OT: RIP Vin Scully :(
August 2nd, 2022 at 11:36 PM ^
What a career. RIP.
August 2nd, 2022 at 11:39 PM ^
Yep. For my money, the GOAT of sports broadcasting. Greater than Cosell, greater than Summerall/Madden, and yes, even greater than Ernie Harwell (and that’s a mighty high bar to clear right there).
August 2nd, 2022 at 11:53 PM ^
Doc Emrick is for the GOAT for me but I grew up watching/playing hockey #1 and everything else was in the rear view
Keith Jackson is the GOAT.
Yes. So glad we still have him.
Not Pam Ward?!
August 3rd, 2022 at 10:03 AM ^
Very unpopular opinion:
I don't mind Pam Ward (as long as it's not for a "big game")
Interesting note…Scully got his start in 1950 as Ernie Harwell’s replacement after Harwell left the Brooklyn Dodgers for the Giants.
August 3rd, 2022 at 11:07 AM ^
Cool. I didn't know that.
August 2nd, 2022 at 11:37 PM ^
Dah-juh base-boll, from Dah-juh Stadium.
August 2nd, 2022 at 11:48 PM ^
I can't express how truly lucky I was to grow up listening to baseball broadcasts by Ernie Harwell and George Kell for the Tigers and national games on the weekend with Vin Scully on TV and Jack Buck on the radio.
August 2nd, 2022 at 11:57 PM ^
Probably one of the most underrated aspects of my overnight-shift sports journalism gig a decade-plus ago was putting the Dodgers games on TV and having Vin Scully's commentary in the background while I was editing away. I agree, he was the GOAT. RIP, good sir.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:03 AM ^
IMHO, Vin Scully is, was, and forever shall be the all-time golden voice of the game of baseball.
As 'ckersh74' already commented, "yes, even greater than Ernie Harwell" (a voice I cherished for decades as a diehard Tigers fan). I'm pretty sure that even Ernie himself acknowledged that he felt he was not the equal of the great Vin Scully.
Mr Scully, may you and your wonderful stories and voice rest in eternal peace. This baseball fan will certainly miss you!
You’re probably correct, but Joe Buck is a close second. He just didn’t have the same exposure as Scully.
I think you mean Jack Buck? (Joe's Dad). Jack had some great calls, including the radio call of Kirk Gibson's walk off hone run off Dennis Eckersley.
Vin and Ernie shared something that seems to be lacking these days; humility. If you asked both of them who was the greatest of the two, I guarantee they’d both have said the other person and 100% meant it.
RIP Vin, and thanks for making baseball so enjoyable to listen to.
Stylistically, Ernie and Vin differed. While both were heavily influenced by the incomparible Red Barber, Ernie's down-home southern presentation was closer to Red's approach (although Red also had a more formal side), while Vin kept the attention to storytelling and pacing but put it into a more universal patois, kind of like Johnny Carson. All three, plus Jack Buck, are your Mt. Rushmore of Baseball broacasting.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:58 PM ^
An excellent Mt Rushmore. I am struggling with the thought that the Bobs (Costas and Uecker) cannot find a place on it. But there can only be 4.
The problem for Costas is that he wasn’t a team’s everyday announcer; he called some nationally televised games and covered the playoffs, but I always thought of him as a “general sports” guy, not a baseball-specific guy.
The others are pure baseball guys that were the voices of baseball for a generation or more.
I put Uecker in the same category as Harry Caray. They are sort of baseball entertainers. Fun to watch, especially if the game is less than entertaining on its own, but if I’m watching a playoff game, or something with pennant race implications, I want one of the other four.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:13 AM ^
Sad, every day it seems we get a new RIP thread. At least Vince had a long successful life, getting to do what he does best.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:15 AM ^
He was the best of the best
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:26 AM ^
Deuces wild. Kind of. 2nd of August, 2022.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:28 AM ^
The rule of threes :(
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:48 AM ^
Listen to Vin Scully's call of the final inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game against the Cubs on September 9, 1965.
August 3rd, 2022 at 11:13 AM ^
3:05, on a close pitch called a ball: "A lot of people are starting to see the pitches with their heart."
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:48 AM ^
One way to understand the greatness of Vin and Ernie is to listen to anyone else call a game. It’s just not the same.
I’ll always associate Ernie with my dad listening to him while waxing the car. He provided the soundtrack of my youth. And then I moved to LA and got to listen to Vin for a decade plus. They are the GOATs. I can’t separate the two.
I don’t know if he was always this way, but one thing I noticed his last year or so was how he never seemed to take a breath while calling a game. His call was almost hypnotic in that way, just lulled you along with his balls & strikes.
The Dodgers and Diamondbacks got in a pretty wild brawl in 2013. This is when Puig was a rookie so you can imagine - it got pretty feisty.
Anyway —- it is worth looking up (I’m on my phone so hard to link). Vins call is absolutely classic. So matter of fact, his cadence never changes. A few great lines in there too, including “no use naming all the individual names in this, they are all there.”
No disrespect to other RIP posts, this news really sucks. The voice of MLB and as an avid baseball fan part of my childhood and as an adult is gone. I would turn to Dodger games just to hear his voice and phenomenal stories. Even after he retired he did parts of some games. Thank you Vin, you will be missed.
Weird - I was Google searching his age just this afternoon. First time I had thought of him in a few years. I thought he was older than 94.
That said, an incredible talent and he lived the fullest of lives. He was calling games solo even into his 80s! So hard to do with a game like baseball where you have to be able to fill all that time.
It’s sad to see him go, but less so given the fullness of his life. I’ll be at the Dodger Padre game this upcoming Sunday (tickets behind home plate! I might make the ESPN broadcast for anyone who wants to see me ha ha). I will have a beer on him. RIP.
Normally, I would insert a brief bio here, but I'll just say that he was born in The Bronx and called the game he loved for 67 years, better than anyone ever did or could.
A GOAT has died.
A GoAT? Use the word The or don't use GOAT. It's there really any doubt? Dude was throwing fastballs I'm his late eighties.
August 3rd, 2022 at 10:15 AM ^
Because the use of The is not permitted.
August 3rd, 2022 at 11:57 AM ^
Wait ... so it's Duh GOAT now?
August 3rd, 2022 at 10:35 AM ^
Hey. Have a box of Raisinets, my treat. 😉
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:05 PM ^
You're going to want to give him THE box, not just a box.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:45 PM ^
I think SDW needs to relax a little bit, maybe let his hair down.
Dude, chill out. And if you're going to come out swinging on the omission of the word "The", may I suggest that you have no grammatical / spelling errors yourself? Note, the missed capital letter in "GoAT", the wrong word "It's" (should be "Is") and the wrong word, "I'm" (should be "in").
fantastic announcer and human being. when i lived out west back in the day it was a pleasure to listen to him. between him and earnie harwell, you get so spoiled about your baseball announcers. the two of them are up in heaven now, saying to the each other, 'no, you were the greatest'
cut from the same cloth, humble, men of faith, marriages that lasted decades. wish we had more of that in every aspect of life.
vin got upgraded last night. God bless him.
When I would travel to LA area for work I'd always put on a Dodgers game just to listen to Vin. Never forget a line he said I still use today...
He's now got the bases loaded with no one out. He's elbows deep in alligators so let's see how he gets himself out of this one...
RIP legend
The best of the best..i listen to west coast baseball games on the MLB app while i'm falling asleep, and I'd always pick the dodgers broadcast. I still do, because Charlie Steiner and Rick Monday are also really good...but it just hasn't been the same since Vin retired.
Listening to Ernie Harwell calling Tiger games on weeknights and Vin Scully on the Saturday Game of the Week - those are the two voices of my childhood. Which was better? Who cares. They were both great. Here's a section from Ernie's Wikipage:
(Ernie) was set to receive the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting on May 5 (2010) in New York City. Harwell considered Scully to be the best broadcaster of all-time. However, in accepting the award on Harwell's behalf (Ernie had died the day before), Al Kaline noted "We Tiger fans respectfully disagree."
So this is a shame on me moment, but I didn't realize until this morning that he did a lot more than broadcast for the Dodgers. No idea that he was the voice behind the infamous Bill Buckner moment, Hank Aaron's passing of Babe Ruth, etc.
Just as did another all-time broadcasting great, Keith Jackson, Vin Scully also called numerous other sports, including PGA Golf (including The Masters), Tennis, NFL Football and College Football.
Here (from his Wikipedia page) is an interesting tidbit about a particular college game from early in his broadcast career:
"Red Barber, the sports director of the CBS Radio Network, recruited Scully for its college football coverage. Scully impressed his boss with his coverage of a November 1949 University of Maryland versus Boston University football game from frigid Fenway Park in Boston, despite having to do so from the stadium roof. Expecting an enclosed press box, Scully had left his coat and gloves at his hotel, but never mentioned his discomfort on the air.
And not just sports---Scully was seen and/or heard in numerous movies and TV shows, cartoons, the Tournament of Roses parades, even video games.
The man was nothing short of amazing.
"And there it goes...!"
I'll never forget Vin Scully's call of Gibby's 1984 World Series home run off Gossage.
August 3rd, 2022 at 10:54 AM ^
Yep. Great call.
Gibson took the first pitch --- during that first pitch Scully tells the story "Gibson made his major-league debut against Gossage. Gossage struck him out on 3 pitches."
Garagiola: "blew him away, Sparky says."
Back to Scully: "And maybe because of that, Gossage is saying, 'I can get him.'"
A two-second pause.
Scully, a bit dubiously: "Well, we'll see."
5 seconds later, we saw enough. It was a great call, but it was also a great story leading up to the call.
August 3rd, 2022 at 12:12 PM ^
Yea, I just listened to that clip as I was posting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSg0vi56syw
"He don't wanna walk you...he don't wanna walk you..."
had never seen that before, thank you for posting. and it then leads you to gibby's 9th inning game-winning 2 run shot in game 1 of the '88 series. scully did that one, too. i remember watching that game live (on TV), was in LA at the time. link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4nwMDZYXTI
gibby was so good when it counted.