I wanted to write in and note the passing on Aug 2, 2022 of Vin Scully at the age of 94. During my Sojurn through the Southland (read California) many years ago I ran onto Vin when my roomates were watching a Dodger game on TV. "Turn down the sound" they said "Vin Scully's broadcasting on the radio". My reaction then was the same as the one you probably just had when you read the first line of this letter. "Vin who?", I thought.
Over the next years and decades I found out Vin who. I got to know Vin Scully like most people did, through his play by play broadcasts of not just Dodger games but also several World Series post season hunts in the mid-90's. What I got to know was that Vin Scully was the finest broadcaster the medium has ever produced. Yes, the channel was sports, the venue baseball, the arena Dodger baseball and the game was the calling of Dodger games over the radio but for me Vin stands above any other broadcaster in any game, arena, venue or channel. I remember listening to Vin and Johnny Bench broadcasting one of the World Series games (that the Dodgers weren't in), maybe '93 or '94, and coming away with the realization that I just went through a graduate course in English Liturature, an undergrad course in statistics, a seminar on baseball history and heard a ball game all at the same time. And I'd had a rollicking good time doing it. For the uninitiated the best Scully primer that I know of is Kevin Costner's 'For Love of the Game' where Costner had the genius to cast Vin Scully as the play by play announcer for the fictional game that forms the backdrop of the movie.
One of the other things I heard when my roomies turned down the amateur on TV and turned up Vin on the radio, was that we were doing this because Vin Scully was objective. In the heart of the second most image conscious, gossip ridden city in America and working for 67 years in a field where you have to choose up sides and support your team, Vincent Edward Scully never played favorites. He called the games as he saw them, right down the line. In doing so he rose above the other broadcasters who were firing up their audiences for their team and promoting partisanship to the point that there has been violence among fans in later years. How he did it gets to the heart of the man, I think.
Vin's bonifide credentials were obvious every time he opened his mouth. A master's command of the English language was out front. An encyclopedic memory for American and English culture, current events, player histories, baseball trivia, numbers (player numbers and stats) and names all played a part. The aforementioned objectivity, a lesson learned from mentor Red Barber, was there too. As you might expect from a member of the WWII generation there was support for the ideal of America and a quiet distaste for communism. The humility, the lack of ego thumping, was there. But the thing that seems to have pulled it all together, the thing that made Vin work, in an environment where he should have tripped and face planted years ago, was that Vin was a Christian. Not the kind of jingoistic, Christ On My Sleeve, kind of Christian that has been the proffered image of a Christ follower these days but the kind of Christian where Christ is not obvious but permeates every aspect of the person's life. I still don't know what stripe of Christian he was, Catholic I think, but I know without a doubt that Vin Scully had met Christ and carried him in his heart wherever he went.
I suspicion I know what some of you are thinking right now. "You're sure wasting a lot of ink eulogizing someone you never even met." Ah but I did meet him. I met him the same way millions of other Americans met him, in the spaces between "2 an 0" or "Popped back. 1 and 1". And somehow, all those years ago, I dimly recognized the larger part of what he was showing me. Yes we both imperfectly follow the master, but Vin Scully followed Christ better than I have. I'm still working on that. There's another reason I'm spending time writing this. It feels like another marker for the end of an era. Baseball, America's Pasttime, reminded us of the ideal of America, what we wish to be, a shining city on a hill where Christ is King. Vin Scully narrated that ideal better than others because he understood it. But baseball is changing and Vin is quiet. In an era where the voices have split and we are called to choose sides because we are told our existance depends on it, there is no voice for objectivity anymore. Of all the big money sports, Major League Baseball is probably the least tarnished but even it has decided not to follow a Christian America. And Vin is quiet. The only sport left that I can think of where truth, honor, justice and evenhanded objectivity are ideals to be quested for is rodeo. So support the Roundup Rodeo and watch some Cowboy Channel too. Not all Christianity comes with organ music.
There are doubtless going to be many tributes to Vin over the next few weeks and maybe even a boxed set of his best called games for the true baseball nerd but maybe someday I'll be able to hear a live Vin broadcast again. I can imagine (emphasis on imagine) that day when the armies of the world are gathered together against whatever small remnant of believers there might be, and Christ himself comes back on a white charger to save his people and remove the influence of evil in a powerful way. On that day I wouldn't be entirely surprised to turn on a radio and find Vin Scully calling the play by play. Objectively. Bye Vin. See you...well, hear you... on the other side.
Robert Wayman
Musselshell
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