Voices of Summer. He has been doing his job like every man should for the past 65 years, working his hardest each day to perform to the best of his abilities. Still today, at 84 years of age, while the Dodgers are in the playoffs and everyone has the ability to watch them in HDTV, young players turn on the radio to listen to the legend. Minnesota Twin's 3rd baseman Trevor Plouffe is a prime example. On October 3rd while the Dodgers were playing the Braves in game one of the NLDS this tweet came out and finished this blog better than I ever could've. A shout out to Vin Scully, the greatest to ever do it.
Listening to Vin on the radio is better than watching the game live. He's the greatest to ever do it.
— Trevor Plouffe (@TPlouffe24) October 4, 2013
