Now, as promised, I am going to talk about Vin Scully. Vin has been the voice of the Dodgers,and baseball, since 1950. He has called 25 World Series games, 12 All Star Games, 20 no-hitters, and three perfect games. I have newspapers and magazines containing interviews with him, and so I will be quoting him a lot. When asked about when he first started to love the game, Vin said the following: “I was not quite 9 years old, I was walking home from grammar school, I walked by a Chinese laundry, and in the window was the line score of the World Series game- that would be October 2, 1936- and the Yankees beat up the Giants 18-4. And as a little boy, my reaction was,’Oh, the poor Giants.’
And then, my grammar school was 20 blocks from the old Polo Grounds. So I could walk after school at 2:30, catch the game at 3:15 for nothing because I was a member of the Police Athletic League and Catholic Youth Organization. So that’s when I fell in love with baseball and became a true fan. My last game with the Giants will be Oct. 2, 2016. That will be exactly 80 years to the minute from when I first fell in love with the game. So it seems like the plan was laid out for me, and all I had to do was follow the instructions.”
This is amazing! Exactly 80 years ago, he fell in love with the game, and now he retires in a game against the same team! Vin also said that he used to sit under the family radio and listen to roar of the crowd. “It came out of the speaker like water out of a shower head,” he said. “And I’d get goose bumps, and I’d say ‘Oh my gosh, this is the greatest sound I’ve ever heard,’...what I’ve tried to do, ever since the beginning, was to call the play as accurately and quickly as possible, then sit back, revel in the roar of the crowd, and for that brief few seconds, I was 8 years old again, I guess.”
In 1950, joining the legendary Red Barber in the broadcast booth. He called his first World Series in 1953, and he was the youngest person ever to call a World Series game. He stayed with the team when they left Brooklyn. Vin reminisces about an interesting experience with a college friend of his from Fordham Prep in New York. “We were in the back of the back of the auditorium, I remember I said ‘Larry, when we get out of here, what do you want to do?’.” Larry is Larry Miggins, his college buddy. “And he said, I’d love to be a big league ballplayer.’ And I said ‘I wonder what those odds are.’ And then I said ‘Well you know, I’d like to be a big league broadcaster. I wonder what those odds are.’ And then I said ‘How about this one for a long shot: How about you play, I broadcast, and you hit a home run?’ And we said ‘The odds, no one would be able to calculate that!”
Larry Miggins broke into the majors in 1948, and on May 13, 1952, Miggins, in his last Major League season, hit his first career home run, and he did it in Brooklyn when Scully was calling the game. “Incredible isn’t it. I mean, really, absolutely incredible,” the 89 year-old broadcaster says. “And probably the toughest home run call that I ever had to call because I was a part of it. He hit the home run against Preacher Roe, I’m pretty sure. And I had to fight back tears. I called ‘home run’ and then I just sat there with this big lump in my throat watching him run around the bases. I mean how could that possibly happen?”
Scully spoke about a time when he heard that a left hander was trying out for the Dodgers. “I had nowhere to go, and somebody said, ‘They’re going to try out a left hander.’ So I thought, Well, I’ll go take a look, and went down to the clubhouse. I looked over and my first thought was, He can’t be much of a player. The reason was he had a full body tan. Not what you call a truck driver’s tan, you know? Full body. But I did notice his back, which was unusual. Unusually broad. So I thought, I’ll go watch him, you know? And I had played ball at Fordham, so I saw some kids that could throw really hard and all of that. He threw hard and bounced some curveballs and...nice, but you know, I never thought, Wow, you’re unbelievable. Nothing like that at all. So what a scout I am.” That lefthander was Sandy Koufax.
Vin went on to call his no hitters, and in Sandy’s last one, Scully said one of the greatest calls in Baseball history."On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters." Here, you can hear part of the broadcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJdli-ONL-8
Vin Scully called some of the most famous moments in baseball history. He called Don Larsen’s perfect game, Hank Aaron’s record breaking 715th homer, Bill Buckner's error in game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and Kirk Gibson’s famous home run in the 1988 Fall Classic. Click below to see some of his most famous calls:
The baseball world will not be the same without Vin. He has such a lovable personality, and has left such an impact on baseball.
We’ll miss you, Vin.
Now that the drought is over, Cubs fans of all ages, especially older ones, are rejoicing. It is true that no living fan remembers their 2nd championship, but Mabel Ball was alive for it. She was overjoyed when the Cubs beat the Indians, but she passed away a few days later. Here is her incredible story. http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2016/11/12/208715402/108-year-old-cubs-fan-passes-away-after-chicago-wins-world-series
This is another interesting Cubs fan story. In 1993, Michael Lee wrote “Chicago Cubs. 2016 World Champions. You heard it here first.” According to the Huffington Post, he first thought of it in a dream he had in 1983. “I saw the words, ‘Cubs World Champions 2016’ on the Wrigley Field sign and I heard Harry Caray calling home runs.”
