Vin Scully

The former radio and television play-by-play voice of the Dodgers was widely considered the greatest announcer in baseball history.

“I don’t use the word ‘fans’ ever, because it’s short for fanatic,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2016. He had two children from his first marriage, Kevin and Erin Scully, and a daughter from his second marriage, Catherine Scully-Luderer. A son from his first marriage, Michael Scully, died in a helicopter crash in 1994. In 2005, Bob Costas, the longtime NBC and HBO announcer, said of that call: “I’ve heard other announcers with great, great calls of home runs, great calls of exciting plays, but what Vin is really great at is all the moments of anticipation leading up to the big moment. But tonight, September the ninth, nineteen hundred and sixty-five, he made the toughest walk of his career, I’m sure, because through eight innings, he has pitched a perfect game.” In 1974, when announcing Aaron’s 715th home run, which broke Babe Ruth’s record, Mr. Scully captured the historic grandeur of the event: “What a marvelous moment for baseball. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter, he made it a perfect game.” No broadcaster spent longer with one franchise than his 67 seasons with the Dodgers, including 59 in Los Angeles. With NBC in the 1980s, he became a fixture of baseball’s Saturday “Game of the Week,” as well as on playoff and World Series telecasts. In 1955, Brooklyn’s “Boys of Summer” won their only World Series title before the franchise moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Mr. Scully’s career began in 1950 — which means he called baseball games for more than two-thirds of the sport’s entire broadcast history. In 1950, when he just 22, he was hired to join Red Barber and Connie Desmond on the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcast team. Mr. Scully continued to announce Dodgers baseball through 2016, retiring on the season’s final day.

Scully's Hall of Fame career spanned the Dodgers' move from Brooklyn to L.A., and the nation's move from radio to video.

What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. The greatest there ever has been and the greatest there ever will be." She made the trip despite President Biden's warning last month that military officials advised against it. "High fly ball into right field! "What a marvelous moment for baseball. He grew up playing stickball in the streets and attending games at the Polo Grounds. "Got him! A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol." There are 29,000 people in the ballpark, and a million butterflies." The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history by Don Larsen, a no-hitter, a perfect game in a World Series." "There will never be another one like him. - In 1953, the 25-year-old Scully became the youngest person tocall the World Series. Five years later, he moved west with the Dodgers and quickly became as much a part of L.A. " as the freeways and the smog."

Scully was the Dodgers' play-by-play man from 1950-2016 and worked for CBS Sports from 1975-82.

He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. "He was the voice of the Dodgers, and so much more. In addition, his voice played a memorable role in some of the greatest moments in the history of our sport. Or, as it came to be called, simply, The Catch: Scully, who called various nationally televised football and golf contests for CBS Sports from 1975 to 1982, started his broadcasting career in 1949 after attending Fordham University, where he studied journalism and was a student broadcaster.

Everyone associated with baseball wanted more to happen when it came to Scully. He officially turned down an offer from Fox Sports to be part of its MLB All- ...

7. Scully didn’t just call the action on the field. 2. One of my Sports Illustrated career highlights was interviewing Scully on my old Hot Clicks Podcast in 2012. He is legitimately the only sports figure who I've never seen anyone say a negative word about on Twitter. “I just think I don’t belong there. The voice, the pacing, the style, the details, the smoothness. I just don’t feel right doing that.”

The legendary Dodgers broadcaster, who died Tuesday at age 94, was a modern Socrates, only more revered. He was simultaneously a giant and our best friend.

It is eternal, not because of the preservation of his famous calls, but because of how he lived a beautiful life. It is based on humility: The speaker begins with the needs of the audience, not a personal agenda. But what made Vin the voice of summer, not just baseball, was the natural ease of his manner. For 19 minutes he revealed as much of his personal philosophy as he ever did. On the call was Vin Scully. “I like people to think of me as a friend,” he once said. The intersection of car culture, the transistor radio and few televised Dodger games in the team’s first decade in Los Angeles? Sure, all of that. What made Vin Scully the greatest baseball broadcaster ever, one of the most trusted media personalities and one of America’s best 20th-century storytellers? Having worked the national radio broadcast for the last All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium in 1980, one of 12 such Midsummer Classics he did, Vin kidded on the square about his goal working those games, when substitutes enter in waves: “Just don’t mess it up,” he said. I mean, I have a big debt to pay in heaven—I hope when I get there—because the Lord has been so gracious to me all my life.” He said just so when Sister Virginia Maria of the Sisters of Charity at the Incarnation School asked her grammar school students to write an essay on what they wanted to be when they grew up. “I remember I was so excited because it was Opening Day and Don Newcombe was pitching,” Scully said.

The Vin Scully anecdotes are coming a mile a minute today. As they should. The baseball icon was as good at his job as anyone has ever been and over his ...

His was a voice we’ll remember forever, whether was calling a double-play or bringing up Hitler just to spit on his grave. The man was nothing but a professional. 94 years, 67 of which he called MLB games.

This story, by Harold Rosenthal, first appeared in the Oct. 14, 1953, issue of The Sporting News. NEW YORK, N. Y. — Vin Scully, the personable young redhead ...

"I worked that football game in a light suit suitable for a dance, which I was planning to go to after the game. When Scully got home that afternoon his mother said, "Red Skelton called you." There was this big Notre Dame-North Carolina game slated in New York and Warren Brown, the Chicago sports columnist who was scheduled to work the game for CBS, became ill. There wasn't, but the fellow in charge of personnel suggested he talk with Red Barber. Barber, in charge of that network's weekly football round-up, told him there wasn't anything, but took his name. Ernie Harwell was moved into the job. Take the case of the secretary at Fordham who insisted that Vin include Radio Station WTOP in Washington among the 150 letters he dispatched asking for a radio job.

Vin Scully, Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, died Tuesday, the team announced.

He said he realized time was the most precious thing in the world and that he wanted to use his time to spend with his loved ones. While being one of the most widely heard broadcasters in the nation, Scully was an intensely private man. The street leading to Dodger Stadium's main gate was named in his honor in 2016. "A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol," Scully told listeners. He often said it was best to describe a big play quickly and then be quiet so fans could listen to the pandemonium. With a snack of saltine crackers and a glass of milk nearby, the boy was transfixed by the crowd's roar that raised goosebumps. "He had a voice & a way of storytelling that made you think he was only talking to you," former Lakers great Magic Johnson, a part owner of the Dodgers, tweeted. "He was the best there ever was," Kershaw said after the Dodgers' game Tuesday night in San Francisco. "Just when you think about the Dodgers, there's a lot of history here and a lot of people that have come through. Although he was paid by the Dodgers, Scully was unafraid to criticize a bad play or a manager's decision or praise an opponent while spinning stories against a backdrop of routine plays and noteworthy achievements. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. In addition, his voice played a memorable role in some of the greatest moments in the history of our sport. As the longest-tenured broadcaster with a single team in pro sports history, Scully saw it all and called it all.

The Sporting News first wrote about Vin Scully in 1953, when he was barely out of college and calling a World Series. Across the years, TSN checked in ...

At 22, I was the youngest and happiest fellow in the business. No matter where the team finished, Scully leads HIS league.” I had no booth and almost froze to death on the roof of Fenway Park doing the Maryland-Boston University thriller in 1949. Scully was almost the only thing certifiably major league about the Dodgers that year. “That has given me the perspective that whatever I have can disappear in 30 seconds. Death is a constant companion in our religion.

Telling stories about a game, Vin Scully delivered a message that was bigger than baseball,

Monday, when he realized what he was going to do, raced over and took the flag away from him. In 1976, at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, two protesters ran onto the field to set an American flag ablaze, but Dodger outfielder Rick Monday had another idea: “It looks like he’s going to burn a flag,” Scully said, “and Rick Monday runs and takes it away from him. And so Monday — I think the guy was going to set fire to the American flag. He endured in good part because of what he did not do: He did not rip the bad guys on the other team. “I have said enough for a lifetime,” he said on that final broadcast in 2016, “and for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon.” He never trumpeted his achievements, never hyped the action on the field. Radio, he knew, was vastly more intimate than TV; it was where he and the fans could imagine together, Scully painting aural pictures and listeners filling in the colors in their minds. When Scully said a young phenom’s swing was reminiscent of Hank Aaron’s, it had nothing to do with anything he’d read or viewed on YouTube: It was because Scully saw them both play and had taken careful note of the alignment. He made listeners — he addressed them as “Friends” — an honest deal: No blather, no phony yuks, just the straight story, with the lessons of history, the wisdom of someone who had seen it all. His voice was SoCal smooth, unhurried, gentle, with a touch of his native New York. He wrote poetry in the moment. He has done it four straight years, and now he capped it: On his fourth no-hitter, he made it a perfect game.” And then it happened, and Scully said only what was necessary: “High flyball into right field. “All year long, they looked to him to light the fire and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight,” Scully said.

Ahead of the 1990 MLB season, NBC lost the national-TV rights, leaving Vin Scully to call only Dodgers games. And that was fine with him, he told The ...

Thomson's three-run, ninth-inning homer gave the New York Giants a 5-4 victory over the Dodgers in the third game of a best-of-three playoff for the 1951 National League pennant. "I don't feel like I'll just be watching sunsets without the network assignments," he said. Red Barber hired Scully to join him and Connie Desmond in a three-man Dodgers broadcast crew. He will, that is, if the 1990 season isn't curtailed by the baseball owners' lockout. "I'm so grateful I’ve been able to take it all in," said Scully. “I've approached my role as a professional announcer. Fresh out of Fordham University, Scully came aboard in 1950, after Ernie Harwell left.

Editor's note: This interview from April 30, 2011 is being brought back following Vin Scully's death Tuesday at 94 years old. Talked to Vin Scully on Friday ...

And after Aaron broke Ruth’s record, I said something like, ‘a black man in the South would be remembered for breaking the record of a white icon.’ I’m proud of that, as well.” I want to spend time with my wife. I would like time to enjoy my blessings.” He told me I wasn’t getting my right hip out of the way in time. ... I checked the box score. ... When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record against the Dodgers, I called the home run on radio and didn’t say anything else. I went back and timed the recording. I was never home. I was doing too much ... football, golf, baseball. I think they were right.” We passed the baton back and forth.” He calls the first three innings of every game on a radio/television simulcast.

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 3, 2022 / 14:38 pm. Vin Scully, who called Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games for more than two-thirds of a century, died Tuesday at his ...

Scully joined the announcers’ team for the Dodgers in 1950, when he was just twenty-two. In 1972, his wife died of an accidental medical overdose, and in 1994 his adult son, Michael died in a helicopter crash. In 2016, Scully — a devotee of the Virgin Mary — created a two-CD audio recording of the rosary. He also earned a Personal Achievement Award from the Catholic Academy of Communication Professionals in 2016. A gifted orator and storyteller who was dubbed a “poet-philosopher of baseball,” Scully deftly narrated numerous momentous events in baseball during his 67 seasons as a broadcaster. Despite being a private person outside of the recording booth, preferring to spend time with his family, he often would allow charities to auction off the privilege of having lunch with him to raise money for good causes, such as supporting people with Down syndrome.

A memorial outside Dodger Stadium for broadcaster Vin Scully on Wednesday morning. (Wesley Lapointe / Los Angeles Times). By D.J. Waldie.

I’ll remember summer evenings and the radio in the soft light. I read the Los Angeles Times every morning over a plate of two fried eggs and two strips of bacon, so I knew something about the team and their standing in the league. He talked about the weather, about the twilight gathering, about the history of the game, about nothing really that important. Jaime Jarrín has been the Spanish language voice of the team since 1959, creating a parallel Los Angeles out of balls and strikes and comments on the qualities of this place. The twinned cities of Los Angeles that Scully and Jarrín have made with their voices may seem like different cities, but their borders are unguarded. Scully’s voice comes from the radio on the dresser in a meter and in a tone that seem to belong to us.

The Dodgers' move to Los Angeles was made seamless by a man who never said too much and was perfect for his new surroundings. His old surroundings still ...

He realized that a momentous play deserved the roar of the crowd rather than the roar of the broadcaster. He carried himself with the aura of a self-confident but low-key star. Major League Baseball had come a long way since Walter O’Malley ran away with Our Bums. Baseball had grown from essentially the eastern half of the United States to a worldwide sport. Instead, Mookie Wilson’s little dribbler slithered past the aching legs of first baseman Bill Buckner, and the World Series was suddenly extended to a seventh game. In 1958, only 30, Vin Scully was the repository for the history of a franchise beloved in another world. Barber, no stranger to alcohol, told Scully that he could not afford to be seen having a beer because it could be held against him if he had slip-up at the microphone. Scully’s impeccable reliance on the action on the screen served him well two World Series later when an injured Kirk Gibson hobbled up to pinch-hit with the Dodgers trailing the Oakland A’s. He tersely called the game-changing homer, but then went silent for 65 seconds as Dodger Stadium erupted, then made one brief comment, and went silent again for 29 seconds. (“Tearing up the pea-patch,” “the two teams are having a rhubarb,” the Dodgers are “sitting in the catbird seat” — we came to know exactly what each one meant.) But behind the jocular and charming regionalisms, Barber was a complicated religious man who had once thought about being a teacher. Gil Hodges and Duke Snider came to the Mets as faded icons, but Scully would materialize on the air waves at the peak of his game. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the State of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. His mellow, pull-up-a-chair approach was like having a beloved elder explain the game unfolding on the field. (The noive of them.)

When Fabiola Torres peers at the 20-year-old photograph of her parents standing on either side of Vin Scully, she sees her father, Salvador Torres, ...

“You could just tell the genuine love he had for humanity, and for the fans,” Armando Delgado said. “He had such a sense of respect for people when he didn’t have to,” Bryan said. “That’s one of the things that sticks with me, how much he loved us fans. “But from Day One in that press box, there were so many extraordinary people there who were super-nice to me. I miss talking with him, eating lunch with him, helping him with his computer and printing his game notes.pic.twitter.com/VmOxMPpKHW He and his grandfather would gradually increase the volume on their respective devices until neither could make out anything being said. “If you want me to watch you, you’re gonna watch Dodger games,” Abelardo told his grandson. “He said, ‘Thank you for your service,’” Fabiola recalled. He learned to speak English by listening to Vin. #VinScully pic.twitter.com/puPOTCNFDj Salvador moved to Van Nuys from Mexico to work in 1956, when he was 12, not knowing English – or baseball. So when Salvador, his earphones draped over his shoulders, met Scully years later, the famous broadcaster didn’t just smile for a picture. “The word he learned?

The Los Angeles Dodgers will wear a uniform patch featuring a microphone and "Vin" in honor of legendary broadcaster Vin Scully, who died Tuesday at 94.

"I was almost in tears,'' 75-year-old Daniel Mirgil of Pomona said of hearing Scully had died. "My grandson was saying this morning, 'He's such a nice person to everybody,''' Gutierrez said. "He's been a part of my life since I was born,'' Walls said. The self-effacing Scully would have appreciated the tributes but would have likely found them to be "a little bit embarrassing,'' which was how he described the hoopla surrounding his retirement in 2016. "Having this opportunity to share this moment with the fans is really important. "It was like listening to your favorite song on the radio all the time, he was always in the background,'' said George Esteves, a 58-year-old from Sierra Madre.

The Dodgers will wear a commemorative patch on their jerseys to honor former broadcaster Vin Scully, who died Tuesday at age 94.

Scully, who was the voice of the Dodgers for 67 seasons, died Tuesday at age 94. The Dodgers will honor broadcasting legend Vin Scully with a commemorative jersey patch beginning Wednesday when they play the Giants in San Francisco. Dodgers to wear commemorative jersey patch to honor Vin Scully

In a town synonymous with fleeting fame, Scully was the one thing that always seemed to endure. His voice, “like a gentle hand,” still resonates.

“Vin Scully was better than the brochure,” Monday said. Culberson was shy, Monday asked and Scully said he would be “honored” to sign it. “I was mesmerized by this game and mesmerized even more by Vin’s voice and the way he presented the game,” Monday said. He recalled Scully’s final Dodger Stadium broadcast in 2016, when the icon beautifully serenaded the sellout crowd by singing “Wind Beneath My Wings” when the game was finished. When he and his wife travel somewhere, he said, his wife often kiddingly says the place wasn’t as good as the brochure. “Vincent Edward Scully meant as much or more to the Dodgers than any .300 hitter they ever signed, any 20-game winner they ever fielded,” Murray wrote in a column published in August 1990. “It’s my seventh year in the bigs, and my mom heard Vin Scully mention my name. Every time they were in the car when the Dodgers were playing, Monday recalls, Scully was their companion. “He was so well read,” Monday said. He was wearing a brace on his left hand and wrist, the result of a bout with tendinitis. “Even when I wrote it, I had my fingers crossed that it would not be made public to an extent where suddenly I’m trying to step into the same spotlight because I didn’t want that at all,” Scully said this summer. “Whether we actually met Vin Scully or not, he was our friend.”

There is really only one way to start a column on legendary broadcaster Vin Scully — “Hello and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be.”.

To throw your words back at you, “May God give you for every storm, a rainbow, for every tear, a smile, for every care, a promise, and a blessing in each trial. However, in the end, I think the reason I enjoyed Scully so much is because he worked most of his time alone. The shift was long and tiring, but somehow everyone in the warehouse would perk up a little bit when Scully’s voice echoed across the building around 7 p.m. as we heard, “It’s time for Dodger baseball.” I swear Scully made those eight-hour nights seem like one or two. Scully’s line “I think the fans were watching that one with their hearts and not their eyes” is pure genius and poetry. I often hear that to be a good journalist you have to be mean. Nobody appreciated the Dodgers/Giants rivalry more than Scully and knew how to handle the situation better, for it was baseball he loved, but kindness he valued. Hearing Scully’s voice, I could picture myself as a young 8-year-old getting into baseball for the first time. I thought of my first real job in college working in a print shop late at night. A voice more beautiful than the sound of Ella Fitzgerald, wind chimes, a Jimi Hendrix riff, crickets at night, a child’s laugh, or a partner saying, “I do.” He called some of the best Giants and A’s moments of all time. He was to baseball what pine trees are for Christmas, water is for thirst and words are to books. After all, he was 94 and had given us so much over the years.

Yep, in case you didn't realize this Dodgers icon also did play-by-play for CBS Golf from 1975 to 1982. And not surprisingly, he was also darn good in the 18th ...

"Now pull up a chair and take a look at the agony of a gentleman who is caught in the pot hole at 14," Scully begins. Such was the case during the first round of the 1981 Heritage Golf Classic when Rik Massengale found himself in a pot bunker on the 14th hole at Harbour Town Golf Links. Despite being a three-time PGA Tour winner, Massengale needed six attempts just to escape the sand. From Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th home run to Kirk Gibson's heroics in the 1988 World Series, Vin Scully was on the call for some of the most famous—and impressive—moments in baseball history.

Vin Scully, who called Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games for more than two-thirds of a century, died Tuesday at his home at the age of 94.

Scully joined the announcers’ team for the Dodgers in 1950, when he was just twenty-two. In 1972, his wife died of an accidental medical overdose, and in 1994 his adult son, Michael died in a helicopter crash. In 2016, Scully — a devotee of the Virgin Mary — created a two-CD audio recording of the rosary. He also earned a Personal Achievement Award from the Catholic Academy of Communication Professionals in 2016. A gifted orator and storyteller who was dubbed a “poet-philosopher of baseball,” Scully deftly narrated numerous momentous events in baseball during his 67 seasons as a broadcaster. Scully was famous for calling games alone — that is, without a color commentator — so the pictorial pope’s silence was apt.