Vin Scully, RIP
Richard Goldstein, writing for The New York Times, had this to say about one of the greatest to have ever done it.
Vin Scully, who was celebrated for his mastery of the graceful phrase and his gift for storytelling during the 67 summers he served as the announcer for Dodgers baseball games, first in Brooklyn and then in Los Angeles, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94. […]
For all the Dodgers’ marquee players since World War II, Mr. Scully was the enduring face of the franchise. He was a national sports treasure as well, broadcasting for CBS and NBC. He called baseball’s Game of the Week, All-Star Games, the playoffs and more than two dozen World Series. In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association voted him No. 1 on its list of the “Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time.” […]
“I regard him, all things considered, as the master of radio and TV,” the sports broadcaster Bob Costas once told The Arizona Republic, recalling listening to Mr. Scully with a transistor radio under his pillow as a youngster in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. “I regard him as the best baseball announcer ever.”
I did not grow up listening to Scully. For me, it was Jack Buck and Mike Shannon. In my opinion, the greatest baseball announcer was Buck. However, I can see a strong argument for Scully.
He was just so good:
Scully called Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th home run.
“What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep South, for breaking the record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron.”However, I think his greatest call was Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”In his time, he called 25 world series, 12 All-star games, 20 no-nos, and 3 perfect games. His final game was on October 2nd, 2016. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 with the Ford C. Frick award for broadcasters' contributions to baseball; and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
Vin Scully called Dodger games for 67 years, from 1950 through 2016. This is how he said goodbye.