“Baseball’s Storyteller, Our Friend”

Dodger Stadium in the latter half of the 1980s — Dodger Stadium in 1987 (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

I actually found myself unexpectedly tearing up just a bit at George Will’s eloquent tribute to the great Vin Scully:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439685/vin-scully-baseball-storyteller

His unique voice is among my very earliest memories, going back to when I was first coming to consciousness in San Gabriel, California.

In the seven long years of my father’s sad incapacity, following a stroke that suddenly left a very vigorous, active, and bright man blind and acutely aware that his intellectual ability had been blunted, Dad listened faithfully to Vin Scully’s radio broadcasts of Dodger games. When I first entered the house after Dad’s death in 2003, I saw the schedule of games that his caretaker had affixed to the refrigerator and I saw the chair in which, day after day, night after night, he sat to listen. It was too much for me. I asked my boys to, please, move it from the room, put it outside. Right away.

Vin Scully has been an institution for the entirety of my life. I can recognize his voice after only a couple of syllables.

Out of all of the many memories of him — I was seated along the first base line at Dodger Stadium in 1962, for example, listening to Vin Scully, when Sandy Koufax pitched his first no-hitter — I again share one that I enjoyed with my Dad:

On 15 October 1988, my family and I were down in southern California visiting my parents for some reason. (I can’t recall why; it was during the school year. I think that I was giving a paper at a conference.)

The World Series had just begun, but (again, for reasons that I can’t quite recall) I hadn’t been watching it. My father, however, had it on television. The injured Kirk Gibson, hurting in not just one but both legs, was called upon to pinch hit. The Dodgers were trailing 4–3. The tying run was at first base, but there were two outs and it was the bottom of the ninth inning. The Oakland Athletics were the overwhelming favorites to take the Series.

Classic.

I walked into the room to watch the end of the game and to endure the probable Dodger defeat with my Dad. I remember commenting that, if this were a movie, the aging, injured slugger would hit a home run, and the Dodgers would win the game as he hobbled around the bases to a standing ovation and a deafening roar. (The Natural, with Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs, had come out in 1984.)

But the count on Gibson quickly moved to 0-2. And his swings looked weak, awkward. The runner stole second base. Gibson kept fouling things off. The count went to 3-2. He was still there. He was still alive. And then . . .