Time for another ride. Hop in. . . .“We were in the back of the auditorium,” Vin says. He is driving us back to Fordham Prep in the early 1940s. “I remember I said, ‘Larry, when we get out of here, what do you want to do?’ And he said, ‘I’d love to be a big league ballplayer.’
“And I said, ‘I wonder what those odds are.’ And then I said, ‘Well, you know, I’d like to be big league broadcaster. I wonder what those odds are.’
“And then I said, ‘How about this one for a long shot: How about you play, I broadcast, you hit a home run?’ And we said, ‘The odds, no one would be able to calculate that!’ ”
Larry was his friend, Larry Miggins. A few years later, on May 13, 1952, playing for the Cardinals, Larry Miggins hit his first major league home run. It happened at Ebbets Field against the Dodgers. On the call that inning in the broadcast booth happened to be Larry’s buddy from Fordham Prep, sharing duties with Red Barber and Connie Desmond.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” Scully says. “I mean, really, absolutely incredible. And probably the toughest home run call that I ever had to call because I was a part of it. He hit the home run against Preacher Roe, I’m pretty sure. And I had to fight back tears. I called ‘home run,’ and then I just sat there with this big lump in my throat watching him run around the bases. I mean, how could that possibly happen?”
Scully has called roughly 9,000 big league games, from Brooklyn to Los Angeles to Canada to Australia and scores of places in between. He has called 20 no-hitters, three perfect games, 12 All-Star Games and almost half of all Dodgers games ever played—this for a franchise that was established in 1890. The home run by Miggins was and remains the closest Scully ever came to breaking down behind the microphone. …
Says Costas, “He never shouts, but he has a way within a range that he can capture the excitement. If you listen to the [1988 World Series] Gibson home run…. ‘In a year that has been so improbable…’ he’s letting the crowd carry Gibson around the bases, but then he has a voice that has a tenor quality that cuts through the crowd.”
Most every other great announcer is framed by singular calls—and Scully, from the 1955 Dodgers to Koufax to Aaron to Buckner to Gibson, has a plethora of them. Such a narrow view, however, sells short his greatness. Like listening to all of Astral Weeks, not just one track, Scully is best appreciated by the expanse of his craft.
“What he truly excels at,” Costas says, “is framing moments like that and getting in all the particulars so the drama and anticipation builds. You don’t always get the payoff, but he always sets the stage. Other announcers have great calls of special moments. What he’s incredibly good at is leading up to those moments—all the surrounding details and all the little brushstrokes to go with the broad strokes.”
Here is more of what sets Scully apart: his literate, cultured mind. Scully is a voracious reader with a fondness for Broadway musicals. He doesn’t watch baseball games when he’s not broadcasting them. “No, not at all,” he says. He has too many other interests.
He once quoted from the 1843 opera The Bohemian Girl after watching a high-bouncing ball on the hard turf of the Astrodome: “I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls.” When he appeared with David Letterman in 1990 he quoted a line from Mame. He suggested a title if Hollywood wanted to turn the 1980s Pittsburgh drug trials into a movie: From Here to Immunity. Last week, during a game against the Padres, he offered a history on the evolution of beards throughout history that referenced Deuteronomy, Alexander the Great and Abraham Lincoln.
Barber, his mentor, majored in education and wanted to become an English professor. Lindsey Nelson taught English after he graduated from college. Mel Allen went to law school. Ernie Harwell wrote essays and popular music. Graham McNamee started out as an opera singer. When Scully calls his last game—either the Dodgers’ regular-season finale on Oct. 2 in San Francisco or, if they advance, a postseason game—we lose not just the pleasure of his company with baseball but also the last vestige of the very roots of baseball broadcasting, when Renaissance men brought erudition to our listening pleasure.
“I really like to do the research,” he says. “So, in a sense, that’s a little bit in that renaissance area, the research of the game. Plus, I’ve always been—even in grammar school—always afraid to fail. So I always studied, not to be the bright guy but just to make sure that the good sisters didn’t knock me sideways, you know?”
A story: At age 88, in preparing for his 67th home opener, Scully notices a player on the opposing Diamondbacks’ roster with the name Socrates Brito. The minute he sees the name, Scully thinks, Oh, I can’t let that go! Socrates Brito! Inspired in the way of a rookie broadcaster, Scully dives into his research. So when Brito comes to the plate, Scully tells the story of the imprisonment and death by hemlock of Socrates, the Greek philosopher. Good stuff, but eloquentia perfecta asks more:
“But what in the heck is hemlock?” Scully tells his listeners. “For those of you that care at all, it’s of the parsley family, and the juice from that little flower, that poisonous plant, that’s what took Socrates away.”
It’s a perfect example of a device Scully uses to inform without being pedantic. He engages listeners personally and politely with conditionals such as For those of you that care … and In case you were wondering…. Immediately you do care and you do wonder.
Scully isn’t done with Socrates. In the ninth inning, Brito drives in a run with a triple to put Arizona ahead 3–1.
“Socrates Brito feeds the Dodgers the hemlock.”
Someone once asked Laurence Olivier what makes a great actor. Olivier responded, “The humility to prepare and the confidence to pull it off.” When Scully heard the quote, he embraced it as a most apt description of his own work. So I asked Scully, because he pulls it off with such friendliness, if he had a listener in mind when he broadcasts games.
“Yes. I think when I first started, I tried to make believe I was in the ballpark, sitting next to somebody and just talking,” he says. “And if you go to a ballgame and you sit there, you’re not going to talk pitches for three hours. You might say, ‘Wow, check out that girl over there walking up the aisle,’ or, ‘What do you think about who’s going to run for president?’ There’s a running conversation, not necessarily the game. So, that’s all part of what I’m trying to do—as if I’m talking to a friend, yes.” …
There was a moment at the end of the ceremony when the former players retreated to give Scully his own space and his moment near home plate. Gazing up on the adoring Dodger Stadium, where he has worked 55 of his 67 years in the business, Scully stood alone with his thoughts.
“I looked at him,” Monday says, “and I saw a look I never saw before. It was emotional. He never lost it, but it was wistful.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.” I remind Vin of this, and then I tell him, “You can’t be this great for this long without enthusiasm. So, for Vin Scully, what are the points of enthusiasm?”
“Well, I guess the challenge to be prepared, number one,” he says. “As soon as I have a little breakfast, I’m on the computer checking rosters to make sure that in that dramatic moment [I know if] somebody comes into the game who wasn’t on the roster three days before. Again, the fear of failing.
“And then, there’s the one thing that to me is the most important, and that’s the crowd. The enthusiasm of the crowd is enough even on those days when I think, you know, I’d rather be home sitting under a tree and reading a book or something. I’ve been asked several times now already, ‘What would you miss the most when you retire?’ I said, ‘The crowd. The roar of the crowd.’”
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