He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that year, and also had the stadium’s press box named for him in 2001. He was similarly silent for a time after Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. After Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, Scully went silent for 38 seconds before talking again. He often said it was best to describe a big play quickly and then be quiet so fans could listen to the pandemonium. Fans held radios to their ears, and those not present listened from home or the car, allowing Scully to connect generations of families with his words. That habit carried over when the team moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962. “They brought the radio to find out about all the other players and to see what they were trying to see down on the field.” “They were 70 or so odd rows away from the action,” he said in 2016. Fans had trouble recognizing the lesser players during the Dodgers’ first four years in the vast Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Scully credited the birth of the transistor radio as “the greatest single break” of his career. “A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol,” Scully told listeners. When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s record in 1974, it was against the Dodgers and, of course, Scully called it. He also was on the air when Don Drysdale set his scoreless innings streak of 58 2/3 innings in 1968 and again when Hershiser broke the record with 59 consecutive scoreless innings 20 years later. He thought he’d like to call the action himself. With a snack of saltine crackers and a glass of milk nearby, the boy was transfixed by the crowd’s roar that raised goosebumps.
His mother moved the family to Brooklyn, where the red-haired, blue-eyed Scully grew up playing stickball in the streets.Īs a child, Scully would grab a pillow, put it under the family’s four-legged radio and lay his head directly under the speaker to hear whatever college football game was on the air. He was the son of a silk salesman who died of pneumonia when Scully was 7. “His voice will always be heard and etched in all of our minds forever.” “We have lost an icon,” team president and CEO Stan Kasten said. He always said he wanted to see things with his eyes, not his heart.
The Dodgers changed players, managers, executives, owners - and even coasts - but Scully and his soothing, insightful style remained a constant for the fans.Īlthough he was paid by the Dodgers, Scully was unafraid to criticize a bad play or a manager’s decision, or praise an opponent while spinning stories against a backdrop of routine plays and noteworthy achievements. “I will never forget you, my heart is broken.” You hugged me like a father,” tweeted Puig, the talented Cuban-born outfielder who burned brightly upon his Dodgers debut in 2013. In the 1990s, it was Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo, followed by Kershaw, Manny Ramirez and Yasiel Puig in the 21st century.
BLOODY ROAR 3 OPENING PRO
I’m grateful and thankful I got to know him as well as I did.”Īs the longest-tenured broadcaster with a single team in pro sports history, Scully saw it all and called it all. He began in the 1950s era of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, on to the 1960s with Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, into the 1970s with Steve Garvey and Don Sutton, and through the 1980s with Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela. “He was the best there ever was,” pitcher Clayton Kershaw said after the Dodgers game in San Francisco. Scully died at his home in the Hidden Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to the team after being informed by family members. LOS ANGELES (AP) - Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, whose dulcet tones provided the soundtrack of summer while entertaining and informing Dodgers fans in Brooklyn and Los Angeles for 67 years, died Tuesday night.
0 kommentar(er)
