1976 was the year I fell in love with baseball, and of course it didn’t hurt that the two radio broadcasters I got to hear most often that season were Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully. I was so lucky to grow up hearing them coming through my AM transistors, and I am so sad that both of them are now gone.
Vin’s most famous calls (Koufax no-hitters, Gibson’s homer, Dodgers World Series clinchers, etc.) will surely get a well-deserved airing today, but take a few minutes to listen to the legendary (and now sadly late) broadcaster call the ninth inning of this May 1976 Dodgers game against the Phillies at Veterans Stadium. The knowledge, perspective and sheer joy he communicates to his audience — even during a sloppy early-season contest that few fans will even remember the following month, let alone decades later — is a wonder to behold.
For so many of us, Vin was practically a member of the family, someone we shared countless weekday dinners and long weekend afternoons with every spring, summer and fall. Although sometimes eating dinner during a broadcast wasn't the best idea; while Vin was such an engaging pitchman that he could even make those disgusting Farmer John Dodger Dogs sound appetizing, his obsession with Adrien Beltre's botched appendectomy ruined dozens of dinners for me in the spring of 2001. I'd bring my plate over to the TV around 7 pm, in time for the first pitch of the evening, and as soon as Beltre would come to the plate for the first time (usually around 7:20), Vin would start in about how impressive it was that Beltre was in the lineup, considering the unfortunate aftermath of his surgery. "He's even had to wear a COLOSTOMY bag," Vin would marvel, as whatever I'd just eaten began to rise in my throat...
To be fair, I should have known by then that Vin always called a game as if he was speaking directly to a first-time or occasional listener. He didn't want you to miss out on any pertinent detail...
One other favorite Vin memory, though he really only figures into it tangentially: Back around the time of Beltre's colostomy bag, when eBay was new — and before YouTube existed — I found a guy selling CD-R burns of Red Barber's Brooklyn Dodgers radio broadcasts from the 1940s and 50s. My dad grew up in the shadow of Ebbets Field, and the first baseball book he ever gave me was Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, so I figured I'd get a bunch of these for him as a Father's Day gift. Not surprisingly, he absolutely loved them; and once he'd finished listening to them all, he asked me if the seller I'd gotten them from had any more of them. "He doesn't have any other Red Barbers, but he has a handful of Brooklyn games with Vin Scully on the mic." Dad just shook his head. "Nah," he said, "That's the new guy."
Rest In Peace, New Guy. May your dulcet tones ever echo through the ages.
"The new guy"! Wonderful.
Posted by: Christopher Earley | 08/03/2022 at 02:04 PM