Entertainment

Dodgers Broadcaster is 94 years old – The Hollywood Reporter

Vin Scully, the elegant, spunky man whose melodious voice provided the soundtrack for the Dodger baseball team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for 67 eye-catching seasons, has passed away. He is 94 years old.

Scully, a member of the Dodgers organization from 1950 until retiring after the 2016 season, died Tuesday at his home in Hidden Hills, the Dodgers announced.

When he parted from the broadcasting station, he ordered nearly half of the games for a brand that was born in 1890.

Always short-tempered and easy to listen to, Scully is credited with turning Los Angeles into a “transistor town” – his broadcasts were broadcast throughout the LA Coliseum (the team’s first home in the south) west) and then Dodger Stadium and was free from traffic and street jams. – locations across the city are brilliant.

Robert Creamer wrote of a 1964: “When a game was on the air, the actual presence of his voice was enormous. Sports Illustrated Scully’s profile is titled, “The Semiconductor Kid.”

“His pleasant baritone voice came from the radios behind the orange juice counters, from the transistors of people sitting under the trees, in barbershops and bars, and from cars everywhere – parked cars, cars waiting for the red light to turn green, cars passing you at 65 on the freeway, cars running next to you during rush hour traffic jams. “

It’s a shame that many distributors refused to do Time Warner Cable’s Dodgers channel in a cost dispute, so most TV audiences in LA haven’t been able to hear the great Scully at work for several years .

Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, Scully also called MLB games for NBC beginning in 1983. (He received a Peabody Award that year.) Game of the weekhe collaborated with Joe Garagiola.

Prior to that, Scully performed The Masters and other golf tournaments as well as tennis and NFL competitions for CBS. Scully was the one who performed the stunt during the NFC championship game in January 1982, in which the 49ers’ Joe Montana threw a last-minute touch pass to Dwight Clark to stun the Dallas Cowboys.

After all of that, Scully continues to act as the voice of the Dodgers.

“His timing was perfect,” Dodgers announcer Rick Monday told Sports Illustrated in May 2016. “He was never in a hurry. It’s like the game waits for him. We have a little joke between us. When Vin starts one of his stories, the hitter will hit three error balls in a row and he will have plenty of time to finish it. When the rest of the players start a ball, the next game is a double hit to the ground. Play to end the round. ”

In 2010, the American Association of Sports Broadcasters named him the greatest sports athlete of the 20th century.

Scully is smooth, cool, and makes sounds effortlessly. He doesn’t talk too much or increase ventilation for the home team. When the Dodgers won the National League pennant in 1959, his inscription was classic: “We come to Chicago.” It was one of the few times he called the Dodgers “we”.

Scully’s honeyed voice is an instrument of sorts, his tempo varied from very soft to complete silence, allowing the crowd and background noise to fill everything. He walked away from the microphone for two minutes in the screams that followed the recording of Hank Aaron- setting up his 715th home run in 1974.

As for Kirk Gibson’s dramatic ninth match in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series that would take the Dodgers to the title, Scully said: “She’s gone! In a year where the impossible happened, the impossible happened.”

“I guess there is no style at all. I’m just being myself, coming to talk to the audience,” he once said.

When Red Sox’s Bill Buckner let a grounder slide between his legs during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, capped off the New York Mets’ frenetic comeback, Scully said:

“A little roller first… after the bag… it went through Buckner! Come here [Ray] Knights, and Mets win! “

One of Scully’s other memorable calls came when he “stamped the time” on the fourth unsuccessful man of Sandy Koufax’s career, which was a perfect game. “The time on the scoreboard is 9:44,” he told his radio listeners. “Date, September 9, 1965.”

He described the scene at Dodger Stadium: “There were 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies.”

“More than half a century later, it still gives goosebumps,” recalled Bob Costas during his acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame in July 2018. “The construction of the film and the anticipation, The meticulous attention to detail, the keen eye of a reporter blend with the graceful pink of a poet. A perfect performance on the matching mound and enhanced by a flawless performance in the stall. “

Scully’s skills are especially evident in the tedious matches that always appear. His forte is storytelling. He mixes off-topic and vivid thoughts that keep fans glued to his words, as if embarking on an architectural assessment of a football field, literary or historical reference. or other interesting information. He brought the color and life of the game beyond the boundaries.

Away from the pitch, Scully was heard on TV shows like Mister Ed, Highway to Heaven, Brooklyn Bridge and X file (Gillian Anderson’s character is named after him) and in the 1962 film Glenn Ford Trials in Terror. He even hosted a game show (It takes two) and his own afternoon TV talk show.

His 47-year-old wife, Sandi, died in January 2020. Survivors include his children, Kevin, Todd, Erin, Kelly and Catherine; 21 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

“We have lost an icon,” Dodgers President and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “The Dodgers’ Vin Scully is one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He is a giant of a human being, not only as a broadcaster, but as a humanitarian. He loves everyone. He loves life. He loves baseball and the Dodgers team. And he loves his family. His voice will always be heard and engraved in the minds of all of us forever. I know he’s looking forward to joining the love of his life, Sandi. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family during this very difficult time. Vin will really miss it. ”

Vincent Edward Scully was born in The Bronx on November 29, 1927. His father, a traveling salesman, died when he was 4 years old and he grew up in an apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. His love for sports television was strengthened when he ducked beneath his family’s wooden radio console to absorb the hum of the crowd during the game broadcast.

At Fordham University, he worked on the school newspaper, ran a radio station, wrote as a typist for New York Times and was a poor quarterback on the baseball team. He also sang in a quartet called The Shaving Mugs.

Scully served two years in the US Navy before graduating from Fordham in 1949. He began his professional broadcasting career as a broadcaster at the WTOP radio station in Washington, where one CBS executives noticed him and took him to see Red Barber, the digital network. 1 sports athlete.

When CBS needed someone in an emergency to host the Boston University-Maryland football game at Fenway Park, Barber called Scully. Barber then suggested to Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, that Scully would make a good addition to the stall at Ebbets Field, and Scully was hired in 1950 for $5,000 a year.

Innocent and kind, Scully failed to file a travel expense report, and the serious announcer was almost gone within the first year.

He replaced Ernie Harwell (who left to join the New York Giants) on the Dodgers broadcast, coming in at 3rd behind Barber and Connie Desmond. Then Desmond leaves and Scully moves up a step. At the start of the 1954 season, Barber moved to the New York Yankees and the Dodgers got themselves a new golden throat, 26-year-old Scully.

With the Yankees in town on July 31, 2013, Scully reminisced online about the memorable home runs he witnessed: Bobby Thomson’s shocking sudden death game winner took the Giants. giants overcame Brooklyn and entered the 1951 World Series; Aaron’s shot put him past Babe Ruth; and Gibson’s utopian explosion.

Scully has another, lesser-known game – from Game 4 of the World Series in 1963, with the Dodgers’ victory wiping out their bitter rivals – that shows the humility that has marked person and his career.

Scully tells how Mel Allen of the Yankees, another legendary player, developed severe laryngitis. The doctors asked him to remain subdued, and Allen remained in control of the Series’ three games, which were broadcast by NBC (Scully is also working for the network).

But when the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle beat Koufax to equalize 1-1 in the seventh round, “Things broke down,” said Scully, who worked the first half of the match before stepping aside. “Forget the caution with his voice. Allen called out wonderfully, but it was too long and too hard for his throat, and he just parted.

“Mel tried to speak, but nothing really came out. I had to go down to the clubhouse if the Yankees lost the Dodgers celebration. However, [NBC Sports head Tom] Gallery tapped Mel on the shoulder as if to say: ‘Give the microphone to Vin.’ And I feel terrible; My heart broke for Mel. “

Scully called the end of the game, victory of the Dodgers. Allen was fired the following season and was never called up for the World Series again.

“This is Mel on the world stage, this great moment… it was a valuable lesson for me,” Scully said. “There, but by the grace of God go, I can happen to me anytime, anywhere.”

Nothing like that has ever happened to Scully, and he bowed on his own terms at San Francisco’s AT&T Park on October 2, 2016. As Giants entertainment curator Sergio Romo was Retiring Rob Segedin of the Dodgers for the final, he said:

“It’s a good line, and it’s certainly a story I’ve kept all year long… The saying is, don’t be sad because it’s over, smile because it happened. And that’s really how I feel about the remarkable opportunity I’ve been given and allowed to keep all these years.

“All my life I have said enough. And for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant afternoon. “

Duane Byrge contributed to this report.

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