I promise this won't be a harangue on the game going to hell, I have written and will in the future about all of that.
No, this is more about Vin Scully and the great times of radio when every team had their own unique voice and character.
Even though Scully had been retired for a bit, it was Scully that was the final link to the days of radio's larger importance to baseball and its fans.
Scully is remembered as a California icon but he started with the Dodgers when they were still playing their games in Brooklyn
A radio game, baseball with the downtime and pauses lends itself to the voices and stories that only the best commentators could wind, and as a result, allowed the listener to do other things while listening to a game.
And as good as each announcer for a team could be with their voice stretching across their region and their ardent fans singing their praises, it was almost universal that one stood above all - and he also called games on television- Vin Scully of the Dodgers.
The smooth voice of Vin Scully made even the most fervent Dodger hater (I hated the Dodgers well before I rooted for the Giants) enjoy watching or listening to Dodger broadcasts with the master behind the mike and as with the best dating back to the age of radio- it was the stories that Scully could tell that made him so wonderful to listen to.
Living on the East Coast, I was robbed of listening to Scully every night as I drifted off to sleep but I did have the honor of listening to some of the greats in their areas- Ernie Harwell in Detroit, Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall from Cincinnati, Chuck Thompson and later Jon Miller in Baltimore, when I was very young, Bob Prince in Pittsburgh and his replacement Lanny Frattare, and Herb Score in Cleveland with his various partners through the years, all of whom were part of my childhood and teenage years.
I always imagined then and now, that there was a counterpart to me listening to games in the west listening to Vin Scully with the Dodgers, Dick Enberg with the Angels, Jerry Coleman with the Padres, and Lon Simmons with the Giants doing what I was doing to pass the time while listening to baseball.
Vin Scully was more of a national broadcaster to me growing up as he did NFL games ( It was Scully on the call of Dwight Clark's Catch in the 1981 NFC Championship game in the last NFL game that he would ever call) for CBS and his work on the Masters for the Tiffany network as well before leaving CBS in 1983 to hold the main play by play voice for NBC for Major League Baseball through 1989 when NBC lost the rights to MLB to ironically CBS.
It was his work on those games for NBC that I remember best with the famous calls but what made Vin Scully perfect for baseball were the fabulous stories that he would tell from thirty-plus years in the game at that time and would be sixty-six years by the time he ended his career with the Dodgers at the end of the 2016 season.
Scully could tell a story in a way that you imagine just sitting around with a father or grandfather talking about their memories of a certain person or event, flowing smoothly through those memories and intertwining them with " a flyball to left, caught by Baker, one down" before returning to the story effortlessly and without feeling that he had to "get his story or catchphrase in" as so many today seem to feel is so important.
Baseball has always been a radio game more than any other sport and it can be argued that Vin Scully could be the best to ever call a game on the radio. However, that will be questioned by many baseball fans with their own regional favorite.
One thing that is pretty tough for any baseball fan to disagree with is this- It's pretty difficult to hear the name Vin Scully and not come up with a memory and shortly thereafter, a smile...
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