The voice of the Los Angeles Dodger’s radio and television broadcaster Vin Scully is as familiar to many people in Southern California as those of their immediate family members. Generations have literally grown up with that mellifluous voice. It is the voice of summer. It is the voice of freshly cut grass. It is the voice echoing off the walls of the garage on a hot summer day, while domestic chores are being tackled at the same leisurely pace in which a baseball game unfolds.

It is the voice coming from the transistor radio at the beach. It is the soothing voice that drowns out the sound of snarling traffic during commutes so long and tedious that you would have to be a Los Angelino to understand. It is the voice whose rhythm, pitch and intonation is so familiar that without really hearing a specific word one could tell the difference between a home run and a mere hit.  “Mays goes back, a waaaay back, she i-i-i-i-i-i-s...GONE!...a three run Homer by Duke Snyder ties the score and we have a brand new ballgame here in the bottom of the eighth.” It is the voice of the ballpark. It is the voice of the Dodgers. It is the voice of Vin Scully.

My hometown team, the Dodgers, more than any sports franchise, is a metaphor for the American experience. From racial integration to westward expansion to globalization, a study of the Dodgers could give you a pretty good primer to American history. From 1883 when this ball club first took the field in the New York borough of Brooklyn, right up to the present, the Dodgers organization is deeply rooted in tradition and yet has always been years ahead it’s time. For the past 66 years Vin Scully has broadcast this narrative to literally hundreds of millions of people. Even in his 80s’ Scully embodies modernism and tradition all at the same time. He is simply a timeless classic.

By the time the Dodgers left their beloved, yet decrepit Ebbets Field in Brooklyn at the end of the 1957 season for all the possibilities and promise of the golden state, Scully, a native New Yorker had already been in the Dodgers broadcast booth for seven years. Scully became the voice of the “Boys of Summer.” He called the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers World Championship, their first in franchise history.

However, Los Angeles and Vin Scully were meant for one another. When he arrived with the team in 1958 the optimism of mid-century America and the sunny, laid back Southern California lifestyle was a perfect fit for the voice which has a smile in it. If Los Angeles seemed to be a city of the future, so was the play by play style of Scully. He represented a fresh approach to sports broadcasting. Up to that point clipped, awkwardly syncopated cadences were used by sports broadcasters that in no way reflected how people communicated verbally in day to day conversation.

Scully doesn’t have a radio voice. That is his voice. It is the same voice he uses in casual, off camera, off mic conversations. Quite frankly, as a young man his voice was a bit thin by professional broadcast standards of the day, but he used the language with such deft precision his instrument has become as potent as anyone who has ever stepped behind a microphone. He doesn’t have the booming baritone of the late Phillies announcer Harry Kalas or that of the outstanding Giant announcer Jon Miller. He doesn’t have the distinctive pipes of longtime Yankee announcer Mel Allen. He doesn’t have the smooth southern drawl of his mentor, the iconic pioneer of sports radio, Red Barber or the beloved Ernie Harwell of the Detroit Tigers for that matter. He has never employed the folksy, guy on the barstool next to you style of Harry Carey or Phil Rizzuto.

Scully does have a mellow delivery where every rough edge has been burnished to near perfection. His style has been described as lyrical. He is direct and to the point without ever drawing your attention to that aspect of his broadcast. He tells it like it is, without ever “showing up” a player, manager or umpire.

With Vin Scully it has never been about himself or his personality, it is about communicating the events that take place on the field. He informs. He illuminates. He disseminates information with more clarity, accuracy and precision than any sports broadcaster ever. He does it all with intelligence, wit, style and grace.  

At the behest of Red Barber, Scully adopted a neutral style of reporting the events on the field. He has never rooted for a team on the air, even the one that has signed his paychecks for the last 66 years. Scully avoids cliché’s. He doesn’t engage in shtick. If Vin Scully does have one calling card it is class.

The importance of Vin Scully in those first few years of the Dodgers relocation to Southern California can’t be overstated. The team obliged their new and instantly huge fan base by winning the World Series in 1959, ‘63 and ’65. In a city full of stars none shined brighter than the Dodgers and no voice filled the airwaves with more luster than that of Vin Scully.

His call of the fourth no-hitter in as many years by Sandy Koufax, which was also a fourteen strikeout, 1-0, perfect game, was almost as brilliant as the pitcher’s performance itself that September evening in 1965. It was two future Hall of Famers at the pinnacle of greatness. Scully’s ninth inning play by play call of that game is generally regarded as the greatest stretch of sports broadcasting ever.

Vin Scully has made famous calls on the largest stages in sport. He has covered a record 27 World Series for instance. His genius though lies in the broadcast of a lopsided meaningless game which he can make entertaining. His greatness lies in the down years; it lies in the day to day grind that is really the hallmark of our national pastime.

For Vin Scully, the awards, accolades, honors and accommodations are of course endless. By now the longevity statistics alone are astonishing and quite literally mind boggling. For instance, in 1982 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. On his plaque it states that he holds the record for most consecutive seasons broadcasting for the same team. That was thirty four years ago. Last year he doubled that number.

However, in a sport where statistics are interwoven into the fabric of the game, Scully himself said, “Statistics are used like a drunk uses a lamppost; for support, not illumination.”

For illumination one just has to tune into a Dodger game. One of Vin Scully’s many protégés is a long time Southern California based baseball announcer who also spent years on the national stage, Dick Enberg who said, "At times I'll be listening to him and I'll think, ‘Oh, I wish I could call upon that expression the way he does.’ He paints the picture more beautifully than anyone who's ever called a baseball game."

In a few moments, on this day, April 4th, the Dodgers begin play for the 2016 season. The team is in San Diego preparing to take on the Padres. I am going to turn on the television as it will be, “Ti-i-i-i-i-i-ime for Dodger baseball”. It is very likely this will be Scully’s last opening day since he announced he will retire at the end of this season.

The eloquence and professionalism of Vin Scully will again add much needed gravitas to the experience of watching men play a boy’s game. He assuages the guilt I sometimes feel when doing something as passive and as insignificant as watching mercenary, professional athletes play ball. After all, I am listening to a national treasure and a piece of history. What could be more important than that? 

Regardless of the outcome of the game, I will be listening to the greatest of all time. I will be listening to baseball history incarnate. I will be listening to the voice of the one and only Vin Scully.

-  David Mac



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