Vin Scully: Hall of Fame Dodgers broadcaster dies at 94

LOS ANGELES –

Corridor of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, whose dulcet tones offered the soundtrack of summer season whereas entertaining and informing Dodgers followers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles for 67 years, died Tuesday evening, the crew stated. He was 94.

Scully died at his residence within the Hidden Hills part of Los Angeles, in keeping with the crew, which spoke to relations.

“Now we have misplaced an icon,” crew president and CEO Stan Kasten stated in an announcement. “His voice will all the time be heard and etched in all of our minds perpetually.”

Because the longest tenured broadcaster with a single crew in professional sports activities historical past, Scully noticed all of it and known as all of it. He started within the Nineteen Fifties period of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, on to the Nineteen Sixties with Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, into the Nineteen Seventies with Steve Garvey and Don Sutton, and thru the Eighties with Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela. Within the Nineteen Nineties, it was Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo, adopted by Clayton Kershaw, Manny Ramirez and Yasiel Puig within the twenty first century.

The Dodgers modified gamers, managers, executives, homeowners — and even coasts — however Scully and his soothing, insightful fashion remained a continuing for the followers.

He opened broadcasts with the acquainted greeting, “Hello, everyone, and a really nice good night to you wherever you might be.”

Ever gracious each in individual and on the air, Scully thought-about himself merely a conduit between the sport and the followers.

Though he was paid by the Dodgers, Scully was unafraid to criticize a foul play or a supervisor’s determination, or reward an opponent whereas spinning tales in opposition to a backdrop of routine performs and noteworthy achievements. He all the time stated he wished to see issues along with his eyes, not his coronary heart.

“Vin Scully was one of many best voices in all of sports activities. He was a large of a person, not solely as a broadcaster, however as a humanitarian,” Kasten stated. “He cherished individuals. He cherished life. He cherished baseball and the Dodgers. And he cherished his household. I do know he was trying ahead to becoming a member of the love of his life, Sandi.”

Vincent Edward Scully was born Nov. 29, 1927, within the Bronx. He was the son of a silk salesman who died of pneumonia when Scully was 7. His mom moved the household to Brooklyn, the place the red-haired, blue-eyed Scully grew up enjoying stickball within the streets.

As a baby, Scully would seize a pillow, put it underneath the household’s four-legged radio and lay his head straight underneath the speaker to listen to no matter school soccer sport was on the air. With a snack of saltine crackers and a glass of milk close by, the boy was transfixed by the group’s roar that raised goosebumps. He thought he’d prefer to name the motion himself.

Scully, who performed outfield for 2 years on the Fordham College baseball crew, started his profession by working baseball, soccer and basketball video games for the college’s radio station.

At age 22, he was employed by a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C.

He quickly joined Corridor of Famer Pink Barber and Connie Desmond within the Brooklyn Dodgers’ radio and tv cubicles. In 1953, at age 25, Scully turned the youngest individual to broadcast a World Collection sport, a mark that also stands.

He moved west with the Dodgers in 1958. Scully known as three excellent video games — Don Larsen within the 1956 World Collection, Sandy Koufax in 1965 and Dennis Martinez in 1991 — and 18 no-hitters.

He additionally was on the air when Don Drysdale set his scoreless innings streak of 58 2/3 innings in 1968 and once more when Hershiser broke the document with 59 consecutive scoreless innings 20 years later.

When Hank Aaron hit his 715th residence run to interrupt Babe Ruth’s document in 1974, it was in opposition to the Dodgers and, in fact, Scully known as it.

“A Black man is getting a standing ovation within the Deep South for breaking a document of an all-time baseball idol,” Scully informed listeners. “What a wonderful second for baseball.”

Scully credited the delivery of the transistor radio as “the best single break” of his profession. Followers had bother recognizing the lesser gamers throughout the Dodgers’ first 4 years within the huge Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

“They had been 70 or so odd rows away from the motion,” he stated in 2016. “They introduced the radio to search out out about all the opposite gamers and to see what they had been attempting to see down on the sphere.”

That behavior carried over when the crew moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962. Followers held radios to their ears, and people not current listened from residence or the automotive, permitting Scully to attach generations of households along with his phrases.

He typically stated it was finest to explain an enormous play shortly after which be quiet so followers might hearken to the pandemonium. After Koufax’s excellent sport in 1965, Scully went silent for 38 seconds earlier than speaking once more. He was equally silent for a time after Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit residence run to win Sport 1 of the 1988 World Collection.

He was inducted into the Baseball Corridor of Fame in 1982, obtained a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame that 12 months, and likewise had the stadium’s press field named for him in 2001. The road resulting in Dodger Stadium’s most important gate was named in his honour in 2016.

That very same 12 months he obtained the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

“God has been so good to me to permit me to do what I’m doing,” Scully, a religious Catholic who attended mass on Sundays earlier than heading to the ballpark, stated earlier than retiring. “A childhood dream that got here to move after which giving me 67 years to take pleasure in each minute of it. That’s a pretty big thanksgiving day for me.”

Along with being the voice of the Dodgers, Scully known as play-by-play for NFL video games and PGA Tour occasions in addition to calling 25 World Collection and 12 All-Star Video games. He was NBC’s lead baseball announcer from 1983-89.

Whereas being some of the broadly heard broadcasters within the nation, Scully was an intensely personal man. As soon as the baseball season ended, he would disappear. He not often did private appearances or sports activities speak reveals. He most well-liked spending time along with his household.

In 1972, his first spouse, Joan, died of an unintentional overdose of medication. He was left with three younger youngsters. Two years later, he met the lady who would turn into his second spouse, Sandra, a secretary for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. She had two younger youngsters from a earlier marriage, they usually mixed their households into what Scully as soon as known as “my very own Brady Bunch.”

He stated he realized time was essentially the most treasured factor on the earth and that he wished to make use of his time to spend along with his family members. Within the early Nineteen Sixties, Scully stop smoking with the assistance of his household. Within the shirt pocket the place he saved a pack of cigarettes, Scully caught a household picture. Each time he felt like he wanted a smoke, he pulled out the picture to remind him why he stop. Eight months later, Scully by no means smoked once more.

After retiring in 2016, Scully made only a handful of appearances at Dodger Stadium and his candy voice was heard narrating an occasional video performed throughout video games. Principally, he was content material to remain near residence.

“I simply wish to be remembered as man, an trustworthy man, and one who lived as much as his personal beliefs,” he stated in 2016.

In 2020, Scully auctioned off years of his private memorabilia, which raised over US$2 million. A portion of it was donated to UCLA for ALS analysis.

He was preceded in dying by his second spouse, Sandra. She died of issues of ALS at age 76 in 2021. The couple, who had been married 47 years, had daughter Catherine collectively.

Scully’s different youngsters are Kelly, Erin, Todd and Kevin. A son, Michael, died in a helicopter crash in 1994.

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Former Related Press staffer Stan Miller contributed biographical info to this report.