LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully, whose sweet tones provided the soundtrack to summer as he entertained and informed Dodgers fans in Brooklyn and Los Angeles for 67 years, died Tuesday night. He was 94.
Scully died at his home in the Hidden Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to the team, after being notified by family members. No cause of death was given.
“We have lost an icon,” team president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “His voice will always be heard and etched in the minds of all of us forever.”
As the longest-tenured single-team broadcaster in professional sports history, Scully saw it all and decided it all. It began in the 1950s with Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, in the 1960s with Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, in the 1970s with Steve Garvey and Don Sutton, and in the 1980s with Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela . In the 1990s it was Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo, followed by Clayton Kershaw, Manny Ramirez and Yasiel Puig in the 21st century.
The Dodgers have changed players, managers, executives, owners — and even coasts — but Scully and his calming, insightful style have remained a constant for fans.
He began the broadcasts with the familiar greeting: “Hello everyone and have a very pleasant evening wherever you are.”
Always gracious both in person and on the air, Scully was seen simply as a conduit between the game and the fans.
The Dodgers beat the Giants 9-5 in San Francisco on Tuesday night. A Scully tribute was then shown on the video board.
“There’s no better storyteller, and I think everybody considers him family,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It has been in our living rooms for many generations. He lived a fantastic life, a legacy that will live on forever.”
Although he was paid by the Dodgers, Scully wasn’t afraid to criticize a bad game or managerial decision, or to praise an opponent while telling stories amid routine plays and remarkable accomplishments. He always said he wanted to see things with his eyes, not his heart.
“Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He was a tremendous man, not only as a broadcaster but as a humanitarian,” Kasten said. “He loved people. He loved life. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. I know he was looking forward to joining the love of life oh, Sandy.
Vincent Edward Scully was born on November 29, 1927 in the Bronx. He was the son of a silk merchant who died of pneumonia when Scully was 7. His mother moved the family to Brooklyn, where the red-haired, blue-eyed Scully grew up playing stickball in the streets.
As a child, Scully would grab a pillow, place it under the family’s four-legged radio, and put his head directly under the speaker to hear whatever college football game was on the air. With a snack of saltine crackers and a glass of milk close at hand, the boy was struck by the roar of the crowd, which gave him goosebumps. He thought he would like to call the action himself.
Scully, who played two years in the outfield for Fordham University’s baseball team, began his career by covering baseball, football and basketball games for the university’s radio station.
At age 22, he was hired by a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, DC
He soon joined Hall of Famer Red Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn Dodgers radio and television booths. In 1953, at age 25, Scully became the youngest person to broadcast a World Series game, a mark that still stands.
He moved west with the Dodgers in 1958. Scully called three perfect games – Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series, Sandy Koufax in 1965 and Dennis Martinez in 1991 – and 18 shutouts.
He was also on the air when Don Drysdale set his 58 2/3 inning shutout streak in 1968 and again when Hershiser broke the record with 59 consecutive shutout innings 20 years later.
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 announced it.
“A black man gets a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking an all-time baseball idol record,” Scully told listeners. “What a wonderful moment for baseball.”
Scully credits the birth of the transistor radio as the “greatest breakthrough” of his career. Fans had trouble recognizing the underdogs during the Dodgers’ first four years at the massive Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“They were about 70 rows away from the action,” he said in 2016. “They brought the radio in to find out about all the other players and see what they were trying to see down the field.”
That habit carried over when the team moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962. Fans held radios to their ears, and those not in attendance listened from home or in the car, allowing Sculley to connect generations of families with his words.
He often said that it was best to describe a big game quickly and then be quiet so the fans could listen to the pandis. After Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, Scully was silent for 38 seconds before speaking again. He was similarly silent for a while after Kirk Gibson’s home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that same year, and also had the stadium’s box office named after him in 2001. The street leading to the main gate of Dodger Stadium, was named in his honor in 2016.
That same year, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
“God has been so good to me to let me do what I do,” said Scully, a devout Catholic who attended Mass on Sundays before going to the field before retiring. “A childhood dream that came true and then gave me 67 years to enjoy every minute of it. This is a pretty big Thanksgiving for me.
In addition to being the voice of the Dodgers, Scully called play-by-play for NFL games and PGA Tour events, as well as 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games. He was NBC’s lead baseball announcer from 1983-89.
Despite being one of the nation’s most famous broadcasters, Scully was an intensely private man. After the baseball season ended, he would be gone. He rarely made personal appearances or sports talk shows. He preferred to spend time with his family.
In 1972, his first wife, Joan, died of an accidental drug overdose. He was left with three small children. Two years later, he met the woman who would become his second wife, Sandra, a secretary for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. She had two young children from a previous marriage, and they combined their families into what Scully once called “my very own Brady Bunch.”
He said he realizes that time is the most precious thing in the world and that he wants to use his time to spend it with his loved ones. In the early 1960s, Scully gave up smoking with the help of her family. In the shirt pocket where she kept a pack of cigarettes, Scully taped a family photo. Whenever he felt he needed a smoke, he would pull out the photo to remind him why he had given up. Eight months later, Scully never smoked again.
After retiring in 2016, Scully made only a handful of appearances at Dodger Stadium, and his sweet voice was heard narrating the occasional video played during games. Mostly he was content to stay close to home.
“I just want to be remembered as a good person, an honest person and a person who lives by his own beliefs,” he said in 2016.
In 2020, Scully auctioned his personal memorabilia over the years, which raised over $2 million. A portion of it was donated to UCLA for ALS research.
He was preceded in death by his second wife, Sandra. She died of complications from ALS at age 76 in 2021. The couple, who were married for 47 years, had a daughter, Catherine, together.
Scully’s other children are Kelly, Erin, Todd and Kevin. A son, Michael, died in a helicopter crash in 1994.
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