SAN FRANCISCO -- Vin Scully’s Hall of Fame broadcasting career came full circle as he was honored in enemy territory Sunday, ending exactly 80 years to the day when his love affair with baseball began.
This being Scully -- a perfect orator of baseball present and past if there ever was one -- it would not be a surprise to know it all was bridged precisely 80 years from when it began in his New York neighborhood all those years ago.
It is not a story the longtime Dodgers broadcaster is shy of telling. Walking around in his neighborhood as a boy, he saw a World Series score written on a shop window. The New York Yankees defeated the New York Giants 18-4 in Game 2 of the World Series.
A switch was flipped inside the young red-headed, Irish-Catholic boy, who would become one of the most beloved baseball men ever.
Wracked with intrigue, overcome with pity, Vincent Edward Scully decided to become a baseball fan in general that day and a Giants fan in particular. The day was Oct. 2, 1936.
On Oct. 2, 2016, Scully signed off, this time for good: “I have said enough for a lifetime, and for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon.” It was a game that pitted his childhood favorite Giants against the team with which he will forever be linked, the Dodgers.
Inside the AT&T Park broadcast booth after saying farewell, Scully put the caps on his pens, closed his scorebook, waved goodbye to some fans lucky enough to capture his attention and put on his sport coat. He walked past a plaque dedicated in his honor just a few hours earlier and escaped into retirement.
The Dodgers would not win Scully’s finale. They were humbled 7-1 by the Giants. But the game was not without meaning. The Giants clinched a playoff spot to touch off an on-field celebration.
Exactly one week earlier, the Dodgers did pull off some dramatics for Scully in his final call of a home game. Charlie Culberson's walk-off home run ended that day. The Dodgers clinched a playoff spot to touch off an on-field celebration.
Like his final home game last Sunday, his final game ever Sunday was a daylong celebration. Scully is one of the few things Dodgers-related that Giants fans may ever embrace. Scoreboard tributes were the theme of the day, taped messages from Scully were shown often.
In one message, Scully spun the yarn of the shop window and how he started out as a Giants fan. The orange-and-black-clad faithful erupted in cheers as if the home team had scored a run. Talk about a guy who knows how to tell a story.
“To see him up here and for him to get the adoration from Giants fans, they did a good job of acknowledging him and loving on him here at AT&T Park, and giving him the respect he deserves,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It was going to be tough to beat last Sunday at home. That will be a high point. But for him to see the season out today, it’s a sad day but there should be rejoicing for sure. He’s had an amazing career.”
Inducted into the Hall of Fame way back in 1982, Scully has called over 9,000 games. He has announced 20 no-hitters, and was there for five Dodgers championship seasons. He called Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yankees in the 1956 World Series and Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965.
The call of the Koufax perfecto is one of his more famous, along with the call of Kirk Gibson's home run in the 1988 World Series. He referenced a sombrero for Fernando Valenzuela's 1990 no-hitter, and of players somewhere between clean shaven and fully bearded he liked to say they “arrived by raft.”
Players didn’t make bad contact, they “sounded like they hit that one with the morning paper.” And a high-energy player “makes coffee nervous.” He was the master of reading lips, deciphering Madison Bumgarner's “Don’t look at me” as recently as a week and a half ago.
One of his go-to statements as his career winded down: “I’ve always needed you more than you have needed me.”
It is time to find out.
Perhaps another broadcasting legend said it best. The San Diego Padres' Dick Enberg also said goodbye this weekend, and this is how he described Scully to mlb.com:
“I would want to describe what Vin isn't,” Enberg said. “It's not loud. It's not frantic. It's not about himself grandstanding, it's not shouting. It's smooth and soft and well-prepared. It's that favorite sweater that you put on during a chilly day.”
That day just got a little colder.