Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (19 page)

Each Saturday, he sat with saltines and milk and heard Ted Husing air
football. "I shouldn't have cared about a game like Florida-Tennessee. But I
got goose bumps hearing the roar of the crowd." The Giants fan loved
Brooklyn's evangelist. "Red made me want to be a sportscaster. At 8, I wrote
a composition on broadcasting for the nuns. My friends wanted to be a
doctor, lawyer-not me." Radio was neither a belated nor acquired taste.

Growing up, Vin delivered milk and mail, pushed garment racks, and
cleaned silver in the basement of the Pennsylvania Hotel. By 1949, he left
Fordham Preparatory, joined the Navy, entered Fordham University, formed
its FM station, sang in a barbershop quartet, played center field, got a degree,
and sent 150 letters to stations along the seaboard.

"I got one response": WTOP Washington, making him a fill-in. One day,
interviewed at CBS New York, Scully asked for Red. "He headed network
sports and only had a second, but told me to leave my address." That fall,
CBS needed a backup Voice for "College Football Roundup." Recalling Vin,
Barber asked WTOP for references, phoned his home, and "got my mother,
who took the message, but told me it was from Red Skelton."

Quit clowning. Vin broadcast on the roof of Fenway Park with a long
cable cord, microphone, and 60-watt bulb for light. Next week Red called
again. "The producer told me about your awful facilities. You'll have a booth
on Saturday---Harvard-Yale."

In October 1949, Ernie Harwell crossed the East River to the Polo Grounds.
On Opening Day 1950, Scully, replacing him, began radio/TV baseball's
longest same-team skein. For the rookie, 22, still living with his parents,
humility, not history, was in the air.

"One day I brought the lineup. Barber said, `This man hit third yesterday.
Why is he fifth today?' It was the last time I didn't know." Red taught to avoid
hearing other Voices. "`Don't copy. You will water your own wine,' he'd say.
Instead, bring to the booth an ingredient no one else could-me, and whatever qualities made me a human being." Soon the newcomer's intuitions were
in tune.

"No other baseball team," wrote Leonard Koppett, "generated a richer
collection of memories, more closely held by so many people," than Vin's
Dodgers. Gil Hodges spelled respect. Billy Cox turned doubles into slumps.
Roy Campanella made Flatbush an arcade. Surnames seemed superfluous:
Oisk, Big Newk, and Preach, not Carl Erskine, Don Newcombe, and
Preacher Roe. All were family, other sports something to take or leave.

Brooklyn cross-hatched victory and misery: six post-war pennants, but
with a thing about losing a last-day flag or Series (1946-47, 1949-53, and
1956). "You know what I really don't understand?" Pee Wee Reese asked.

"What?" said Jackie Robinson.

"How after all these years playing baseball I haven't gone insane."

As we have seen, the Dodgers ditched Barber on the 1953 Classic.
Heartsick, Vin asked his advice. "If there was anyone I'd want to take my
place, it'd be you." Scully, 2S, did. By 1955, having lost seven straight Series,
the Borough of Churches sought absolution.

In Game Seven, Vin called the final out of the Dodgers' 2-0 deliverance.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Scully said on NBC, "the Brooklyn Dodgers are
the champions of the world." All winter people asked how he remained so
calm. "The hard truth is I was so emotionally overwhelmed that if I had said
another word, I would have cried."

Even harder, Walter O'Malley already was thinking of moving to Los
Angeles. Vin saw no cause to leave. He was happy, in his home town. The
team had drawn a million people a record 13 straight years. How could you
trade them for a place Fred Allen called "great, if you're an orange"?

Easily, it occurred, in October 1957.

"Historically, we shall be proven right," O'Malley said of the Dodgers'
apostasy. Scully wondered. "Everything I cherished was in NewYork. It's like
the wife whose husband is transferred. She may not want to go, but she goes."

The second-year Angelenos won a pennant playoff: "Big bouncer over the
mound, over second base," said Scully. "Up with it is Mantilla, throws low and
wild! Hodges scores! We go to Chicago!" A New Yorker cartoon showed a
Brooklynite crying at Ebbets Field: "Somewhere the sun is shining, somewhere hearts are light." Vin telecast the Series. "Somewhere" meant L.A.'s
weird temporary den.

"The problem,"Vin mused, "is that the [Memorial] Coliseum was a football and track place-and football and baseball need different configurations." First-base stands almost touched the foul line. Third's seats lay
somewhere off Marina del Rey. A visitor absorbed white shirts, coolie hats,
251-foot left-field line, and 93,000 capacity. In center field, you needed
binoculars to spot home plate.

"Until '58, the closest big-league city was St. Louis," said Los Angeles Times
columnist Jim Murray. "The Dodgers had a selling job." O'Malley had
beamed each game from Ebbets Field. In L.A."We're not giving away our product"-he barred home TV. The move gave Vin, with his rhythm and
tempo and bending vowels and similes and allusions-twilight's "little footsteps of sunshine"; "He catches the hall gingerly, like a baby chick falling from
the tree"-vast leverage. Interest turned to radio, of which Scully was a wiz.

"Walter knew there were probably more radios in this area than anywhere in the world,"Vin said, "and that for every guy listening, many would
come to the park." To writer Rick Reilly, the Portable Vinnie made L.A. a
transistor town. "Forget video. [His] musings drift up from every traffic jam
and outdoor cafe."

Scully's voice was everywhere Venice Beach, Whittier Market, in the
stands, on the field. In 1960, he noted that it was umpire Frank Secory's
birthday. "So I said over the radio, `I'll count to three and everybody yell,
"Happy birthday, Frank." "'

Scully: "One, two, three."

The Coliseum cast of thousands: "Happy birthday, Frank!"

The '62ers opened Dodger Stadium. The A.L. Angels became a tenant.
One day Baltimore changes pitchers. Fans begin to cheer. Orioles Voice
Chuck Thompson says, "These are great fans here, cheering Baltimore." Next
day the O's change pitchers. Again, applause. "What's going on?" he said,
finally seeing earplugs. "They're hearing Vinnie, cheering when something
happened." Millions took Scully's offer to "pull up a chair."

Vin didn't do the Dodgers. Wrote Reilly: "Vinnie is the Dodgers." It is fair
enough to ask why.

A hunch:

• Scully was a scout. "L.A.'d have loved anybody when the Dodgers
came west," said Bob Prince. "It was his fortune to be first-to set
the style." Bob later snubbed a San Diego Padres offer: "You've
got desert to the east, Mexico to the south, ocean to the west, and
Scully to the north."

• Knowledge. "He'd played baseball," said Murray. "Plus, it can lag
and Vinnie distracts you. He'll move into a story about Duke
Snider so smoothly you'd swear Duke was playing now."

• The Coliseum, so large that viewing resembled pantomime.
"A lot of people couldn't see, so they brought radios to hear
me talk," Vin said. "Then it became a habit even after we
moved in '62."

• Being near, but not of, Hollywood. "Authenticity counts in the
living room," said Pacific Palisades neighbor Ronald Reagan.
Affable and courteous, he treated you like a guest.

Even then, Los Angeles sprawled sans focal point. "When you talk about [it],
you're talking about the drifter. Californians aren't in contact with their
neighbors," Theodore H. White wrote in The Making of the President 1964.
"People are lost. They have no one to talk to. And the doorbell-ringer has an
importance . . . they've reached out and touched." Vin became a doorbellringer, a friend you would want to know.

By the late sixties, he had missed only two games (birth of a child, and
sister's marriage), become two- (ultimately, four-) time National Sportscaster of theYear, and called four (of a record 19) no-hitters, including Sandy
Koufax's in 1965. "There are 29,000 people in the ballpark, and a million
butterflies," he said. The mound had "become the loneliest place in the
world."

Finally: "Swung on and missed! A perfect game! On the scoreboard in
right field it is 9:46 P.M. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California."
Prose was telling: Vin's eyes were already on the clock.

"How much more time do I have for trying something new?" he said in 1969.
"Could I have become a moderator? An actor? A singer?" Starting NBC's quiz
show "It Takes Two," Scully's schedule approached rush hour in Riverside. "I'll
read books, magazines, talk with experts. I'm afraid of going out and
sounding like a horse's fanny, which is one reason why I prepare. Sir Laurence
Olivier was asked what makes a great actor and he said, `The humility to prepare and the confidence to bring it off.' Believe me, I'm loaded with the
humility to prepare."

Could L.A. wave the flag?Vin asked on radio. (From 1967 to 1973, no.)
Turn to "It Takes Two": Miss, how many feet of nylon thread in a pair of stockings? (There once was a girl from Nantucket ... oops, wrong card.) Where
were we, anyway? NBC? Dodger Stadium? "I'm glad I did it all," he laughed.
"It's just that with the crazy scheduling, I'd hate to do it again."

"ItTakesTwo"died in 1971. CBS's 1973 "Vin Scully Show"lasted 13 weeks.
More abiding was a gag. One day a car used in an old George Raft film drove on
the set. Backstage crews, actors, and "Laugh-In"'s entire company watched. Vin
"was to open the trunk to find the answer to a question on bootlegging," read
TV Guide. Innocently, he did. "His jaw fell. Reclining within, unseen by the audience, was a delicious redhead, who had starred in Playboy. She leaned on an
elbow, staring soulfully at Scully. She was as naked as a jaybird."

Fordham had not prepared Vin for ladies who had on not a stitch. "[He]
was speechless. His first impulse was to remove his coat and cover the lady,
but he realized this would stir suspicion among the audience. Nervously, he
lifted the answer from the trunk and closed it. The plotters in the wings
roared."

Two decades of play-by-play, and Vin was still transported. "I still get goose
bumps when I hear a roar before the first pitch. Maybe it means I haven't
grown." Sadness had. In 1972, wife Joan, 35, died of an accidental medical
overdose. "I had three young kids. The road was awful. My best friend there
was a book. Once I got to Atlanta and my oldest son, Mike [who died in a
1994 helicopter crash], said, `Why don't you come home, Dad?' I said, 'I'll
be there in only 12 days.' I felt like a louse."

Being Catholic, bleeding Irish, Vin said, "I was brought up thinking about
death. Tomorrow is so uncertain." As a single parent, job one became staying
home. "He spurned `Monday Night Football' and NBC baseball," said Times
writer Larry Stewart. In late 1973, Scully got engaged. Sandra Schaefer had
two children. Soon they bore another. "Baseball'd been enough," he said.
"Now we needed money"-i.e., CBS 1975 tennis, golf, and football pact. "I
could still do the Dodgers. Network baseball was never a big deal [CBS didn't
carry it]. I was happy as it was."

To many, baseball sans Vin equaled Bogart sans Bacall. "Only a Dodgers
flag," said Murray, "put him on the Series." He did 1966's, then 1974's.
"[NBC's] Curt Gowdy, Tony Kubek, and Monte Moore sounded like college radio rejects [vs.] Scully," wrote Henry Hecht. ABC shrugged in 1977.
"In their first Series," the New York Post's Phil Mushnick said, "they wanted
their own [football's Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell]. Vin was offered a
bit part," declining. Insult stung: baseball's Secretariat, dumped for two
Mr. Eds.

In 1978-79, he did CBS Radio's All-Star Game and Series, respectively.
The New York Times noted "fans turning off [ABC] TV's sound ... and onto his
commentary." Willie Stargell's homer won the Classic. "He's done it!" cried
Scully. "Pops has hit it out!" Listening, you thought: Vin does that each night.

In 1982, he had a Night at Dodger Stadium, entered the Hall of Fame, and got
a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That fall NBC inked a $550 million major-league six-year pact. Return on investment demanded Scully. "I was
doing fewer Dodger games [home radio/road TV]. It was easier to say yes [to
an annual $2 million salary]." Pulling up a network chair seemed as comfy as
Vin's childhood Emerson.

"He is baseball's best announcer [four L.C.S., 12 All-Star Games, and
nonpareil 25 Series]," said NBC sports head Thomas Watson. "Why shouldn't
he be ours?" Mused columnist Jack Craig: "Skeptics could wonder how well
[Scully] will do onTV [vs. radio] on a network [vs. local] level." By mid-1983,
it was hard to rind a critic who admitted doubt. Weekly Vin made network
baseball breathe, dance, sing.

"So Rice hits a long out, and Tony Armas hits one out long!" he said one
Saturday. The 1984 Tigers began 35-5: "The first-place Bengals are clawing
up a storm." A first baseman made an error: "[By contrast] Gil Hodges's big
hands made his glove as handy as Michael Jackson's." It seemed inevitable:
"Game," Scully's Everest. Or was that the '84 Series? "Perhaps no sports
event," wrote TSN, "has been told as well."

Lance Parrish dinged Goose Gossage. "With the clocking of the [speed]
gun, the Goose has been clocked."Tim Lollar was "trying to keep San Diego
from disappearing without leaving an oil slick." Detroit's Mickey Lolich
receded to a Bob Uecker seat. "Sic transit gloria," said the Latinist of the exSeries ikon. ("Thus goes the glory.") Vin even lip-read on-field dialogue. "Tom
Lasorda is the easiest guy in baseball to read."

A sense of when to hush made Vin a breeze to hear. In 1974, Al Downing
ceded Hank Aaron's 715th homer. Rising, Scully left the booth: "I didn't
want the temptation to talk over noise." Finally, he returned: "And it is a
great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron."A decade later
Kurt Bevacqua went Series yard. "For one minute, as the replay showed
Bevacqua turning around in a circle and jumping for joy," said The Washington
Post, "[Vin] didn't say a word."