When Bryce Harper was growing up in Las Vegas, where he could watch the Dodgers on television and listen to Vin Scully, he noticed readily what most of the world has known for decades. It wasn't just about the game to Scully.
"It was about the beauty of the game, the beauty of the fans, how much he could bring the fans together and the Dodgers together, things like that," Harper told the New York Times recently. "When you think of the Dodgers, you don't just think about all the greats that played for the Dodgers, you think of Vin Scully, as well."
There was a time when such was said about the man who brought Scully to the Dodgers in the first place, Red Barber. The faithful in Brooklyn were as likely to talk about and think about Barber as they were about Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, or Roy Campanella. Little did Barber know that his protege would eclipse him in recognizability after the Dodgers went west.
How long ago was that? Put it this way: On April 1, 1950 (this is no joke, folks), future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was born in New Jersey; surgeon Charles Drew, who invented the concept of the blood bank, died; the number one song in the country (Billboard) was Teresa Brewer's "Music, Music, Music." (That was from my ootsy-poo period she would say years later, when she transformed into a respected jazz singer.) Milton Berle was still numero uno on television, Jack Benny was radio's king, and the Dodgers were preparing to break spring camp and get a season going.
In Barber's day and for well enough after, the thought of a farewell tour wasn't even a topic. Joe DiMaggio didn't take one with the Yankees; he simply retired, feeling he no longer had it, after the 1951 season. Robinson — despite a hilarious bid to trade him to the New York Giants — simply made his quiet promise of retirement permanent in 1956. Ted Williams asked nothing more than a chance to go out like a champion — and punctuated his Comeback Player of the Year season with a poetic home run at the end of 1960. Stan Musial didn't exactly take one, though he was saluted in a few cities in 1963. In 1966, Sandy Koufax — who once told Scully it was almost as much fun listening to him calling a game as it was to pitch a game — confided in one reporter that it would be his final season, then went out, pitched it, and retired formally after the season.
These days, some farewell tours of baseball greats have been sublime. Mariano Rivera in 2013, graciously visiting American League ballpark staffers while the opposing teams feted him. David Ortiz, doing likewise where possible this year and, while he's at it, leading the American League in slugging and OPS at this writing. Some have been ridiculous. Derek Jeter's ostentatious 2014 farewell tour comes to mind, Jeter having overstayed his pure baseball welcome by a couple of years as it was.
But when was the last time you heard of a team's announcer getting the farewell tour. Not that Scully's been feted in person city to city this season. No. As the Times observed wryly, the farewell tour — Scully finally intends to retire after this season — has been coming to him all season. Players and staffers from teams visiting Dodger Stadium have made the pilgrimage to the stadium press box, long since named for him, to visit and salute Scully. And he's cherished every such visit.
Even the umpires. "They look up to the booth and they see me," says Scully's Dodger radio broadcast partner, Charley Steiner. "They kind of doff their caps, but they hold their palms upward as if to say, 'Where is he?' I'll say, That's the best I can do!"
This past weekend the Dodgers gave their longtime voice an amusing tribute. When players, coaches, manager, and front office staffers joined up for a team photograph, they hoisted Scully face masks in front of their own mugs. The lone holdout? Scully himself, seated front and center, grinning appreciatively. And appropriately. When ESPN conducted its 2007 polling to determine the face of each major league franchise, with each team's fans voting, Dodger fans voted Scully in a walk. He was the only non-player/non-coach/non-manager/non-executive so voted.
It's rare for a man or a woman to excel at something for the normal career span. Scully has excelled at it for almost seven decades. Even his old employer Barber, who was legendary for his understatement and his anecdotal style, seems now to have been an amateur by comparison. Barber could give you a profile of a player while he batted. Scully told stories. Barber was like the pleasant horticulturist next door who didn't mind if you eavesdropped. Scully was the one who'd open the door, invite you in to pull up a chair (he says it often enough opening his broadcasts, anyway), and pour you a cold, tall one, right before the first pitch.
He means it when he speaks as though talking to friends, just as his listeners have meant it when they tell anyone who'd listen that they feel him a friend. Numerous stories about him have noted that when people meet him for the first time and address him as "Mr. Scully," he's quick to offer a handshake and say, "Forget the Mister. I'm Vin." A few years ago, doing a game that coincided with the anniversary of D-Day, he started a mid-game talk about it thus: "I don't want this to be an intrusion, but I think we've been friends long enough, you'll understand."
Scully's genuine warmth has been known to cool down the most boiling of baseball hotheads while inviting viewers to smile with him as he orders a camera pan to capture a very young child in the park and speaks of that child with a truly fatherly affection. (Codicil: Not only did Scully have to survive the accidental death of his first wife — he's long since been remarried happily — he withstood the death of his own oldest son in a helicopter crash.) He's also displayed a wry wit, and occasional understated editorializing, while observing and discussing less commendable acts on the field.
You'd need a facility the size of a university video library, perhaps, to line up the absolute best of Scully. His moving call for salute to Campanella the first time the quadriplegic former Dodger catcher appeared at a game when the Dodgers played in the Los Angeles Coliseum awaiting Dodger Stadium. The ninth inning of Koufax's perfect game. (There are twenty thousand people in the stands and a million butterflies.) Hank Aaron's 715th home run, hit against the Dodgers. Games Six and Seven of the 1986 World Series (when Scully worked concurrently for NBC). Fernando Valenzuela's no-hitter. (If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!) Kirk Gibson's pinch homer winning Game One, 1988 Series. (In a season full of improbables, the impossible has happened!) His hilarious transliteration of Jim Tracy's argument on a shallow line out. (That is blinkin' fertilizer! No way! No blinkin' way! No bloody way!) Clayton Kershaw's no-hitter. (One measly out to go.) The thousands of times he'd have cameras pan to capture very young children and purr something almost of fatherly affection about them.
They even managed to capture Scully's style when casting him as himself in a baseball film; specifically, 1999's For Love of the Game, in which Kevin Costner portrayed a Tiger pitcher in Yankee Stadium threatening a late-season perfect game while his backstory is told in parallel — the career, a star-crossed romance seeming to end on the day of the game. When Costner's Billy Chapel consummated the perfecto, with his estranged love watching in an airport bar, Scully crooned on script, "The cathedral that is Yankee Stadium belongs to a Chapel." Unless the writers and director just told Scully to say what he'd really say in a real such game.
"The people have responded so well — so touchingly — that it will be very difficult for me to just suddenly walk away," he said in 2014, at a time when he'd been publicly undecided about returning to the Dodgers for another season or two. "It's the human relationships I will miss when the time comes. Like everyone in life, I've had my tragic moments, and the crowd has always got me through those moments. That's why I've said 'I needed you far more than you needed me.' I rarely use the word 'fans.' I realize the origin is 'fanatics,' but I always use the word 'friends'."
The Dodgers' season will end in due course. The last words Scully will ever deliver over the microphone and on the set will pass through the air soon enough. No number of preserved clips stocked aboard YouTube or archive.org will make up for knowing that we go to the 2017 season without him in his customary perch. He'll remain grateful to have had the long professional life doing what he loved, grateful for having made a friend of several generations of Americans, if not half the world.
And we'll wish him well enough when he steps to the retirement we once thought would never arrive. But forget baseball; forget Los Angeles. Knowing Scully won't be at the mike, calling a game, telling the stories within the stories around the stories behind the stories, it'll feel like America won't quite be America anymore.
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